Modern life

I've also had that and I was like, huh? My daughter had to explain it to me. I still don't get it. It's liberalism gone mad. Or something.

Seems quite sensible to me. There are plenty of names that don't give a clue to the gender of the person, and I have sometimes responded to an email uncertain as to how to address the person.
I wouldn't expect it in a personal capacity, but this sounds like an 'official' email going to a lot of people so easier to have it in the usual signature than to pick and choose.
The 'rose' in my username is a family nickname - my real name is usually female, but there are some parts of the English speaking world where it is used as a male name. I used to get around that by putting 'Ms', but would be happier with this (though it never occurred to me!)

So, if you had to reply, would it be wrong to start the email 'Dear Sir or Madam?

And actually, weren't we modern all those years ago?

All you need to do if you are a female with a name say Charlie
is what has always happened in the past you put (Miss) (Mrs) or (Ms) in brackets after the name you don’t need to write a sentence to explain what you want to be called that’s so stupid
Best wishes
Bluebelle (Ms)
You can call me he, she, it, duck or love, but not hun

It was an unequivocally female name.
Do men have to sign off giving their preferred pronouns?

Nobody has to sign off with their preferred pronouns. It's just a Woke craze.

Well, call me old-fashioned, but what is the matter with Miss/Mrs/Ms/Mr in brackets after their name?!!!

kittylester: So, if you had to reply, would it be wrong to start the email 'Dear Sir or Madam?
Oh my goodness, terribly wrong these days! The BBC are teaching children 9-12 years there are 100 different genders. Believe it. BBC 100 Genders
The person might be intergender or agender or any of the many others! ?
They would be permanently offended!

I'm pretty offended at having to prove my femaleness. I guess I'm not 'woke' or whatever ungrammatical adjective is flavour of the month.

I'm of the Dear Sir or Madam ilk.

DD has a name which is male in the country where she lives and works, so I suppose it would work for her.

So why not just add Miss/Ms/Mrs. No need to list preferred pronouns.

In these days of equality and non discrimination between the sexes, why bother to explain what sex you are? My name is shortened to a male sounding name and I have never had any problems during my working life.

To me it’s really really pretentious Look at me I m woke I know how to behave in this modern world, thumbs nose dah diddy dah dah

It's gone loopy.

It’s not about being male or female, it’s a out how you self identify. So if you name is Margaret, it’s clearly female but you may identify as neither male or female so your preferred pronouns would be they/ their/ them. If Margaret left you a message asking you to ring them, you would ring up and tge conversation would go like this

You Hello I’ve had a message from Margaret, they wanted me to ring them
Organisation They are not in this morning
You When will they next be in? Or maybe I can leave a message for them on their voice mail

Etc etc etc . I’m finding all this self identifying quite ludicrous.

Just daft!

This gender thing is a load of old tosh.

How would you address a letter to this Margaret though? Dear Margaret sounds very informal, obviously not Sir or Madam because that specifies male or female,

Dear Person?

It is very confusing.

The gender thing isn’t a load of tosh hen in general, even if it might bbecin this particular example.

Jane10 Certainly this example is just ‘woke’ but is presumably how their HR dept has instructed staff to sign off letters.Covering their arses in case anyone complains!

I agree lemon. The power and influence of the self id gender group is out of all proportion to its numbers.

Or you could reply, with To whom it may concern. No gender no names. That used to be used.

The pronoun is not really about how you address them in a letter/ email = that’s easy - but about how you would refer to them when a pronoun is used. I generally use their full name if it’s given eg Dear Margaret Smith - with emails just first names are quite commonly used now