Pride Month: Workplace have asked for anonymous feedback on "how can we be more inclusive?"

When are companies going to realise that their inclusiveness is anything but?

I reply Penguin/Penguins but that i don’t fear being misgendered….

Well put.

It is in effect a demand to know if you love Big Brother.

I agree.

It's tantamount to asking everyone to join in a prayer before the meeting starts.

And, as with the prayer, it puts non-believers in gender ideology in the position of either having to engage in the rituals of a religion they don't believe in because the request is coming from their employer so there is an imbalance of power and they feel under duress to do so, or they have to openly admit they are a different religion from their employer and the rest of the workforce and face the inevitable consequences.

I also think that employers don't realise how stressful all of this is for non-believers who have already been harmed in some way by gender ideology and/or who desperately don't want to be forced to publicly state their beliefs on the subject.

For me it would be like being asked to declare my horoscope star sign at the start of a work meeting.

There's an answer I could give to that question (Aries), but I think the whole horoscope thing is bollocks. So to be forced to identify myself within the terms of a system I think is bollocks is offensive.

I'm not going to stop another consenting adult reading their horoscope: that's their affair. But to force everybody in a workplace to go along with an imaginary system of classification is frankly bizarre.

Well done OP.

Inclusion involves nine protected characteristics, not just the one. Women, disabled women, women of faith, religious tolerance, homosexual people -

Trans employees do not need to see other people's interests and needs subordinated, enforced belief performed against other people's beliefs and equality, and inclusion abandoned for all but them, in order to be included.

Political activists may want it. That is not the same thing. And the political agenda is not inclusive of all trans people; only those useful to and compliant with the political activist agenda, many of whom are not themselves trans.

I'm not "out" as bisexual at work. Mostly because I've been married to a man for over a decade but also because its not necessarily information I want to share with my colleagues. My colleagues I am close to probably know from random comments about celebrities etc but no one else knows.

I am not actively hiding it, I'm not ashamed of it, I'm not scared of talking about it and if someone one on one asked me I would probably have a chat with them about it.

But if I got asked at the start of a meeting to state my name and my sexuality I would probably freeze, over think it and feel incredibly uncomfortable.

So I don't see how forcing people to state their pronouns every meeting could be comfortable for someone who is unsure for example whether they are non binary or not.

It just seems rather ironic that gender critical people seem to have more sympathy to those in that position than TRAs. Almost like if you aren't "out" and proud of it then tough feel uncomfortable. They sure do seem to be comfortable with a whole load of people being uncomfortable....

no one is outed as one or the other by the pronoun thing any more than being asked are you Ms, Miss or Mrs outs your marital status.

Nobody asks people to state their marital status (or race, sex, parental status, religion, sexual orientation etc) at the start of a meeting - it's not relevant to their job and could be seen as enabling illegal discrimination against those not giving the preferred answer. Why is gender the exception?

No response yet as they as collating feedback.
But I'd love to see how they address my points. If they say they are important then they are admitting that they haven't got policies in place that are inclusive to a sizeable minority; if they dismiss them as not being what they meant then they are admitting there is only one topic of inclusion they are interested in.

I suspect none of my points will be mentioned at all.

And yet you don't see the hypocrisy of the trans lobby forcing their beliefs on other people.

Asking for pronouns is not polite. It’s an aggressive forcing of trans ideology in the workplace meant to let everyone know that people who don’t play along will face consequences.

Good response OP. Hopefully others do the same.

I'm waiting for the annual staff survey so will be writing something very similar!

Needless to say I will have no part of this pronouns on email signatures nonsense.

The culture in many Stonewalled companies is to 'be inclusive' to the point of hounding. Neutrally declining to participate is not accepted and creates further issues and awkwardness.

Calmly ignoring a departmental/company email encouraging pronouns to be added to email signatures results in increasingly persistent reminders. This is despite it not being a requirement and there being several good reasons why people may choose to opt out.

Being put on the spot to adopt or decline an ideology while at work is unacceptable.

It's not polite and it makes the asker look like an idiot.

That is such a great response OP. Thank you.

Also not equivalent.

How is it forced? Asking pronouns is polite and no one is forced to respond with a pronoun. As I put in my post, anyone is usually (or should be) free to decline to share their pronouns.

Since you are concerned that some trans/nb people might not want to share pronouns, not just those with gender critical beliefs, how is it outing anyone? If the company at a meeting says “introduce yourself and your pronouns if you so wish” and Sam says “I’m Sam, no pronouns”, then you don’t know if it’s a gender critical Sam OR a nonbinary Sam who’s not yet decided or comfortable enough to out themselves as nb.

So no one is outed as one or the other by the pronoun thing any more than being asked are you Ms, Miss or Mrs outs your marital status.