Council worker sacked over pronouns

This was clearly not about pronouns. It's about agreement to an ideology. Pronouns are just shorthand to signal agreement.

This is true. If the council had said it wanted people to put their star signs in their email signatures, then surely everyone would see how ridiculous it was.

The question then is whether the council can legitimately sack someone who mocks their daft requirements by putting something clearly stupid in their email signatures instead.

This is why I think it's a difficult case. Obviously the council's requirement is ludicrous. But equally, as an employer, are you obliged to put up with your own staff taking the piss out of you? Probably not.

It's always one way isn't it. One side gets to go as far as things like fox/foxeself and we all have to play along. The other gies by material reality and that's the problem.. 🤔

Besides what actually happens when you are " mis gendered " I go by a unisex shortening of my name. Think along the lines of Ashley. If I get mistaken for a guy I don't give a fuck. It literally has zero impact on me. I don't have a melt down.

Why are we pandering to such fragility. Honestly how do adults handle a work environment when they are so self absorbed, more worried over whether a complete stranger knows their identity than doing their job.

Fellow retail people back me up here. We get called names, accused of all sorts, we get stuff thrown around the shop. People kick off all the time. We even get manhandled by customers and accosted strangers in the street because they recognise us from our work place. Having a customer go " I was speaking to a guy named Ashley via email is he about " would not even register as a problem.

I hope he appeals and gets a decent lawyer and crowd funder this time.

Yeah I’ve reread and it looks like that was exactly it

Same here.

It's remarkable that people are calling it provocative.

It's bloody provocative suggesting that employees might want to signal their compliance to an ideology that is offensive, dangerous to women, and damages children.

The Forstarter judgement protected lack of belief in gender ideology, too. Which his choice of 'pronouns' was.

This was clearly not about pronouns. It's about agreement to an ideology. Pronouns are just shorthand to signal agreement.

His employer should have withdrawn the statement suggesting people could use pronouns. You don't suggest people adhere to an ideology that many people consider batshit and dangerous, in the workplace.

He may not have been clever enough to win his tribunal. But I bet if he appeals and gets a lawyer, he will. Anyone could make mincemeat out of what those pronouns represent.

He could have just not added his pronouns. Noone was making him
He was sacked because of his twatty behaviour, not because of his objections.

Good, articulate points

It tells you that they believe in trans ideology and, therefore, that culturally assigned sex roles are the defining factor in who is a man and who is a woman. The pronoun people are regressive, old-fashioned sexists.

It's a subtle trap that the idiot fell for.

It wasn't compulsory to state your pronouns. But reading between the lines it absolutely was compulsory to give 100% respect to the idea of stating your pronouns.

Hamfisted protest failed because council could just argue "we weren't forcing anybody to do anything!"

A colleague or boss who puts pronouns in their signature is informing you that they believe the culturally-assigned sex roles of men and women are in fact innate.

No it doesn’t mean that at all. It can just mean they believe people have the right to make their pronouns known or make other people feel more comfortable.

Pronouns aren’t really a big thing where I work but the few people who do state them certainly don’t believe culturally assigned sex roles are innate. Far from it.

This it has got so ridiculous.Sacked for being clever probably much frowned upon in the council.

To be fair, I strongly suspect my “big boss” probably just thinks he’s being supportive of “trans rights” and DEI and hasn’t thought much about it, but it does give me pause for thought and add to my reluctance to raise this as an issue.

Like many others, I don’t really want to risk my job and am unwilling to rock the boat when all this is effectively optional at present. It would be different if someone was insisting I put pronouns in. Then I would object. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in though.

Fo/Ad - in homage to Green Day’s epic Fuck Off & Die?

I agree with PriOn1's post. A colleague or boss who puts pronouns in their signature is informing you that they believe the culturally-assigned sex roles of men and women are in fact innate. They believe in masculinity and feminity being the deciding factor of who is a man and who is a woman. It's a massive warning about what they really think and also that they are the type who will get you sacked if you challenge their sexist thinking.

He was being silly and sounds full of self importance.

Lol. The irony.

(HR seem to have suggested looking for less 'offensive' wording that might have this effect, but he wasn't having it).

I wish they'd suggest to men who claim to be women, that their wording is offensive. No doubt they 'wouldn't have it' either, but that would be ok of course. It's sickening.

Yes he should have got a lawyer involved. After following the many ETs on here it seems that defending yourself is really difficult. Also I think lawyers would have probably have given him advice on the likelihood of winning the case from the start and may have advised him not to bother. Good for him for making a stand. It does make you wonder if he’d taken the opposite direction and come up with some neo pronouns that could be changed regularly or depending on context etc or even suggested ‘no pronouns to be used’ and complained when they inevitably were how the Council would have reacted.

As it was highlighted elsewhere that more general accusations of bullying and harassment by the Council (and I also read something about lack of complaints being resolved) made it sound like a nasty place to work.

Most public bodies have strict rules about signatures. Employees can’t just add whatever they like.

Although the policy didn’t give an exhaustive list what he added weren’t actual pronouns. There is no reasonable expectation that someone would actually use what he wrote to refer to him in every communication. He and her are actual pronouns whether you agree with particular individuals using them or not. He had the option not to add any.

His beliefs weren’t the problem. He was being silly and sounds full of self importance.

...except that being confronted with a wall of sheherhehimtheythem pronoun people when all you want is to access county services is hardly likely to constitue access without barrier or prejudice, now is it? I might go so far as to call it an unsafe environment, especially if it's a municipal institution running a swimming pool and I want to ask them about access to the ladies' showers.

It probably would have been a better strategy to put something like ze/zir and then complain to HR and threaten to sue every single time a colleague got it wrong.

I disagree with this. This is particularly relevant to me as I work in the civil service, which is supposed to be politically neutral, but it applies anywhere.

Those who choose to put their pronouns in their signature are making a definitive political statement.

Not putting pronouns in your signature is not an equal and opposite political statement. It’s impossible to say whether those who don’t put their pronouns in are doing so in protest or are merely indifferent.

Several people I work alongside have pronouns in their signatures. They include the head of my division. Because he has his pronouns in his bio, to be equal with him (and others) I should be allowed to state in my signature that I disagree with the practice.

Should I choose to write something professional in my signature, such as “I consider all pronouns should be sex based” it makes it obvious that what we have is a competing situation of rights.

I would argue that stating your pronouns (when they are perfectly obvious) is a political statement and not a useful exercise to help people identify you correctly. A good lawyer should be able to argue such a case, I believe.

This case is unhelpful as this aspect was not explored. It may be that his signature was noted as being unprofessional, and therefore a sacking offence. It appears however that some hyperbolic statement was used about harming people, which a decent lawyer could also have pulled apart.

So I disagree that pronouns or omission is an equal position. I would very much like to see this case properly argued, or preferably a better case, where there was no question of unprofessional conduct, beyond the equally unprofessional conduct (in my opinion) of including your political position on pronouns in your signature by listing them.

The idea of choosing your pronouns is massively sexist and regressive and he was right to make a protest. If trans ideology is valid then the council has no right to decide that his pronouns were inauthentic.

He probably would have done better to remove the signature when asked and then go through the official complaints process asking why his chosen “identity” was unacceptable.

True, but even people you don't like have rights.

He was silly and facetious but not offensive and he didn't endanger anyone. He probably deserved a warning. But being sacked? Is there more to this?

Sacking does seem extreme, but I suppose once he refused to comply, having made his initial protest, it put his employer in a difficult position. You can't have staff putting something obviously stupid in their email signatures - well, unless it's the correct, prescribed stupid thing.