Speaking out at work

[Chrysanthemum5]

I work in a very woke environment and I have been feeling under pressure to keep quiet about my gender critical views.

Also I'm not really speaking out about my background - I have an intersex sibling who has transitioned as an adult but that's not the 'right' kind of transgender in this workplace. Apparently her respectful stance that she doesn't know what it was like to grow up female isn't brave and stunning enough

Anyway yesterday I got an email as a senior manager asking about making two training sessions compulsory. One about general awareness and one specifically on trans awareness. I've replied yes to the first and no to the second and said I will explain why at the next management meeting.

So far so good. It feels bloody annoying though that it actually took a lot of courage to even say that.

Just posting to ensure that I feel obliged to carry on with my reasoned discussions rather than avoiding the battle

Good for you. There is an awful lot of misinformation being spread around under the heading of awareness. I think it's about time employers realise that many of us are aware of the inaccuracy of the legal information being presented and the imposition of policy and training without any equality impact analysis.

I would ask for the session plans on each training session and let the management know that if you are going to implement such things as unisex toilets, they need to redo a risk assessment to ensure for example that filming or sexual assaults are mitigated against.

Thanks both those are great suggestions

I was going to comment similarly to sackrifice. If you don't have information about the course provider or the materials, it will be easy to paint you as someone objecting in ignorance and, therefore, a bigot.

Play the game, its probably the usual guff but don't make that assumption, tell them you are open to becoming aware of new facts but will use your critical judgement to assess any new ideas.

Some of my male coworkers have asked today if they can start using the female toilet, as someone doesn't flush their toilets, they are sure it is not one of them from our department and they are fed up. Luckily our boss is worried that this would just mean that the Ladies toilet would become equally gross.

Some possible responses or thoughts for you:

I think it's also about looking at who is really being disadvantaged - still - in the workplace.

By far the majority of those having advantage in the work place will be natal males. And by far the majority of those disadvantaged in the workplace will be natal females.

Women make up just over 50% of the population; transwomen & transmen are 0.1% of the population (I think? or is it 1%?)

It is not a coincidence that the sex-pay gap has slipped since the various equality committees united under one organisation, which oversees race and sex.

Overall, the oppression & disadvantage of women is so 'normalised' or made to feel 'natural' (you could cite Althusser & hegemony if you want to counter po-mo woke) that we generally don't see it. And as women, we ourselves are socialised/conditioned not to make a fuss, to do the emotional labour, to grease the wheels of sociability.

So you might need to 'defamiliarise' the situation of women in your organisation and/or profession etc.

I write as one of the 12% of female professors in the UK ... that statistic on its own pulls people up, because their experience of those 12% is that we are generally pretty forthright & noticeable (you know that thing - more than 1 woman on a committee and it's "dominated" by women??) so they forget that 78% of the professoriate in UK HE is male. Which is Not.Good.Enough.