Have just openly pushed back on the corporate inclusive / gender neutral drive

[AffronttoBS]

…on the company DEI social media page, and was scared at first ( so much for ‘inclusive’ , safe space for everyone), but decided to go ahead anyway as I felt it needed to be said, to signal to people not everyone is fooled by this, and to hopefully make it easier for other people who care about women’s rights to be braver to speak out. And I would also like to see how another employee would come at me, without sounding deranged, or even coming with any sort of reasonable or logical argument.

The background is, someone posting a virtual signalling post on Microsoft s AI Editor in Word that prompts inclusive language etc.

For those who choose to use it, Editor’s inclusive language critique offers suggestions to replace language that may perpetuate biases around age, ability, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic or racial slurs, as well as outdated or sensitive geopolitical references.

There followed many likes and comments about ‘good to see system change….for inclusion’.

Then

Let's hope it does what it says it does, rather than the opposite and perpetuate biases in the name of 'Inclusive'. The fact the opening paragraph excludes the potential for biases against 50% of the population does not inspire confidence. No, I'm not very trusting of the Big Techs in this regard. Unpopular opinion perhaps.....but, diversity of thoughts.

Hopefully this is not a career limiting move.

Well done, OP. I think I sense that more and more people are speaking up about this. They can't cancel us all.

While I agree this kind of thing should be treated with caution, I don't get the specific criticism you're making.

The criticism is aimed at the paragraph in italics, at what the MS Word Editor is claiming to do.

@ArabellaScott agree. They can’t cancel all of us. Hopefully if my comment escalates the ‘debate’ , others will have my back.

The sex bias is absent isn’t it? Well done and good luck. There is always a blind spot about right old school sexism, I find.

Well done OP that's brilliant.

Aaron, have you not noticed the lack of 'sex' as one of the criteria for bias?

I now hone in to any such paragraph and look for the word before reading the text for nuance.

Yes @ArticusI am being deliberately indirect and oblique.

Using their tactics. Those who know, know.

It may help other women realise they're not alone and excluded by 'inclusion'.

I tend to think that what this editor thing does may not really make a distinction between 'gender' and sex - I'd have thought it would largely be doing things like expunging 'default male' language, which is a good thing. It may to some extent be using 'gender' as a euphemism for sex , and the fact it's not accurately capturing the protected characteristics in the U.K. may be because it's American. (Cultural imperialism?)

Good work 💪

Yes it could expunge‘default male’, and it could also easily embed gender neutral language across the board, without regard to context....and that's not a good thing thing for ‘inclusion’ of women.

Yes - Sex neutral language is good except in contexts relevant to only one or other sex.

Sounds like an auto correct designed to change eg "women" to people or "her" to their in any correspondence relating to women.

It's not compulsory is it?

@GNCQ

Sounds like an auto correct designed to change eg "women" to people or "her" to their in any correspondence relating to women.

It's not compulsory is it?

It was more likely originally designed to change 'he' to some neutral form of words. The 'default male' has diminished but it's not gone yet, and was a real problem. I write technical documentation and it's quite rightly entirely neutral nowadays.

However, if a (possibly) unintended consequence is removing sex specific language from sex specific communications then that needs resisting.

I wouldn’t trust Big Tech for this to be an unintended consequence.

We’ll done that woman

Well done- I emailed a group I'm in using gender when quoting the Equality Act in place of sex. Received a thank you saying they would correct it.
Little steps.....

Well done for speaking up....