Home Office staff are told to add their pronouns to work emails

[EmbarrassingHadrosaurus]

A row erupted last night after it emerged Home Office staff have been told to declare their pronouns in their emails to make life more welcoming for trans people.

People working at the Visa, Status and Immigration Services department were instructed to say in their emails whether they are a man, a woman, or non-binary.

This means they have to say if they are he/him if they are a man, she/her if they are a woman or they/them if they are non-binary and do not describe themselves as a man or a woman.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10723983/Backlash-Home-Office-staff-told-add-pronouns-work-emails.html

This is in contradiction to Yogyakarta Principle 6f (Principle 6 is all about LGBT people's right to privacy).

6f states:

Ensure the right of all persons ordinarily to choose when, to whom and how to disclose information pertaining to their sexual orientation or gender identity, and protect all persons from arbitrary or unwanted disclosure, or threat of disclosure of such information by others.

If you don't feel comfortable making these disclosures about yourself then employers should not insist that you should do so.

yogyakartaprinciples.org/principle-6/

legalfeminist.org.uk/2020/07/19/pronouns-compulsion-and-controversy/

Sex Matters has some guidance for anybody that this affects:

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/pronouns/

I’d put something random in every day, if my employer tried enforcing that.

We recently were given the option via our online HR system to disclose our pronouns and protected characteristics such as race or disability etc. It’s voluntary in theory to add your pronouns but you can’t disclose eg your disability without also filling in the pronoun bit. So I’m not doing any of it.

Talk about missing the zeitgeist

"you can’t disclose eg your disability without also filling in the pronoun bit."

There's some forced teaming if ever I saw it. There's a legitimate reason for collecting disability data and none whatsoever for collecting data on how you do or don't engage with a social construct that's escaped from the fringe excesses of academia.

I work somewhere where pronouns are allegedly "optional". Except everyone in HR has capitulated and we've been subject to endless essays on why we should copy and bekiiind. What is interesting though, is to observe where it is and is not taken up. And which teams still have a spine.

I'm in a civil service job. My line manager said a few months ago that we could put them on if we wanted but it was up to us. He's very sceptical about gender ideology. I asked if I could put my star sign - don't believe in that either. He suggested (ruefully) I steer away from that sort of thing to avoid confrontation.

Just put your pronouns as reverend, father

I’d put something random in every day, if my employer tried enforcing that.

In a lot of systems, it's only IT that can do this which is why some people's email sig files remain the same but they're more fluid in the chyrons on Zoom/MS Teams/whatever platform.

iirc, somebody was very pleased that she had refused to respond to the HR request to declare pronouns only to find when discussing this with somebody that IT had gone through and attached people's pronouns anyway.

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus

I’d put something random in every day, if my employer tried enforcing that.

In a lot of systems, it's only IT that can do this which is why some people's email sig files remain the same but they're more fluid in the chyrons on Zoom/MS Teams/whatever platform.

iirc, somebody was very pleased that she had refused to respond to the HR request to declare pronouns only to find when discussing this with somebody that IT had gone through and attached people's pronouns anyway.

Is that not triggering/transphobic if eg Dave hasn’t yet come out at work about transitioning to another gender but his email says he/him forcing Dave to face the forced gender that Dave was observed to be at birth rather than the gender Dave feels Dave is?

The MoJ does not (yet) require pronouns in signatures. I would go fucking BALLISTIC if some pencil-neck in IT took it upon themselves to choose them for me!

My pronouns are pish/tush.

Didn't the Home Office also change all the loos to mixed sex then had to change them back as everyone was going elsewhere for a comfort break and nobody would use them? Staff were going to other buildings, I think.

When will they ever learn?

I'm sure that learning the pronouns of home office civil servants is a top priority for asylum seekers who have finally reached the UK.

It will make their journey to Rwanda so much better.

It's not clear from that story if it's suggested, or expected.
If the first - fair enough. Some people might want to.
If the second - not good.

Civil servant soon to be ex thank god we had a memo to say female sanitary products wd be put into mens loos I said what a waste of money I got reported for being transphobic I said are you mad it’s a sin was my life in the 80s my friends wire more slap than boots counter and higher heels than any woman there was never any bullshit about gender nonsense they were gay men end of - bullshit wokery

I disagree with the government’s Rwanda decision, it’s dreadful, but I do think they need to get a grip on the CS.

If adding pronouns is demanded and not suggested, then those making this policy are assigning no weight to the possible stereotype threat effects of forcing every female employee (who accepts being seen as female) to double-remind everyone of their sex (if their name is clearly female, too) or to inform the recipient about their sex (if their name leaves that unclear).

I am not sure how large that would be in this context, but it has been shown to affect girls when taking tests in topics where the general society sometimes tells them that their sex might be a handicap. Like physics or mathematics.

But it's also another sign of us going backwards from the idea that it's the individual who should matter in most work- and school-related situations and not what sex or gender group that person belongs to. Gender essentialism.

Hello, my name is Luna, my pronouns are she/they and I will be overseeing your transportation to Rwanda.

Not happened in my work yet (also CS) thankfully, but i have my response prepared just in case. There has been more talk about inclusion of late, including LGBT+ so I'm wondering if it will end up being suggested.

My sex is not relevant to my ability to do my job, and conscious and subconscious bias against women persists. Therefore I will not be advertising my sex, thanks very much.

It's always the fault of the IT dept .

They generally do what they are told. They don't own the data.

They won't enforce this in your email signature unless they are instructed to do so and it won't be some 'pencil neck' in IT who decides what pronoun to use for you.

Still pretty shit what HO is doing but lots of misunderstanding about the role of IT.

I honestly think the only way to stop this is for every person to put the opposite pronouns to stop the special ones feeling so special and make people realise how ridiculous it is.

The ludicrous argument by a certain TRA whose surname is a garment you wear when it’s cold:

“It's not compulsory and does NOT breach equalities law. Even if it was compulsory, if it can be objectively justified it would be unlikely to be unlawful.”

First, what objective justification could there be for forcing someone who doesn’t want to show support for a philosophical position to do so? Second, surely compelled speech is always unlawful. Third, is this really an argument that this form of discrimination might be objectively justified, coming from someone who believes a rape shelter for women should be forced to admit males?

Can I choose my own adjectives and compel everyone to use them when referring to me?

Bordois
(Phenomenal/underpaid)

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus

I’d put something random in every day, if my employer tried enforcing that.

In a lot of systems, it's only IT that can do this which is why some people's email sig files remain the same but they're more fluid in the chyrons on Zoom/MS Teams/whatever platform.

iirc, somebody was very pleased that she had refused to respond to the HR request to declare pronouns only to find when discussing this with somebody that IT had gone through and attached people's pronouns anyway.

I would be very careful with MS Teams etc. I saw a lot of people demanding that Microsoft add a pronouns feature into ( techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/personal-pronouns-in-teams/m-p/2480633 ). So you may get a situation where they come up because Microsoft has added the feature and they automatically appear for everyone.

At least with LinkedIn I refused to use the feature.

I find the pronouns LinkedIn so distracting that I avoid using it.

Mine are Just No

I would be very careful with MS Teams etc. I saw a lot of people demanding that Microsoft add a pronouns feature into ( techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/personal-pronouns-in-teams/m-p/2480633 ). So you may get a situation where they come up because Microsoft has added the feature and they automatically appear for everyone.

Some companies have instructed that they're included in Zoom.

I attend some very large meetings. Scrolling through galleries or the list of participants to bring up people's pronouns is a lot of overhead. People end up conversing in very awkward ways if they don't want to keep consulting chyrons or search through the attendee lists.

Because that is what we all need, additional cognitive overhead in these endless virtual meetings.

The Home Office obviously missed the pronouns/Rohypnol memo then...