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/

When I was a young 'un and starting out in my career, I was specifically advised not to make an issue of my gender as many employers automatically, whether by design or by unconscious bias, tended to screen women out of positions in my chosen industry. To this day, I never prefix my name with Ms when it comes to work related issues as it bears no relevance to my competency and has never been an issue. For years I have worked hard to be judged on the quality of my work rather than my reproductive organs. If I were a civil servant I would be very aggrieved at being pushed back into the arena of being judged because of my sex.

Adult/human/female

@TheBiologyStupid

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

The HO is full of incredibly progressive people who wish to beeee kiiiiind, but who also deported legally settled Black people (Windrush), have been keeping asylum seekers in limbo for years waiting for case decisions, and are now dragging their heels to let Ukrainians in. But hey, the pronouns must balance everything else out, right?

Indeed, RayonSunrise - not to mention their latest plans to send refugees to the paradise of Rwanda.

Am fairly sure an employer compelling employees to disclose their pronouns is guilty of discrimination under the Equality Act. It's fairly well documented that bringing attention to the fact someone is female makes them more likely to face harassment.

Forcing someone to disclose their pronouns is also obviously extremely transphobic, if they're dysphoric but not ready to come out yet.

I recently got emails with "she/her" below the signatures from a teacher and an administrator at my children's schools (2 different schools). The correspondents were called Hannah and Laura so I could have deduced they were either of the female sex or presenting as the female gender from their names. But I don't care what their sex or gender is as it is irrelevant - I was asking one for a reading list and booking an open day visit with the other. I had no reason to talk about them in the third person (and even now I am I can avoid gendered pronouns). I kind of want to call the schools to find out what their policies are and what they're teaching the kids. Is anyone else getting this from school contacts? I'd like to know of any previous experience people have with discussing this in a school setting.