Pronouns

[Heroicallyl0st]

Pronouns again, sorry.

My work have asked everyone to fill in D&I data on the HR system. There are questions about gender, gender identity and pronouns along with other stuff about religion, disability etc.

The pronouns question is the only question without a ‘prefer not to say’ option. The options are:

• she/her


• he/him


• they/them

It can be left blank so you’re not forced into selecting one to be able to submit the rest of the data. But HR have recently said they’re going to send monthly reminders to those who haven’t completed the question set. Would it be reasonable to suggest to work that they should add a ‘prefer not to say’ option? Feels like the right thing to me, but I’m only just getting educated about this stuff and feeling weirdly nervous about it.

The thing that irks me is that this pronouns data feeds through to other work systems, so when I send an email it will show in someone’s inbox as being from ‘first name, surname (pronouns)’. So if everyone blindly follows and selects an option, I’m worried I’ll eventually stick out as being ‘unsupportive’.

I’d email and politely say please don’t send any further reminders as I am choosing not to disclose this data.

If ignore for now. What happens if you don't complete and return the questionnaire, and then ignore all the reminders?

That's so weird, so you're not even allowed to opt out? I thought asking about religion was a no no in work situations. HR departments seem to be totally down the rabbit hole with this crap.

I would say, take a bit of time and do some research before submitting anything - I think there are other threads about similar stuff on here if you do a quick search or look back).
You could send an email to HR, mentioning Maya's tribunal win and that gender ideology, like religion is a belief system that you do not adhere to, and so your should not be forced to comply.

But the wording is really important. As you say, you don't want to have a target on your back.

You could have a look on the Sexmatters website, I think there are good resources to querying this.

www.realityslaststand.com/p/when-asked-what-are-your-pronouns

This is an interesting article on the topic if being asked for your pronouns. I haven't been put in this position yet, but I'd like to think this might give me the clarity/courage to take a stand on it..

Can you remind them that this could be outing for trans people in the organisation who might not be ready to disclose a trans status, and don't want to be forced to choose their non-trans pronouns because it would trigger their dysphoria? Chuck in the Yogyakarta Principles, section 6 if you're feeling brave!

The final paragraph is very powerful:
"The effort to resist gender ideology is reality’s last stand. We simply can’t ignore fundamental realities of our biology and expect positive outcomes for society. Pronoun rituals are extremely effective at normalizing and institutionalizing the abolition of biological sex in favor of gender identity. These rituals take advantage of people’s confusion and compassion to achieve compliance. But the time for politeness has long passed. The only proper response to the question “What are your pronouns?” is to reject the premise and refuse to answer."

Oh and why are they forcing everyone into one of 3 boxes rather than letting them define as they choose, which is supposed to be the point of these bloody things? What about the she/theys and xir/xies? I know more people with she/they's than out and out opposite sex pronouns

What about those like Pips/Pippa bunce who is a man on some days and a laydee on others?

Maybe their pronouns could be

Mondays and Wednesdays: he/him
Tuesdays and Thursdays: she/her
Friday: Depends what's left in the wardrobe

Tell them your pronouns are Fae/Fim and that the fact you’re unable to select this as an option is making you feel unsafe.

Or just ignore HR’s reminders and if pressed simply tell them you do not wish to disclose this information and do not expect to be asked about it again.

I am going to ignore the pronoun bit and ask why your work needs to know your religion? Disability.?.um maybe but thats more a HR thing (at time of interview or when it medically happens) than a D&I at this stage. Are they asking about your race/ethnicity too?

I do find these kind of questions disturbing. Some of them are nobodies business except your own.

It appears they're collecting the data for equality monitoring, but introducing their own categories under, not the Equality Act ones. Gender and gender identity are not recognized under the Equality Act, let alone the pronouns, so why are they collecting this data, and where is the question on the protected characteristic of sex?

It would be reasonable to question why they're doing that, as I think you have the right to know how they'll use that data, under the GDPR. Hopefully someone with better knowledge of GDPR will respond though, as I'm not a data protection specialist.

I would also be scared to confront my organization though, as it's totally captured, so if there was pressure on pronouns I'd probably waffle on about Yogyakarta principles, rather than outright state my gender critical views. How the fuck we got here, to be terrified of stating your legally protected views is horrific!

Generally it's to monitor diversity and should only be seen in a way that removes identifiers so that it can't be linked to a particular person.

My work shared the full list just within the HR team and the GDPR manager was not happy so they had to change the report to remove identifiers

I wouldn’t want to share any of this data formally. Whether I’m gay, straight, religious, not religious, disabled, able, etc., is only relevant to my employer if it affects my ability to do my job or I want them to be aware of their particular obligations towards me (for example, I need them to make accommodations).

I would be quite happy stating I prefer people to just use my name. If they feel they need to use a pronoun instead of my name (in case they do not know it) they can use their judgement.

As far as I myself am concerned my pronouns are I/me/mine.

Unless of course my sex/gender is relevant to my job then this can be reviewed.

It's not relevant individually but is collectively. If all the managers are white straight men and all the junior staff are ( insert protected characteristic of choice) then a lot of employers want to be able to measure/ monitor etc.

I have seen it in a previous role where we got racial discrimination claims that only white staff got promoted.

Thanks everyone, plenty of links etc to research so will get reading.

I do feel my work is generally very caring and inclusive and is asking these questions with the good intentions of understanding the workforce so they can be accommodating in policies. I don’t anticipate any comeback if I don’t complete the data at the moment, other than having to delete a monthly chaser email. But it does scare me what could happen with all this data if leadership/politics changed direction.

Actually there is a ‘he/them’ (??) man in my local D&I group - maybe I’ll sound him out.

It irritates me - the claim to want to be inclusive on the face of it, but the number of people they exclude through poor design of the question bank.

Just a sideline - I have a colleague (male) who has started putting pronouns on his email. He has a teenager who has decided they identify with the (a?) gender they were not assigned at birth. He has admitted he is struggling with coming to terms with this but is trying to be supportive and understand what is going on.

So do not automatically make assumptions about people who do use pronouns. Sometimes they are just confused parents trying to make sense of it all.

@WaveyHair yes good point. All the more reason to make it okay to ‘prefer not to say’ I think? It can be so complicated for people to decide how they feel about labelling themselves.

You could consider a letter /
email message like this if you felt brave enough...
I would prefer not to have my pronouns displayed in my emails and I think there are a number of good reasons why many people might prefer not to if they were given a free choice.
The first is that, for women, drawing attention to sex/gender in this way increases sex discrimination and I think it is important to not pursue policies which disadvantage one sex. Sex being a protected characteristic in the Equalities Act 2010. blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/why-we-should-all-use-they-them-pronouns/
The second is that the beliefs of all employees should be considered as shown by the Forstater ruling. I believe sharing pronouns should never be compulsory, or whatever its value as a friendly signal of sympathy might be /
once have been would be completely lost if this were to become the norm. Whilst still potentially creating a hostile environment for some other employees

mforstater.medium.com/dont-overblow-forstater-8253b9830d1d

The my last but by no means least point is that preferred pronoun use can be deeply personal and situational and in a situation where you are forced to share your pgp with people you don't necessarily know in every email can be an incredibly delicate and uncomfortable situation for a person to navigate leaving trans nb and agender individuals feeling deeply vulnerable
www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/10/16/xiao-against-mandatory-preferred-gender-pronouns/

There are nine protected characteristics in the Equalities Act of 2010 and I think it is vital that they are all considered and protected.

Thanks, that's an excellent letter, screenshot for if I ever need it.

Thanks @howdoesatoastermaketoast , really useful

@fenlandia wrt the Yogyakarta Principles, I was trying to remember the name this afternoon thanks!

So I finally tracked down the right HR team to ask about the pronouns thing…

They said it’s possible to not select an option on the pronouns question and still save the questionnaire (true because I managed to do that first time I tried!)

I replied thanks for explaining and said I was worried it gave the impression we were twisting peoples arms into picking a label. They said it isn’t mandatory to pick an option, it’s just for people who want to use it, and they’d forgotten to add an explanatory note to that question which would have said it wasn’t compulsory.

So I’m pretty happy I didn’t even have to go into why I might not want to choose pronouns! Will keep reminding them til they add the note as I do feel that explanatory note is important to set the tone and make people truly comfortable to do what they want.

Thanks for your help again everyone.