Pride Month: Workplace have asked for anonymous feedback on "how can we be more inclusive?"

[Bornin1989]

I work for an SME who are big on their inclusive ethos (a good thing) but for the last couple of years have made a habit of asking staff, esp. new starters, to "State your name, role and pronouns". We are also "encouraged" to put our pronouns in our e-mail signature, to help trans and non-binary staff members feel safe and included. As part of pride month they've created an anonymous form to collect feedback on how to make the company more inclusive.

I used it as an opportunity to tell them about gender critical feminism, asked them to stop asking people's pronouns in company meetings (pronouns in e-mail signatures are non-compulsory thankfully!), told them that GC beliefs are protected in law and why GC is not transphobia. I also said I was happy to work alongside, love and respect trans and non-binary colleagues, including the use of their preferred pronouns, the same as I do with religious colleagues despite being an atheist.

I hope it will help senior staff realise that gender identity theory is an ideology that not all staff align with.

Has anyone done similar? How did it go?

Brilliant. That won't be the response they were expecting!

It's great that we are now able to express GC views without immediately being labelled a transphobe and being in fear of losing our jobs.

Is your company a Stonewall champion, or are they just following the trend? Are there actually many trans and non-binary people employed that you know of?

So, you asked them to be more inclusive by excluding trans and nonbinary people?
“I….asked them to stop asking people's pronouns in company meetings.”

You know with gender critical being recognised as a philosophical belief, that you can decline to share your pronouns, but that doesn’t mean you get to impose your beliefs on others and stop them asking for others pronouns?

No-one can change sex!

@MagpiePi One of our most senior staff members has a close family member who is a transman (which sparked the beginning of all the pronoun stating at the company) and we had a non-binary colleague who used they/them pronouns, which I honoured as best as I could. However, the former I know to be generally open to debate and the latter as left the company.

We have no other trans or nonbinary staff member that are openly so anyway! We have a high ratio of LGB people at the company. No affiliation to Stonewall thankfully!

Yes we are full on rainbow everything at my company. When they asked us for inclusivity ideas last month I said we should encourage a culture where people don't use accessible toilets for doing their poo in private or park in the disabled spaces just because there are usually ones free, make sure the lift is fixed in less than 1 working day, make all doors controllable by push button, make a ruling that all meeting requests come with an agenda so people with autism or anxiety don't panic about what prep they should be doing, and partner with schools and disabilty charities to create more opportunites for employment.

I didn't say anything about what they probably wanted me to say, but made it about what I believed EDI should be about.

When you ask people to state their pronouns in a meeting, it puts them on the spot. In a signature, sure thing, but in front of everyone. Maybe someone is non binary but not "out" and they feel awkward too?

Would you feel comfortable being asked your favourite bible verse in a meeting that had nothing to do with religion? Just to make Christians feel more included?

^@HadalyEve that was for, sorry forgot to tag.

The equivalent to asking pronouns isn’t a pop quiz on the Bible.

@HadalyEve it's personal and reveals a lot about your character, none of which is relevant to our job. It's a forced outing of trans, non-binary or gender critical status. In front of all staff members.

How about asking everyone which football team they support?

In Scotland that used to be a shorthand for workng out who was Catholic and who was Protestant depending on whether they said Rangers or Celtic. A friend's daughter lost her job because she was the 'wrong' religion.

Those are good suggestions! Did they respond? :)

How is it forced? Asking pronouns is polite and no one is forced to respond with a pronoun. As I put in my post, anyone is usually (or should be) free to decline to share their pronouns.

Since you are concerned that some trans/nb people might not want to share pronouns, not just those with gender critical beliefs, how is it outing anyone? If the company at a meeting says “introduce yourself and your pronouns if you so wish” and Sam says “I’m Sam, no pronouns”, then you don’t know if it’s a gender critical Sam OR a nonbinary Sam who’s not yet decided or comfortable enough to out themselves as nb.

So no one is outed as one or the other by the pronoun thing any more than being asked are you Ms, Miss or Mrs outs your marital status.

Also not equivalent.

That is such a great response OP. Thank you.

It's forced because it's in front of everyone! If you look at social psychology, people feel pressured to say things they may not necessarily agree with when they are asked to answer a question in front of peers. When you're a new starter you may feel even more pressured to try and conform with what you feel to be a right answer. Also, are you seriously saying that if you decline to answer, that people would not go away wondering why you'd declined. There will be people wondering if you're trans or nonbinary and others wondering if you're gender critical, declining to answer could be seen as an answer in itself (wrongly, yes, but you can't escape human nature to infer something from an observation).

And why ask anyway? Especially if it gives people anxiety about what to respond. It's not relevant to our job in the slightest. We can (and do) state we're a trans inclusive organisation to help trans people feel comfortable and safe. You're welcome to state pronouns in your e-mail signature if you wish. I don't, but I think most people think it's because I've not gotten around to it, if they've even noticed at all.

p.s. Asking pronouns is not polite! If you asked me what my pronouns were, I'd assume you were inferring that I looked masculine and you couldn't work it out for yourself. I'd be pretty upset.

It's not polite and it makes the asker look like an idiot.

The culture in many Stonewalled companies is to 'be inclusive' to the point of hounding. Neutrally declining to participate is not accepted and creates further issues and awkwardness.

Calmly ignoring a departmental/company email encouraging pronouns to be added to email signatures results in increasingly persistent reminders. This is despite it not being a requirement and there being several good reasons why people may choose to opt out.

Being put on the spot to adopt or decline an ideology while at work is unacceptable.

"Being put on the spot to adopt or decline an ideology while at work is unacceptable."

This! This is why I asked them not to ask in meetings. Literally the whole company is looking at you, it'd take some serious ovaries to turn around and say "I decline to answer" to a company who you've only just started working for - you don't know how deep the gender identity dogma lies when you're a new starter! I've worked there for a while and I feel awkward every time - wondering whether the person actually wants to be answering or not!

@HadalyEve Seems like gender critical people aren't the only ones who hate being asked their pronouns:

https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/ryh9x9/anyone_else_dislike_being_asked_your_pronouns/

https://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/214083-why-i-dont-like-being-asked-for-my-pronouns-just-another-perspective-to-throw-in-the-mix/

Feels like it's a pointless exercise for all involved.

Good response OP. Hopefully others do the same.

I'm waiting for the annual staff survey so will be writing something very similar!

Needless to say I will have no part of this pronouns on email signatures nonsense.

Asking for pronouns is not polite. It’s an aggressive forcing of trans ideology in the workplace meant to let everyone know that people who don’t play along will face consequences.

And yet you don't see the hypocrisy of the trans lobby forcing their beliefs on other people.

No response yet as they as collating feedback.
But I'd love to see how they address my points. If they say they are important then they are admitting that they haven't got policies in place that are inclusive to a sizeable minority; if they dismiss them as not being what they meant then they are admitting there is only one topic of inclusion they are interested in.

I suspect none of my points will be mentioned at all.