Work HR: Preferred Pronouns are mandatory

[MoreThanAFeline]

Name changed for this. I wanted to update my address on the HR system at work. The instructions on how to do this say that something simple like updating an address can be done easily and that each section can be independently accessed.

When I try to click to the address part of the form, I get the attached error message.
Preferred Pronouns are apparently mandatory. My 'gender identity' is mandatory. My 'trans status' is mandatory. Sex is not asked for anywhere.

My workplace is supposed to be run by grown ups. How depressing.

I've heard of these principles on MN but do they have any legal standing in the UK?

They don't have legal standing anywhere.

I don't want to say my work area but there is an outside body that collects equality data and that's why my place of employment need to have our personal data updated - they've an obligation to report.

None whatsoever but they appeal to the DEI types who might be concerned about inadvertently harming the people they are supposedly trying to help. It's a way to refuse pronoun nonsense without needing to mention sex, if your org is very captured.

It's as if a "religion" question only had religions and no "atheist" option.

I had this recently and there was no option to self-describe. But actually it was a pop up and it turned out you could go on to the next page by just opening the pop up and not answering anything. It was work related but not my employer (a service provider) so I complained to them (they want us to use their service, they need to make it user-friendly).

I think I'd be wanting to see their data processing impact assessment for this...

You might want to ask them.

They're also processing special category data, ask them what their lawful basis is for processing article 9 data. Bet they haven't got one!

To be fair, atheism is not a religion by its very definition. It's an absence of belief in any deity, the rejection of religion. So no it can't appear as a religion option because it isn't one.
I don't mean that to sound pompous or arrogant, just highlighting why it isn't a religion option.

I thought asking that sort of crap was made illegal years ago as it disadvantages women, and i would have thought it's none of their Fucking business.

This is actually a protected characteristic so might have a more legitimate reason than GI/pronouns which don't.

True! So it's more like a mandatory question where you can say you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist but there's no option for No religion.

Please don't do this! These "principles" are basically a wishlist put together by gender ideologists, some of which are really bad for women (as now acknowledged even by one of the authors of the original set) and the updated set is now even worse, including calling for self-ID and the removal of all sex markers from identification documents for example. If you say "Oh but that breaches the YPs" in this case, what the HR person or whoever will hear is "You ought to be following all the YPs" - so from having potentially never heard of them, you've now essentially told them to go and look them up and start trying to implement them all at your workplace as though they were a legal requirement (which they're not). This is really not a good idea! And there are plenty of other, good reasons to push back on these questions without having to invoke the YPs.

Nope,
They can collect the data without attaching the data to your file.

Your outside body is not looking to get data on GreenMonty employee it is just looking for headline numbers.
So if you were "the only gay married disabled Xi in the village" your employer also has a duty to not make you easy to ID

Well exactly. But up here in Scotland, that wording for the “ethnicity” (!) question has been utterly standard for the last 15 years since the SNP took over.

That was also the wording in “Scotland’s Census”. You know, the one that was delayed by a year just because we have to be special and different from the rest of the UK and was so badly run as to have generated mostly unusable data at huge additional cost.

You’re not allowed to be Scottish and British you see. Well meaning people down south used to see the SNP as a nice, progressive party (pre Isla Bryson and camper vans perhaps).

But nationalists gonna nationalist 🤷‍♀️

but that is the same as the gender identity option being mandatory and not giving the option to say "i don't believe in Gender Woo" (or other words to the same effect)

I'm not going to click a religion because I'm an atheist. If it is a mandatory box, I'm stuck.

Wow, I didn't know any of that. That you can't be Scottish and British.

Well they are breaching the equality act and the data protection act, maybe you should tell them?

And it is a white only option
What other colour / race did HR add in on the dropdown list??

You could reframe this.

I think demanding to know whether someone is transgender or not breaks the equality act. It seems like this is deliberately outing people, and thus is transphobic.

How can it be mandatory and fit with Maya's ruling on belief?

I do not believe in gender identity. So why would I want to go along with compelled speech on pronouns and endorse it?

I'm not disrespecting anyone else's wishes by refusing to state my own pronouns?

Why does their belief have to be enforced on me?

For what purposes does anyone need pronouns, under GDPR? If I fail to provide this information, why is it a problem?

I hope people start challenging this shit.

It's a fucking religious belief.

For what purposes does anyone need pronouns, under GDPR? If I fail to provide this information, why is it a problem?

All to do with Equality Diversity and Inclusion, apparently.

Here you go. (You can only be Scottish if you're white. Otherwise you have to be British).

OK so for some reason you are allowed to say 'No Religion' for the religion question (but you're not given the option to say you don't believe in Gender Ideology elsewhere on the form).

I'm perplexed by the white showman and showwoman?! But that option doesn't seem to be offered in the other categories?! 😵‍💫

Right at the bottom of that letter it says "if you prefer not to answer any questions you are able to select this option". So that makes it non mandatory. Or is mandatory another word that means whatever they want it to mean?

Call them out OP. Not as a GC person but because the form is wrong on so many levels eg Scottish is not listed with the other nationalities. Nice of them to mention Roma, Traveller and Showman but the rest of it? Nah.