Council worker sacked over pronouns

[mcduffy]

Can't do a share token as telegraph

The worker has lost a tribunal

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/17/gender-critical-council-employee-sacked-over-pronouns

A “gender critical” council worker was sacked after protesting the use of pronouns on his email signaturee_.
James Orwin was left furious when Caroline Lacey, the council’s chief executive, invited employees to “consider adding pronouns to your email signaturee_, should you wish to do so”.
In “protest”, Mr Orwin, an IT project officer, changed his email footer to “XYchromosomeGuy/AdultHumanMale” rather than he/himm_.

It's a subtle trap that the idiot fell for.

It wasn't compulsory to state your pronouns. But reading between the lines it absolutely was compulsory to give 100% respect to the idea of stating your pronouns.

Hamfisted protest failed because council could just argue "we weren't forcing anybody to do anything!"

It tells you that they believe in trans ideology and, therefore, that culturally assigned sex roles are the defining factor in who is a man and who is a woman. The pronoun people are regressive, old-fashioned sexists.

Good, articulate points

He could have just not added his pronouns. Noone was making him
He was sacked because of his twatty behaviour, not because of his objections.

Same here.

It's remarkable that people are calling it provocative.

It's bloody provocative suggesting that employees might want to signal their compliance to an ideology that is offensive, dangerous to women, and damages children.

The Forstarter judgement protected lack of belief in gender ideology, too. Which his choice of 'pronouns' was.

This was clearly not about pronouns. It's about agreement to an ideology. Pronouns are just shorthand to signal agreement.

His employer should have withdrawn the statement suggesting people could use pronouns. You don't suggest people adhere to an ideology that many people consider batshit and dangerous, in the workplace.

He may not have been clever enough to win his tribunal. But I bet if he appeals and gets a lawyer, he will. Anyone could make mincemeat out of what those pronouns represent.

Yeah I’ve reread and it looks like that was exactly it

I hope he appeals and gets a decent lawyer and crowd funder this time.

It's always one way isn't it. One side gets to go as far as things like fox/foxeself and we all have to play along. The other gies by material reality and that's the problem.. 🤔

Besides what actually happens when you are " mis gendered " I go by a unisex shortening of my name. Think along the lines of Ashley. If I get mistaken for a guy I don't give a fuck. It literally has zero impact on me. I don't have a melt down.

Why are we pandering to such fragility. Honestly how do adults handle a work environment when they are so self absorbed, more worried over whether a complete stranger knows their identity than doing their job.

Fellow retail people back me up here. We get called names, accused of all sorts, we get stuff thrown around the shop. People kick off all the time. We even get manhandled by customers and accosted strangers in the street because they recognise us from our work place. Having a customer go " I was speaking to a guy named Ashley via email is he about " would not even register as a problem.

This was clearly not about pronouns. It's about agreement to an ideology. Pronouns are just shorthand to signal agreement.

This is true. If the council had said it wanted people to put their star signs in their email signatures, then surely everyone would see how ridiculous it was.

The question then is whether the council can legitimately sack someone who mocks their daft requirements by putting something clearly stupid in their email signatures instead.

This is why I think it's a difficult case. Obviously the council's requirement is ludicrous. But equally, as an employer, are you obliged to put up with your own staff taking the piss out of you? Probably not.

Same here!!

How was he being a dick??

I'd garden for him!

He only stated the truth!

Maybe it would come down to - if you disagree with the ideology, a disagreement which is now legally protected, is it sufficient to refuse pronouns or can you take a more active stance if asked.

Because refusing email pronouns is not stating a belief - or lack of one. Putting your pronouns in, is.

Pronouns in, or pronouns out, are not at all equal.

Unless there is a pronoun equivalent that says I don't believe in gender ideology, what is the equal action one can take?

So a male engineer who transitions and changes their sex characteristics to female believes that men can’t be engineers?
There are quite a few trans men/ trans masculine nurses. Do you think they transitioned because they think only men can be nurses?

There are increasing numbers of lesbians and AFAB non-binary people using they/ them. They don’t identify as men but they are gender non conforming enough that they don’t wish to be referred to as she/her. I don’t think what they are doing has anything to do with believing in culturally assigned sex roles. It just doesn’t fit the narrative you want to believe.

If your hypothetical male engineer transitions to a woman, what is he identifying with? What makes him think he's a woman?

Do you think they transitioned because they think only men can be nurses?

Does "transitioning" mean emulating the opposite sex characteristics? I thought it was to do with gender identity which is around feminine and masculine "inner" traits?

I'm always so confused about this!

If a man isn't 'a male' then why does any female adopt male physical features if they feel they're a man?

So you can't be a gender non-conforming female and instead have to pretend you're neither sex? Sounds pretty regressive to me.

Signed woman with short hair who is gender non conforming and is sick of this sexist shit.

So the reasons for sacking him are that he was 'arsey' 'twatty' and 'a dick'... I've had a look at the laws on dismissing someone from their job, and can't find 'arsey' 'twatty' and 'being a dick' listed as valid reasons for dismissal.

You might be muttering 'Unfortunately🙄' under your breath, given that we've all had to work at some time with awkward so-and-sos, but dismissal has to be for a valid reason
.
Maybe the Council had other reasons for wanting to get rid of him, but they picked a dodgy one to run with..

A man calling himself a man.

How dare he.

Very much ditto to this. I'll conform to dress code when I must, but left to my own devices I'm very much gender non conforming. In other words, a perfectly normal woman

It's a shocker isn't it!

Agree wholeheartedly - as a gender non conforming female engineer that never felt any need to (a) be one of the boys or (b) pretend to be a different sex / not have a sex.

I'll need to have a lie down in an effort to come to terms with the absolute horror of it.

I don't think yiu can make arguments about "actual pronouns" and reasonable expectations of your coworkers considering this particular bureaucracy seems to have explicitly suggested "ze/zier" as an example of possible pronouns 😂

Surely the whole "trans" stuff is about stereotypes? If you use the pronouns traditionally associated with the opposite sex, that is because you believe in the stereotypes of that sex and wish to conform to those stereotypes. Otherwise what the heck is it about?

It's the $64,000 question.

Never gets answered.

Other than some woolly nonsense about gender identity not being the same as your sex. But ask about gender identity and what it means?

Crickets.

During the hearing, he asked for his name to be used instead of he/him (no tips on how to form the accusative case, though), and the Tribunal agreed to it (whilst apologising in advance for any slip-ups 😆).

Clearly, proper nouns are fine. So common nouns and compound nouns don't seem like that much of a stretch.

If he'd gone for adverbs, however.....