Bank of England staff told to share pronouns and use ‘gender neutral’ language

[IwantToRetire]

... “while fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective”, he believed that training courses like the one given to Bank staff are “ideologically driven”.

“As a result, they may have the unintended effect of fostering an intolerant workplace culture in which some employees feel they cannot express certain, perfectly legitimate points of view,” the letter said.

“Our primary concern is that the ‘Trans Inclusion’ course appears to promote gender identity ideology while stigmatising gender critical beliefs, which are <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/P9CHb/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/28/left-has-captured-language-of-political-debate/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">protected under the Equality Act 2010.”
The FSU’s letter highlighted a part of the training that stated “using the wrong pronouns” is another example of a “microaggression”.

Full article in the Telegraph at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/31/bank-england-share-pronouns-woke-training-trans-rights-sex/

Can also be read in full at https://archive.is/P9CHb

I assumed this must be an old stories as I thought most institutions had given up on this nonsense. But appears to be recent'

think there will be an inevitable lag between established reality (i.e. protected beliefs enshrined in law) reaching the koolaid gang. These people have enough difficulty with reality at the best of times, the fact that the landscape has changed somewhat will be unwelcome and correspondingly resisted. Too bad-suck it up, fruitcakes.

BofE appears to still be a supporter of Stonewall, advertising its Gold Award from 2022 on its DEI page.

Wish there was a way to boycott them.

There's someone or a group of people at the Bank of England strongly pushing this crap - remember it being all lit up in Trans colours?
Surely this group are a problem as they have captured the Bank and are using it for their own agenda rather than for banking?!

You would think MI5 would be interested in this capture of the Bank and other institutions too?!

'I know it says £5, but it identifies as a £20 note!'

If they truly wanted gender neutral language throughout the organisation, then pronoun declarations seem rather silly. Surely referring to every person as singular ‘they/them’, would be the best option.

Assuming that pps don’t actively want to misgender someone in the workplace, don’t you think being open about pronouns is actually pretty useful?!

On the subject of non-gendered language, a big reason for this is that up until recently, the language of law, financial services and many other professions has been to assume that people in the workplace, people in control of a bank account etc are male. So the customer would be referred to in T&Cs etc as ‘he’, the professional might be referred to in guidelines as ‘he’. Which subtly reinforces the idea that the people holding those positions are male. From
memory, there’s a bit about it in Criado-Perez’ Invisible Women (which is a fascinating read all round).

Do you really think referring to mothers as ‘birthing parents’ has anything to do with males being in control of bank accounts? Personally it seems like removing the word mother (which is legally what is recorded on a child’s birth certificate) is more about removing references to women in the workplace than protecting them. Just my opinion!

Well birthing parents is often used to deal with the fact that a baby can have two mamas, but parental leave rights (for example) will depend on whether you’re the birthing parent or not. I’d say it’s pretty important that employment policies don’t disenfranchise mothers who were not the birthing parent, or suggest they are in any way not a mum as a result.

There are a whole range of reasons why gender neutral language is useful and necessary.

But what gender neutral language is not is some great conspiracy out to get women’s rights or sideline women in any way.

But what gender neutral language is not is some great conspiracy out to get women’s rights or sideline women in any way.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist so I'd be inclined to agree with you that there wasn't a plan hatched in a smoke-filled room to get women's rights or sideline women.

Bummer that it's turned out to do just that, isn't it, though?

It just hasn’t though.

How are you (and I’m making an assumption you’re a woman, so do correct me if I’m wrong) prejudiced by the use of the word ‘birthing parent’, or by someone including their pronouns in their sign off, @MarieDeGournay ?

I'm not sure what you mean by being "prejudiced by the use of the word 'birthing parent'" @ElleWoods15.
But if applied to me, I consider the term atomizing, abstracting, dehumanising. It takes the whole experience of being a mother, and cuts it into little pieces - "here is the moment in time when they birthed their offspring."
Being a mother is a whole body, whole self, whole decades long experience. It is not a random collection of atomised moments of task completion.
The experience of matrescence was, for me, life changing and deeply healing.
I'm going to counteract your belittling language with my very favourite poem, by Camille Dungy, which is on the subject of matrescence:
https://poems.com/poem/trophic-cascade/

The removal of sex based language does precisely that - makes women, women's health and women's interests invisible. As a lesbian parent I am fully cognisant of the concept of two mothers and fortunately personally know no women, lesbians or non lesbians, who approve of the terminally foolish, male dominated drive to remove the language of women and mothers from society.

You may wish to educate yourself about the tactics of the movement to eradicate women's rights from society by reading the leaked report from Dentons law firm which detailed the anti - democratic and underhand tactics used by those who wish to remove women's rights and child safeguarding from society. It was quite an education when women understood how these (mainly born men) had operated behind the scenes for some time:

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/

‘You may wish to educate yourself’…. And I’m the one whose language is referred to as belittling 😂

As I've said before - I will choose a pronoun when you tell me what you assume them to mean. If I say my pronoun is "she", do you take that to mean I have a female body, or that I have a "woman" gender identity? Or both, or neither?

People will say "it's so they know what to call you" but if I'm saying "she" to mean female, and the person wanting to refer to me doesn't believe that 'she' refers to female people, I don't want them to call me something they're uncomfortable with or that isn't true.

If it's simply an arbitrary label and doesn't imply anyone's sex or gender, that's fine, but they need to make that clear.

Birthing parent only works because we all know that only women give birth so "birthing" stands in for mother.

If it was to do with same sex female couples' maternity rights they'd say "birthing mother".

I thought that was a very polite suggestion to a poster who (judging by your posts on this thread) perhaps isn't up to date with some of the concepts relating to women's rights and the importance of accurate sex based language? Apologies if I've judged them inaccurately.

You may wish to educate yourself about the tactics of the movement to eradicate women's rights from society

just looked at the article, thank you for posting it

i think ‘you may wish to educate yourself…by reading this article’ is much better than the usual ‘educate yourself’ with an absolute refusal to link to articles etc that Ive seen in other threads

No one has to comply to a person’s philosophical belief.

And we have recently been shown just how meaningless the language that some people demand is and how it IS based on philosophical belief.

Because to be a person with a transgender identity is not based on having gender dysphoria. We have been told this now by professional academics as well as trans people themselves.

Therefore the only commonality for people with transgender identities is that their philosophical belief. Meaning no one needs to comply with another persons philosophical belief. No one.

No matter how kind or respectful that person who is trying to shame you into complying tells you that it is to use the preferred language, it is someone who is demanding that you support their own philosophical belief.

You, general you, are totally free to choose to base your own language on using the sometimes centuries old established meanings of words and the established protocols of language that are based around sex. Not someone's identity.

Another issue that the recent discussions about the male boxers has shown us that the word 'cis' is also meaningless and based on someone's philosophical belief..

In fact, because we were reminded that 'cis' means any person 'assigned' female at birth, this also includes those male people who have been incorrectly registered as female. And I am talking about the male people who have differences of sex development where their bodies are capable of processing the testosterone that their testes produce.

What this means is that there is now no words to describe a unique group of female people that reliably means just those female people, either pre or post puberty, who have bodies that are female sexed.

Cis is a meaningless word. Birthing parent is dehumanising and dissociating for many mothers. It should not be used in any general communication.

The solution to accommodate two ‘mothers’ is not to dehumanise the one who is giving birth to an infant who requires significant care and not to be dehumanised by the language used.

Using preferred language around describing someone is based on someone else's demand to believe in their philosophical belief. It is purely up to you.

What you don't get to do, is to shame others for not supporting your belief if they do not choose to. No one gets to infer / imply or to directly state it is ‘disrespectful’ in anyway to use accurate language that has commonly understood meanings amongst the majority of the population.

I assumed this must be an old stories as I thought most institutions had given up on this nonsense. But appears to be recent'

The article is basically a rehash of a story from last year. Indeed, it includes a link to that story. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/07/bank-of-england-boe-diversity-equity-inclusion-staff-bailey/

Hence why the subhead says "Employees were instructed to use language...". Nothing new has happened since.

This is just the Telegraph filling space during the silly season, as they did the other day with a report (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/25/teachers-taught-to-challenge-whiteness-in-schools/) on various "woke" policies that hadn't actually been implemented by anybody, although you had to read the piece very carefully to realise that.

Now, if people think that this is an important issue, then they should keep talking about it even though nothing has changed. (For the avoidance of doubt, I agree with the view that making people talk about their pronouns is nonsense.) But it is very dishonest journalism to recycle a story a year later for an extra round of clicks and outrage, without apparently any check to see whether things have changed.

(Also, and maybe this is just me, I find it a little bit hard to take Toby "Actually mate, I had my dick up her arse" Young as a defender of women's rights.)

The only person I have regular contact with at work who has transgendered does not use personal pronouns in any email. Who along with anyone else who chooses not to should be supported in their decision.

Not just you about Toby Young, @samarrange . But he's not wrong about everything.

Guidelines from sex matters about pronouns at work if anyone wants more information

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/pronouns/

"Birthing parent" sounds cold, clinical and ideologically motivated to me. Nobody referes to themselves as a parent in this way, unless they are trying very, very hard.

Given that " gender neutral language" stems from Queer Theory and the attempts to eradicate the reality of biological sex and replace it with the concept of 'gender identity'; and "a conspiracy" is a covert grouping of forces/bodies that are working together towards a certain end - I would say there is a conspiracy to remove the dignity of the female sex, in particular, by eradicating words and concepts related to it, and by attempting to eliminate reference to women's bodily parts, functions and female roles, especially motherhood.