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'

Name changed but I’m a regular poster.

I joined the BoE recently and have been actively pushing back on this. I’m openly GC, as are several of my colleagues and I a position to turn the dial on this. I’ve already flagged issues with the trans inclusion training (and challenged several points when I attended) and have a meeting arranged with the person responsible for it this month. The training was diabolical but nobody seems to have taken any notice of it.

Very few people seem to engage with the pronoun stuff on the inside and it’s easy to avoid the gender neutral discussions. I did call a colleague out for using “straw person” when they meant “straw man” argument recently too.

There are some people with clear agendas in positions of responsibility, and others tripping over themselves to fly pride flags and hold network events etc but the org generally seems pretty balanced to me. (Certainly better than other orgs I e worked for.)

Well done @BoEAnonymous 👏

@BoEAnonymous we don’t agree in terms of viewpoint, but I hope you’ll take the following as a question being asked from genuine interest as I’m conscious what I’ve seen on this is newspaper reporting, the FSU response etc, rather than the training itself.

Has BoE made trans inclusion training mandatory?
And were the points around (eg) announcing pronouns at the start of meetings given as a ‘you must do this’, or given as suggestions of ways to foster inclusive behaviour (or indeed somewhere in the middle)?

I say that recognising that not all training (even when it comes with good intentions) gets it right. But it’s hard to ascertain tone/purpose/or indeed what was actually said from Toby Young style reporting!

The training isn’t mandatory but there are objectives linked to diversity and inclusion so it seems it’s an easy way for staff to tick that box.

It was horrifically one sided. Being kind, you could say pronoun use is encouraged but less experienced staff would probably take it as an instruction. As I say, nobody on the training with me gives their pronouns at the starts of meetings and a tiny proportion of staff have them in their emails. There isn’t any badgering done outside of the training.

The training is delivered by an external org and I suspect it was written 5 years ago and not updated. There was absolutely no recognition of GC being a protected belief or that all protected characteristics have equal status. It was very “be kind to these poor suicidal souls” and no references for any of the quoted stats.

There’s a major lack of critical thinking amongst the workforce so I think they just go along with this stuff without challenge in the main.

Thanks @BoEAnonymous. I think that’s really helpful context both in terms of content of the training, but also the Bank’s overall stance (which is probably a bit less headline grabbing than TY might like!)

Yes, all this plus… why don’t I get to assert my preferred nouns, if others can insist upon their pronouns (which are rarely used in their actual presence anyway)? I’m a mother. Yes I birthed two babies, but I also lost 5. If I hadn’t had two live births would my experience as a maternal being have been negated? What about the incredible women who have raised children who were unable to ‘birth’ them? A ‘mother’ is more than the sum of her gynaecological parts.

It has always seemed like a one-way street. The kindness and compassion only goes one way.

@BoEAnonymous Do you have an idea of how many of the 4,000 or so people who work at the Bank of England identify as trans, non-binary, genderfluid, or anything else other than "XY man" or "XX woman"? I wouldn't have a clue what numbers to expect.

The use of the word ‘birthing parent’ doesn’t erase or replace the word mother in all contexts @CautiousLurker . It’s not an attempt to deny or erase the experience of mothers.

It is used in specific circumstances (generally to do with accessing services relating to giving birth, or accessing certain types of parental leave), where the context relates to giving birth as opposed to the overall maternal experience.

And I’m sorry for your losses. FAOD and to ensure my previous para can’t be misunderstood given I mentioned parental leave, I’m not suggesting for one minute that those who experience pregnancy loss shouldn’t have access to the same parental leave rights as those who have live births. I absolutely think they should.

Good to hear your experiences BofEAnonymous.

Sounds like you had the misfortune of having one of the old fashioned trans grifting groups to deliver training. However, as long as they continue to indulge in the unprofessional, emotive nonsense then generally a majority of listeners are unimpressed as the emotional manipulation is so easy to spot. To be fair, training in D&I training is really hard to deliver with credibility as it can be so dependent on ideology.

That's really interesting. Thanks for pushing back on this.

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.

?

Hasn't jurisprudence developed such that a use of the male gender includes the female. Hence "mankind" meaning "all humans". Certainly when it came to paying taxes "he" in law damn well meant "she" as well.

First organisation google presented me with was the General Medical Council erasing the words woman and mother from their maternity and other policies. Doctors evidently convinced that men can give birth 🙄

www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/gmc-deletes-women-and-mothers-from-forms-8fshb3pfp

Jurisprudence does indeed say that @SerendipityJane.

But this is a slightly different point.

Imagine that you’re a women entering a profession that’s typically been very male dominated, for example construction. And all the guidelines, regulations etc that you read refer to the builder, the surveyor, the architect as being male. That reinforces the idea that this is a profession for the boys, and that you- a woman- don’t belong there. So to keep using ‘he’ to mean everyone is actually really pernicious to women’s advancement in careers which have typically been male dominated.

Not off the top of my head. Which makes me think it’s too few for them to publish.

I worked there decades ago, and this is as far from the Bank I knew as it is possible to be.

I recall there was one chap who, having dressed as a woman for a while, went away, had the operation and came back with a different name. Everyone just got on with it, no fuss.

This grandstanding, flag waving, and pronoun announcing is just mad and feeds into a febrile, dangerous, ideological mindset.

Genuine gender dysphorie affects a tiny, tiny percentage of the population.

I have no idea what the senior management are thinking.

*dysphoria

Waves at @BoEAnonymous .

Glad to hear your experience! I can only imagine the eye rolling going on in some quarters.

It is a mystery how this miniscule % of the population has been able to remove the language and at times, rights of over 50% of the population to the extent that once intelligent and rational adults wibble over the idea of defining what a woman is or acknowledging that, in the history of the universe, only women give birth.

The current PHI covers gender reassignment surgery. Maybe they’re hoping numbers will increase…….. 🤔

'Gender-neutral language', which can be applied to either a man or a woman - chair, or chairperson, doctor, author, President for example could describe a man or a woman because biological sex is not an inherent feature of the role - fair enough.

Language that erases biological sex in cases where it is 100% relevant and important, for example information on cervical cancer, violence against women and girls, data collection, etc., is not acceptable because it is using language to obfuscate instead of using it to exchange information - often crucially important information.

People telling other people what pronouns they want is a signal that they seek to override a basic feature of language, and want other people to share in that unilateral re-shaping of grammar.

Language and speech are important aspects of human society, and deliberately divorcing it from observable reality damages communication.

It matters to women because surprise surprise it's vocabulary related to women that is being disappeared.

While I was out at the shops lots of other posters in replied in great detail to your posts, ElleWoods15, and thanks to them for doing that better than I could

People telling other people what pronouns they want is a signal that they seek to override a basic feature of language, and want other people to share in that unilateral re-shaping of grammar.

^Language and speech are important aspects of human society, and deliberately divorcing it from observable reality damages communication.

A really good way to put it.

Or perhaps people telling you their pronouns are just asking for a basic level of respect.

I don’t get why you would actively want to misgender someone?

Pronouns are about sex, not "gender", so "misgendering someone" isn't actually something that I give much thought to.

I'm not ever going to call a man "she" but there are ways to avoid it.

Also that "basic respect" is kind of a one way deal for those people, no?