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'

Divorce dissolves your marriage. Divorce does not entail you reverting to your unmarried name, or keeping your ex-husband's name. The surname you had before getting married was your surname. You chose to revert to it, just as you chose to adopt your ex-husband's surname.

Anyone can choose their name. What they cannot do is:

1. Choose their sex
2. Insist that everyone uses a third-person pronoun to refer to them which is grammatically incorrect
3. Insist that everyone falls in with their worldview that a person's gender identity is more important than their sex (and yet somehow is also their sex, when it suits)
4. Insist that others must pretend they cannot see what sex they are
5. Insist that others must go along with the concept that pronouns belong to the person who is being referred to.

"They/them" are properly used to refer to a person whose sex is unknown, or a hypothetical person.

Where is the "basic respect" for the people who do not want to use preferred pronouns?
Where is the care for the painful feelings of those whose freedom of belief and freedom of speech is being violated?

What a fantastic, thoughtful post Cautious. 👏👏

It is like the endless accusations that we all get about 'hating' children who have gender identities and that any concern we express is just pure hatred and bigotry.

It is all based on a deep entrenchment of what some people seem to believe discussions on this board are about. It is, of course, a prejudiced view.

But as far as a bit of 'reach'.... nah. I have to disagree in a way (it is of course, a reach for such an interpretation to be make by a reasonable person reading that post after reading all your other contributions). I remember you being accused on the other thread of having no 'consideration' on how your friend's child felt by a poster who actively weaponised suicide in an attempt to further shame you. And that poster just disappeared with even acknowledging what they had done and how they had posted harmful misinformation while doing so.

They certainly never produced any evidence to support their misinformed and harmful claim about suicide. At all. Who the fuck would do such a thing....

Oh. yess... that is right .....

Its nice that I’m not going mad…ive got to start work in 10 minutes and that would have completely ruined my afternoon

similar happened to me, I said one thing and the other person turned it about face 😶

I'd forgotten about that awful comment.

As a general point, I've noticed that the (fortunately rare) posters who belittle safeguarding, misuse suicide stats and make outlandish claims about perfectly reasonable comments that women on here make, so often demonstrate an ignorance of parenting, child development, safeguarding and how women and mothers fiercely protect children.

I presume it's back to that ideology (as demonstrated in Dentons) that sees children and the young as targets for queer theory activists to use, rather than as vulnerable growing human beings with their own age related needs and rights?

Language is a common resource - by which people communicate with each other. Words and terminology have certain meaning - without which language would be meaning -less.

If you are presented with a male person the instinctive reach is for male pronouns; if presented with a female person we reach instinctivley for female pronouns.

People do not like being subject to what they sense are ideologically motivated imperatives which make them feel deeply uncomfortable, compromised or compelled to perform.

Do you not see that trying to impose unnatural speech on other people is, itself, disrespectful towards them......insisting your feelings about yourself supercede the importance of shared or common understanding. To my mind it is really quite Orwellian......getting people to speak what they know to be an untruth - just to make yourself feel in control.

You may accept the central premise of 'gender identity' - but most people don't.

Yes MrsO

It is all 'nothing to see here, move along'.

I often wonder how many are so very comfortable with Foucault's history in Queer Theory that significantly underwrites these language changes? Then we see posts that weaponise suicide, declare that parents of children and young people who are questioning gender are hateful and never 'consider' the child, and lectures others about pronoun usage without being ever able to acknowledge where it all stems from.

I mean, the poster told me the other day that I was extremely offensive because I pointed out that a male can never be what they declare they are when they declare they are female. Because the material reality is that their experience only ever being their own interpretation of what a female life experience is.

When some people are so determined to never think a concept through to a really basic level because they believe it is offensive to do so ... I really question whether they have ever thought about the origins of Queer Theory and the damage that Foucault inflicted. Not only on the children he raped, but the generations of children in France that he was instrumental in exposing to rape from adults through his and other followers actions.

The text of post of mine which I assume is in question in @Helleofabore ’s last post:

How does the young person in question feel about this though.

CautiousLurker and her friend are devastated, consider it tragic etc. But surely the person whose feelings are key in this debate are those of the young person in question (not clear whether they are NB or a trans man hence using non gendered language)?

Where do accuse CautiousLurker of having no consideration for the young person? I asked a simple question about how that young person was. I asked it because all the pps who had commented had asked about CautiousLurker’s feelings, and her friend’s, and no one had asked about the young person who, personally, I felt to be key in it all.

I’m afraid I have long since muted that thread when had turned into a witch-hunt. I’m going to do the same with this one given the personal attacks.

I don't think it's disrespectful to say no to a request that I should change my use of language to affirm a philosophical or religious worldview I do not share, any more than it would be disrespectful to say to a Jehovah's Witness that I do not want to attend a meeting they invite me to and join in with the "Amen" at the end of their prayers.

Is it disrespectful of someone to accuse me of being a bigot because my rather elderly brain failed to use the demanded pronouns? This has happened to me, and it wasn't just "your behaviour seems bigoted", it was full-blown shouting at me, followed by complete unwillingness to discuss what we agreed and disagreed on. My request to discuss our differences has been ignored; I do not see why their demand to use their language deserves any more respect. I don't think it's disrespectful to say no to a request that I should change my use of language to affirm a philosophical or religious worldview I do not share.

Is it disrespectful of someone to accuse me of being a bigot because my rather elderly brain failed to use the demanded pronouns, or failed to avoid using them at all? This has happened to me, and it wasn't just "your behaviour seems bigoted", it was full-blown shouting at me, followed by complete unwillingness to discuss what we agreed and disagreed on.

Language is largely used instinctively to convey thoughts, and demands to modify it really need to be backed up with good reasons. If I must use incongruous pronouns it causes cognitive dissonance and causes me to lose my train of thought, because my attention has to be on policing my words. I think the reason sexed pronouns are such an important thing to trans people is because they know that they are not in reality what they wish they were. The reality represented by sex-based pronouns is therefore uncomfortable.

When you divorced, you wanted other people's language to reflect the reality that your marriage was behind you. So we are down to "what is reality?" My view of sex and gender is absolutely relevant to what words mean to me. I have always used third person pronouns based on my perception of the sex, not the gender, of the person I am referring to. Gender is not a binary, so the pronouns "he" and "she" etc do not map onto gender ("masculine" and "feminine"). I am more "feminine" in some respects than many men, but also "masculine" in other respects. But I am entirely male; and it would be impossible for me to be some mixture of male and female. This also applies to my son; he is not a woman just because he wishes it were so, and I do not have to lie every time I mention him.

No. Not the post. This one.

What about the effects of refusing gender affirming care, and indeed of family etc refusing the acknowledge a young person’s gender identity - associated suicide risk etc?

My question though related to the fact that the response was unequivocally ‘how tragic’, ‘how devastating’ to CautiousLurker’s post, relating primarily to how she and the young person’s parent felt. But no consideration at all was given to the mental health and overall impact on the young person in question.

Oh... so you muted the thread.

Maybe you should go back to the thread and consider the wording of what you have written and the impact on CautiousLurker after what she had written. And the misinformation that you have posted about 'suicide risk'.

"I’m going to do the same with this one given the personal attacks."

Criticism of posts is not a personal attack.

@Helleofabore the lack of any posters asking how the YP was doing following CautiousLurker’s post did indeed look like no consideration from all the gender critical posters checking in on CautiousLurker about the YP’s wellbeing. Sorry, but that’s how it comes across.

And ‘who the fuck would do such a thing’ is not criticism. Again, sorry, but it’s a personal attack.

I see.

You, personally, made a negative judgement about all the other posters on that thread, including Cautious and you felt justified to weaponise misinformation about suicide risk. And you don't think that your post could be interpreted as any other way?

Thank you for your explanation.

I don't think it's disrespectful to say no to a request that I should change my use of language to affirm a philosophical or religious worldview I do not share, any more than it would be disrespectful to say to a Jehovah's Witness that I do not want to attend a meeting they invite me to and join in with the "Amen" at the end of their prayers.

This.

Solid effort, but a bit long for a t-shirt! 😛

I wonder though whether, and this is general, activists who tell others over training sessions, social media and in face to face conversations recognise that it is disrespectful to others to not use demanded language, understand how they have catastrophising interactions. By this I refer to this constant referral in guidance, training materials and social media to disrespecting as being disproportionately ‘wrong’ and valorising ‘respect’ while never acknowledging the symmetrical impact that demand has.

It is a tactic of cognitive distortion. It goes with emotional reasoning and magnification. And sadly, for those activist session leaders, I think that many people are being to push back on these overly emotive tactics to enforce a philosophical and/or political belief.

The catastrophising/ emotional reasoning and response seems to be a very common tool though.

I just think it's power tripping.

I agree with that too. eresh

But I also think the quickness to claim persecution through being ‘disrespected’, eg.not having everyone comply to the philosophical/political demands is one example, is being used to manipulate emotions to convince some who respond to that type of argument. Hence there is very little evidence presented, because it is resting on that emotional appeal.

And it means that anyone disagreeing should be freely demonised too.

So, yes. A power trip and a tactic of ensuring compliance and convincing some others susceptible to emotional reasoning.

I agree, for me the motivating goal is power and control of others, the tactic is manipulation, whether conscious or not.

Agree.

I get tired of the constantness of that tactic being so lazily rolled out. It is so obvious when you see it, but it seems some activists believe it still gains some success.

Part of the reason that it has so much success in general is that manipulative people of all stripes have "flying monkeys" who either consciously or unconsciously enable them to control and punish others.

www.narcissisticabuserehab.com/types-of-flying-monkeys/

So an example of a flying monkey might in some cases be the boss of a person who has bought into a sob story about "misgendering" and victimises a person who either conscientiously objects to using wrong sex pronouns because they don't believe in gender identity ideology, or slips up even though they're already walking on eggshells.

And we have seen these scenarios reflected in the court cases brought so far on this issue.

I’m pretty sure that pronoun sharing started for an entirely different reason, that our workforce has become more diverse and that we aren’t all able to tell if a name is male or female. And we also can’t assume because we have what might seem an obvious gender based on name that our colleagues from other cultures can tell about us either. On that basis I don’t object to it but from a gender identity pov it doesn’t make sense yo me. Don’t people who change gender tend to change their name as well? So it’s actually about the name and not the gender/sex of the person?

I’m pretty sure that pronoun sharing started for an entirely different reason, that our workforce has become more diverse and that we aren’t all able to tell if a name is male or female.

This has long been the case. Pronoun sharing hasn't been happening for that long.