Fear for your job still?

[tobee]

I occasionally post a thread on here to see asking what people are thinking about the way the current wind is blowing in various areas.

So tonight I'm asking if people are still feeling in fear of losing their jobs for GC views these days? Or have you heard anecdotally of friends or relations or whatever of losing their jobs for same, and in which areas/industries?

Obviously I'm aware of Forstater and the Peggie case. And that it might be more subtle than losing your job.

No, I absolutely don't. I have always gently challenged this stuff at work when it's come near me, and I've always had a positive reaction. Thank you to Maya Forstater - I followed the case live on Tribunal Tweets three years ago now. Though even before then I did discreetly push back when a well-meaning member of the pronoun police joined my office.

I'm lucky not to have worked anywhere that has encouraged staff networks to spring up and go bananas over it, or that has signed up to a Stonewall-esque scheme. I'm also lucky to have a very in-demand skillset and a good reputation at work, so I am confident they wouldn't want to lose me in a hurry, or refuse to hear me out (not that this helped Maya at her workplace, I suppose - they were very foolish to lose her).

I work in academia. It’s not so much fear of losing my job as the ostracising or shunning if my views were known.

Yes

Yes. I know people adversely affected. Even for professional working groups etc. ALBs, professional organisations, journals are all captured. It’s pretty clear people wouldn’t lose just their job but their occupation.

Healthcare.

Ostracising is real, too. It’s plain bullying.

Yes, absolutely. For every Forstater and Peggie with the guts and resources to go the distance, there's the legions of women too cowed to stand up for fear of job loss and/or their lives being made hell. And behind them are all the women either quietly let go or brutally dismissed, who don't have the wherewithal to do anything about it.

Thank you for the interesting replies.

I meant to say I work for myself/am training currently so largely miss out on the general direction of travel.

Some of these replies are depressing. But not so surprising given the sectors mentioned.

I still live in hope that it's changing reasonably rapidly and those now ostracising will be lone voices soon.

I’ve experienced it in hobbies, too. Twice. It’s a shame. Cos I would have liked to do them but I refuse to tell lies.

The creative industries are in a terrible state - we've had 'How to be an Ally' online training with cartoon characters holding baseball bats covered in trans and pride flag colours, menacing the bad, wrong-thinking people and the evil Terfs!

It doesn’t really come up where I am now, but I reckon I would be able to express GC opinion without repercussion yes

Yes. Not due to my colleagues or managers who are overwhelmingly supportive but to my professional regulator and organisations. Hasn't stopped me expressing my concerns, though I choose my words carefully - but does keep me up at night.

Also healthcare.

Also healthcare in Scotland. Lots of management and union bods trans rainbowed up with badges and lanyards to show they are allies and a safe space from the evil terfs.
Lots of the 'hello my name is' with pronouns on display.

I've managed to have some gentle conversations about it at work over the last few years, found some fellow terfs and even peaked a few people along the way, but still have to be careful as there are plenty of 'well meaning' types who pop their pronouns on their signatures etc (without necessarily having fully engaged with the subject) and the odd zealot. My regulator has had a bit of a whipping (thank you Rachel Meade) so I think they'd be a bit less gung ho about it now, but I still don't post on social media (aside from MN) and am tentative in what I share.

Social work.

No. I was mainly concerned about the influence of the Americans I work with who were very hostile to dissenting opinions. Set against the current backdrop, my gentle criticism of some of the extremist trans positions is immaterial. They have much bigger fish to fry.

Let me be clear that this is in no way a victory for me. What's happening in the US is horrifying and the people to blame are those on both sides of the political spectrum who have fanned the flames and refused to engage in any kind of rational debate.

Yes

i was a bit depressed the other day when HR sent a request for people for a “diversity committee” including a request for people who “identify as female”. That put me off even bothering to engage although I desperately wanted to reply “I am a female and identify as such”.

when I see pronouns in my industry it’s an instant red flag as no one does it

Yes. My professional body is still captured.

Yes I am still afraid and will keep quiet if it ever comes up, sadly.
This is not based on particular examples, just my general feeling.

Yes.

I need to keep a roof over my head and groceries on the shelves and I work in an organisation that boasts of its position in the Stonewall rankings. So I chip away in small ways. I'm not going to do a full scale Jo Phoenix just yet! For example I point out that it's easier to do well in the Stnewall league table because so many organisatisn are pullign out ("Are they really? I didn't know that' say the EDI specialists). I talk about unpleasant side effets of hormone treatments and limited evidence that they do any good (Cass was a great help in this regard). I relate the experience of a couple of friends who had "bottom surgery" but who had problems afterwards including wounds that failed to heal and postoperative infections and so were invalids for a very long time if not permanently. I've got some interest in the history of youth subcultures in the UK so I talk about times when people were challenging, subverting or playing with gender stereotypes, without a pronoun or hormone injection in sight. I take the piss. A couple of years ago when 'Can a woman have a penis' was the question of the day I replied 'Of course. All the best women have penises. Maybe I should bring mine in to work next week' so I wasn't giving the politically correct answer but people could tell I wasn't taking it seriously either. And so on.

I’m in aerospace engineering (well actually at the moment I’m out with small kids but I keep in touch). Most people in the industry aren’t captured.

Maybe because it’s male dominated. Being kind is obviously socially women’s work and those of us in the industry have already had to make it clear we aren’t pandering to male egos so they’ll have to make their own coffee, take their own notes, etc.

I'm medical and everyone I work with agrees with me on this. I wouldn't go public with my real name due to the relentless abuse some poor women have got but no one in my workplace believes in the ideological rubbish.

Yes.

Quiet questions (never statements or challenges) behind the scenes to the right people are as far as I dare go.

I think I wouldn’t be sacked, but I would expect to experience at least one of these things; having trouble getting another role, lack of career progression, finding my role disappearing in a restructure, missing out on a good performance rating. Maybe all of them.

This is in the public sector, with leadership very visibly committed to Stonewall, and internal policies that reflect Stonewall’s advice as it was a couple of years ago.

Same here. Many of my colleagues have pronouns on their emails, and they're not idiots, they're lovely intelligent people who I like working with. If I was totally open on this topic I think a lot of people would just think I was a bigot, which would make me sad.

I have had the occasional careful conversation, plus one conversation with someone fairly high up about a new LGBT policy, which I was quite proud of myself for.

At the moment, as someone else said, a lot of people are horrified at Trump's USA and the hostility towards many minority groups including LGBT, which I absolutely have sympathy with.

However. If there was a specific area or policy where I thought saying something would help matters, I'd consider doing it (and have once).

My boss has repeatedly ranted to me about how awful JK Rowling is, so there is no way I'd be prepared to reveal my opinions at work. I might not actually be manoeuvred out of a job, but I would very possibly find it so uncomfortable that I'd have to leave.

I'm an academic too @SidewaysOtter and @DisappearingGirl (waves).

I've had loads of one to one conversations with people and it's quietly Terf central out there. Suspect Humanities and loads of the Social Sciences are captured but even there it's by no means everyone. Can we work out a secret signal in case you're in the office next to mine?