Colleague has suggested I remove all pronouns from a report

[girlinabox]

I don't work for the NHS but this colleague does. I wrote a report about several clients we have been working with over many months. We have also been working with their carers/family. Colleague suggested that we haven't asked them how they identify so can't refer to them as he or she. So in the report we should just continually use their names. In our interaction with these clients there has never been any ambiguity, and carers/family have referred to them as he/she. I think this is utterly ridicolous. Other option is to make contact to ask their gender. Many have significant learning disabilities so this would not be straight forward.
Despite being gender critical I would have no problem with using preferred pronouns in the report if it was obvious to this was the client's preference but this is just daft. I respect this person but feel that this is such a waste of valuable time and energy. This stuff seems to encroach on my work more and more.

I have been told by my Gen Z DD that the preferred pronoun for the youth is they/their if it's not known. FGS. I just told her I'm not having any of it because they/their is for the royals or non-binaries only. She has no response to that.

Your perception of daft is correct. In your position I wouldn't support any genderwoo.

Is it health related? Then correctly sexed pronouns are the right way to go.

I would push back on grounds of data protection. I had to work with a report recently from a few years ago, and it was completely unreadable due to every name being redacted (instead of changing them for anonymity which would have made sense from a historical POV), so you couldn’t follow who was doing what through the 40 page report. Correctly-sexed pronouns give future readers more of a chance of working out who is doing what.

Why don't you just explicitly state that for clarity you are using pronouns based on the sex of the individuals and that their preferred gender is unknown? That is factual, clear and in 90% of cases more useful than using arbitrary preferred pronouns anyway.

This. If the colleague is indeed caring and sensitive, show her how she is herself making assumptions.

Have they told you why they think you should remove the pronouns? Is it possible that they just didn't want you getting into trouble if someone kicked up a fuss over it?

Ultimately, unless you've had new guidance on the subject, you've no reason to do things differently. But unless this colleague has form for it, I wouldn't immediately assume that they were trying to waste your time.

I am currently in a battle with my local council who asked for my gender ID (on a consultation about how housing should allocated) because I do not have a gender ID.

They have said that there is an option to say, 'prefer not to say 'but I do want to say.

Gender ID is a political position and should not be imposed on anyone.

If you’ve not been advised that this client/patient has preferred pronouns, you should simply continue to follow the usual department style guide and refer to them using sex based pronouns. Unless colleague is co-authoring, her opinion (whilst possibly well-meaning) is irrelevant.

You can say that their gender is irrelevant but you know their sex and that will do fine

Reply "I will give your comments appropriate consideration", which can mean anything and nothing.

I would say this is the best approach. Ignore the email and just do what you were going to do. If they want to make a scene, they can

Surely she can just change it herself?

I mean if it was framed as a confidentiality thing then you can just use the person's initials? It's fair enough if it was for that but it shouldn't be because she suspects some of them might be trans. When you know none of them are.

Presumably some are so profoundly disabled that the concept of who they 'identify as' could be unclear to them in any meaningful way.

"I've given this some thought and I feel it would be disrespectful to clients to query their pronouns when they have given us no reason to think they prefer anything other than the default sex based ones. It would have the effect of dehumanizing any clients with learning difficulties that made it impossible for them to understand or respond to the question."

Point to NHS plain language guidelines

https://service-manual.nhs.uk/content/how-we-write and service-manual.nhs.uk/content/health-literacy, particularly important if some of your stakeholders have learning disabilities. Are they part of the audience for the report, no decision about us without us style?

I’m piggy backing on this thread to ask for thoughts on a succinct but clear explanation as to why I do not think asking undergraduates to state their pronouns is a good idea. Especially as part of a group exercise.

My uni aims to be ‘inclusive’ so I know that they’re telling us to ask pronouns as part of being inclusive but we’ve also got international students and some from conservative countries.

I liked the comment about not pushing people to identify themselves when they’re not ready to do so but I’ll be told that they don’t have to say if they don’t want to. Or, they may add "tell us if you want to" to the instructions.

Any other suggestions to explain why this is a bad idea?

As a compromise, put a disclaimer that says something like “this report has been written with pronouns. Should they be incorrect please notify us and we will amend accordingly”. 99.9% of people will ignore it and reduces your workload.

Say it increases the chances of unconscious bias based on internalised misogyny.

Because they might not want to state their pronouns or declare their gender identity which is a private matter, and even the act of not stating your pronouns may be 'outing'.

Ironically, I do think this is a situation where Article 8 is relevant!

I think this approach is the strongest as it comes from a place of wanting to protect the privacy of students.

They’d be utterly confused by this statement because they would deny internalised misogyny.

If you wanted to push the issue a little more (and potentially out yourself) you could say that asking for pronouns presumes the existence of (or that a person has/believes themselves to have - choose your wording as appropriate) gender identity, and that this presumption is detrimental to, and may have a chilling effect on, those with the (WORIADS) opposite belief that gender identity does not exist (or that they don’t personally have a gender identity).

If you felt prepared to do that, I think it would be worth flagging. The “you might out a trans person before they are ready to be outed” is probably more likely to gain traction with your audience, but I do think it’s important to start pointing out that asking for pronouns has the potential to alienate another group of people, whose beliefs are equally protected in UK law.

@TwoLoonsAndASprout I did wonder about pointing out that some might not believe in gender ideology and feel uncomfortable by being asked to declare pronouns. However, that could result in a challenging discussion with huge potential for being misunderstood and mislabelled as a transphobe in a knee jerk fashion. In turn, that could have job and career implications.

we have a fair idea of their gender from working with them

Are you using gender when you should be using sex? If so, could this be causing your colleague to think that there's room for ambiguity?