Pronouns and Safeguarding

[Albless]

I work for a church and this evening am to attend on-line safeguarding training which is arranged and delivered by the Safeguarding Team at national level. When the Zoom link was emailed this afternoon, the person who sent it has included they/them pronouns in their email signature. I have noticed pronouns, which usually match the name, in other signatures from the national offices - across a range of departments.

Given that this is Safeguarding training, I plan on raising this as an issue, and wonder if anyone here can point me quickly to helpful information on this. I have found a helpful article on the SEEN in Health website which mentions compelled speech and that those who hold to biological reality are protected in law. I intend pointing out that using pronouns in this way normalises an ideology which is political and can be harmful, especially for the young and vulnerable.

Anything else?

That gender critical beliefs being protected in law gives you absolutely no right to prevent other people from choosing to share their pronouns if they wish to do so. Nor is there any meaningful safeguarding issue here, there is no evidence that sharing pronouns has any harmful effect on anyone. This is a baseless and spurious complaint stemming from no legitimate concerns apart from your own personal animus towards trans people and will likely be treated as such.

If you do decide to go ahead and complain, please do come back and share the response you receive as I'm sure it will be quite funny.

Given that this training relates to working with children and vulnerable adults, I do think it is relevant that our Safeguarding Office very obviously adopts and is normalising a particular stance.

Not a church group, but another youth organisation in my area had a girl who had recently adopted a traditionally male name and was being referred to by male pronouns. Most of the other children in that organisation had known that individual for years beforehand and were fully aware that she was female. I am concerned for the welfare of that young woman, and also for her peers, who find themselves in the position of being expected to deny their own knowledge and understanding of biological reality and to use the pronouns which do not match the sex of the person referred to.

If you do decide to go ahead and complain, please do come back and share the response you receive as I'm sure it will be quite funny.

The OP didn't say "complain" but "raise as an issue". It is a valid subject for discussion, much as some would like to shut the conversation down.

There is a safeguarding issue around leading people, particularly the young and vulnerable, into believing someone is female when in fact they are male.

I don't regard any concerns relating to safeguarding as "quite funny" but I accept others may disagree, for their own reasons.

This is as relevant now as it was when first written:
https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/

Further to my post above and the sentence "believing someone is female when in fact they are male" I would add "compelling someone to affirm someone is female when they are male" and therefore going against their own instincts.

It is very much a safeguarding issue to expect other people to use language which hides your sex.

Thank you for helpful comments, thoughts and information.

I think what I'm going to do is ask a couple of questions, but not get overly involved this evening. Then do a lot more reading, learning, thinking and put my concerns in writing and ask for a written response.

As an aside - but not unrelated as it involves vulnerable adults - I remember hearing a good while back that as those who had the early "sex change" operations aged and developed dementia, they were extremely distressed by their own surgically changed bodies, as their mental frailty and memory loss meant that their "identity" was lost and their biological reality was what remained (albeit not fully).

@Albless - if you can find any videos by Amy Sousa, she covers this quite extensively.

@Albless there are some safeguarding experts on this board but they might not see your thread in time for this evening. Hopefully they will be able to give you some pointers for the future though.

The judgement noted:[8][41]

Just as the legal recognition of civil partnerships does not negate the right of a person to believe that marriage should only apply to heterosexual couples, becoming the acquired gender 'for all purposes' within the meaning of GRA does not negate a person's right to believe, like the claimant, that as a matter of biology a trans person is still their natal sex. Both beliefs may well be profoundly offensive and even distressing to many others, but they are beliefs that are and must be tolerated in a pluralist society.

The summary went on to say:

This judgment does not mean that those with gender-critical beliefs can 'misgender' trans persons with impunity. The Claimant, like everyone else, will continue to be subject to the prohibitions on discrimination and harassment under the [Equality Act].

What point are you making @CoolforKats ?

Did you mean to include a comment?

This means you can’t follow anyone around chanting ‘him, him, him, him’, you can of course call a man ‘him’ in the normal course of a conversation.

Thanks.

It would be very helpful to hear from others with knowledge and experience so that I can put it in writing and ask for a response in writing and take it from there.

Simply raising it at the on-line training probably won't achieve much, but I'll be interested to see what they have to say about it.

As far as I've seen, most of the pronoun people I've come across so far in the church are simply stating the pronouns which accord with their sex and which would be used by anyone with eyes and ears and a reasonable grasp of the English language. But they are promoting and normalising a particular ideology which has been shown to be harmful, particularly to children and the vulnerable, and which promotes compelled speech and asks people to speak in contradiction of reality.

This afternoon's email was the first I've received from a they/them/their, and I can't tell the person's sex from their name. Their social title is Mx. I find social titles a little irritating, to be honest, but in this instance it could simply be omitted.

Nor is there any meaningful safeguarding issue here, there is no evidence that sharing pronouns has any harmful effect on anyone.

I disagree. Helene Joyce has talked about this on numerous occasions. If you present the possibility that some people can change their sex, then naturally some children will decide that they're the opposite sex too. That's natural behaviour in children; as it's a way to be special in exactly the same way as if you asked them their favourite colour - some will choose unpopular colours simply to assert their individuality. It's in fact a likely driver of the social contagion.

How did your meeting go, Albless?

You made valid and legitimate points. How did the meeting go?