Contentious claims
Naomi Cunningham replying to a comment at Legal Feminist last September:
So it’s ok for the diversity training to emphasise that staff mustn’t harass trans colleagues or discriminate against them. It’s very far from ok for the diversity training to assert, for example, that “trans women are women”: that’s a highly contentious claim that many people reject. Similarly, it’s ok for diversity training to emphasise that staff mustn’t harass Christian colleagues or discriminate against them. It’s not ok for training to assert that Jesus is the Risen Lord.
I will add that if diversity training does emphasize that staff mustn’t harass Christian colleagues, it should also emphasize that Christian staff mustn’t harass atheist or secularist colleagues. It should cut both ways. I have had to work with god-botherers who didn’t keep their mouths shut about it, and it felt very much like an imposition.
You say “being less trans-exclusionary, and more trans inclusive seems a reasonable viewpoint to be presented to employees.” That would be fine if “trans inclusive” just meant not discriminating against trans people. But gender critical people are slurred as “trans exclusionary” not because they want to exclude trans people from work or public life, etc. – which obviously would be terrible – but because they don’t accept that trans-identifying males are included within the definition of the word “woman.” So if HR say “be less trans-exclusionary”, they are making a demand that their staff believe something.
That is a very interesting point. I tend to think of the “exclusionary” bit of TERF as meaning literal, physical exclusion, i.e. from women’s sports, locker rooms, conferences and the like, but of course it is also about the concept, and the definition. It’s about that first, really, since radical feminism is itself conceptual so the point is that terfs think radical feminism isn’t about men.
I’d definitely agree that the exclusion, such as it is, is first and foremost the rejection of TWAW/TMAM. Everything else follows from that.
I think inevitably there will be conflicts when companies talk about “bringing your whole self to work.” The example my employer showed was a young lesbian conflicted over whether she should hang a picture of her partner at work, as straight couples do. But it’s really not well-defined, and it could be used to “raise the bar” on how much of our whole selves we shouid bring to work.
Many people in the call center I worked in when I first started with this company brought their bibles with them and posted Jesus and God pictures in their cubes. One of m co-workers decided to bring “The God Delusion” to read at work, and was admonished. I was admonished once for wearing a t-shirt for 2 GIngers Irish Whiskey, while others wore brewery shirts, so it made little sense as to which part of our whole selves we were to bring to work. It was pretty much left up to the judment of individual supervisors as to where they drew their line.
There are people who pronoun their sigs, but there has been nothing from our DE&I directing anyone to do so, and the trans issue doesn’t ever come up in our team meeting DE&I sessions. I think my employer has pretty good employment lawyers so they don’t push anything on it.
Many of the comments under that article are good examples of people trying to tease this all out, but the one that stands out is from the reader who points out that by not complying with the sig pronouns, one is making a declaration that serves s a beacon to those who are watching. Silence can be seen as an act of defiance. There is no escape.
When it’s your boss who puts pronouns in their sig, it puts pressure on you as their subordinate to follow suit. You know, be a team player. I’m at the point now that if I was told to declare my pronouns at work, I’d go straight to the board and have a lawyer in tow.
If I was told to declare my pronouns, I would be tempted to declare ‘it’.
It was suggested in a meeting this morning, but the reasoning was that since we have co-workers from other countries it’s not obvious by name what our sex/gender is. I didn’t make a fuss, because there is SOME sense in that suggestion.