Take the pronouns with you everywhere
Divoosity training hits another bump in the road.
Since its creation in 2020, the [Free Speech Union] has handled over 2,500 individual cases and queries relating to free speech. Of our free speech cases, 46% are in some way associated with the workplace and, among these, approximately one fifth concern EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) training (approximately 230). In practice, this means that our members are asking whether they’ll get into trouble if they refuse to do the training, or seeking our help because they’ve already got into trouble for challenging it.
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In some cases, EDI training extends to telling employees and professionals how they should behave outside the workplace, such as the insistence that employees should use the preferred pronouns of trans people in their private life.
Well, if you believe, you believe everywhere. Also, belief is not optional.
We’ve also recently uncovered an example of EDI training at Amazon in which employees are not allowed to challenge the trainers’ ideological biases. The full Amazon case study has just been added to our recent research briefing, the EDI Tax, but here’s a brief summary.
Our source is an Amazon employee and FSU member who provided us with a copy of the training material produced by ‘Glamazon’, the company’s internal LGBT+ affinity group, which has been rolled out to employees in the UK with supervisory responsibilities. The managers concerned are referred to as – wait for it – ‘Glamzonians’.
Ew. Because LGBTQ++++++++ is so glam while the rest of us are so dowdy and lame and dull, is that it?
The course contains many of the familiar LGBT+ topics but, as highlighted by our member who said that employees feel “silenced and scared to admit their own beliefs”, it slides into authoritarianism when discussing “preferred gender pronouns”. The following is taken directly from the Glamazon UK training material:
The #PushforPronouns initiative is aimed at normalizing the sharing of pronouns to ensure all people have the opportunity to define and be referred to by the pronouns they personally identify with.
Yes and that’s the problem. The “sharing of pronouns” should not be normalized. It’s absurd and childish and rooted in fantasy plus ignorance.
But the training material makes a third recommendation:
Start introducing yourself with your pronouns. Whenever you’re introduced to somebody new, it’s easy to state your pronouns alongside your name. This helps others understand how to refer to you in the future, and encourages them to also share their pronouns.
Wrong again. What it helps others understand is that you’re a preening narcissist eager to use up other people’s time and attention.
The training says that employees should:
Do this at work and in your personal life to help establish pronoun sharing as a standard practice with your team, your business org, and your community.
No.
“Ew. Because LGBTQ++++++++ is so glam while the rest of us are so dowdy and lame and dull, is that it?”
What if I belong to that class whose preferred term for them is ‘Bullshittonians?’ How do I proceed in the sharing of that around?
(Aside.) It’s a tough one.
I initially read that as ‘LGBT+infinity’…and wasn’t at all surprised.
It is also a warning to other people that any interaction with you means entering into a minefield, and they will have to work very hard to appease you if they don’t want their legs blown off; that you are constantly monitoring their every move for signs of Wrongthink and are determined to destroy anyone who fails to demonstrate the required level of compliance or ideological purity.
This is one of the infuriating things about the cynical manipulation of forced-teaming of LGB with the T. T has piggy-backed onto all the hard work, organization, and good will painstakingly developed by LGB advocates over decades, and glommed themselves onto it like leeches. Workplace trainings are nominally called “LGBT.” That way, they get to act as if their training materials examine a comprehensive cluster of issues, when in fact I’d be willing to bet that the trainings don’t devote much to the LGB aspect of rights awareness. It’s all T, all the time.
Well you see that’s because the LGB are fine, they are flourishing, nothing bad ever happens to them. The poor sad neglected weedy T are desperately in need of attention and compassion and money and more attention.
Apropos of the forced teaming, the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding Oregon’s ban on conversion therapy. (The conservatives seem to be predictably opposed to the ban, as is Kagan.) Of course the article and the comments section tie conversion therapy not just to trying to convince LGB people to go straight, but also trying to help gender dysphoric kids come to accept their bodies. Those are not equivalent–if anything, “gender-affirming care” is conversion therapy.