Compelled Speech at the BBC

Our first BBC whistleblower.

Please do get in touch if you’re at the BBC, the Guardian, or any other organisation that’s been cognitively captured by gender identity ideology. The following story I think is all the more chilling in its mundanity. BBC managers repeatedly sent round to check the thinking of people who don’t believe that men are magically able to turn into women.

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Thanks again for responding to me reaching out - I would probably have never supposed to try and contact you but yesterday was a weird one - I read your article in the morning which contains the line "If anyone at the BBC would like to blow the whistle on the situation in there, please get in touch." 

I had a rather uncomfortable conversation with my manager so thought I would share my experience.

I will try and be as succinct as possible but I guess this is going to be a fairly lengthy email, please bear with me. I may be overreacting to something insignificant but it didn't feel like it, the experience felt quite insidious.

I’ve been working for the BBC for some time now and have found it generally a decent place to work. I am in the technology sphere in a fairly large team. I had a one to one with my line manager recently - as usual, we mostly talked about work stuff. This meeting was actually a review/goal setting one and my work performance is good, I had strong feedback from colleagues I work with. At the end, it was the usual "anything else you want to discuss?"

I brought up the issue about recent guidance for staff being recommended to put their pronouns in their Slack profile/email signature. I explained that I didn't subscribe to this ideology and would never want to do this. My boss said that's fine - no one is obliged to do this. 

I can't remember exactly what I said after this but I made some comments as to the ridiculousness of the trans ideology, that sex is binary and immutable and that while of course, I have no issue with anyone living their life as they see fit I can't subscribe to the belief that people can actually change sex. He said I am entitled to have opinions but that we need to respect other people's pronouns. The conversation finished with me commenting that I hoped that I hoped this remained a hypothetical situation.

I thought no more of it - he had to take the official stance, I disagreed, that's fine.

Fifteen minutes later he pinged me - can we quickly chat again? Turns out this was actual BBC policy that we must use someone's preferred pronouns - to the point of disciplinary action if we don't. I made a comment about compelled speech really not being a good look and again commented that hopefully, it would remain a moot point. I confirmed that I understood the BBC policy.

Surely that must be the end of it now?

It wasn’t. He pinged me again the next day - “can we have a quick chat?”

What now I think... 

He tells me he consulted HR after our previous conversation! They advised him to have an "informal conversation" with me to clarify the policy. An informal conversation which is to be documented and recorded!

He basically just reiterated the previous conversation about BBC policy mandating we need to use a person's choice of pronouns if indicated. I said I understood but made my point that obliging people to do this is obliging them to subscribe to a belief that they do not hold, akin to demanding blanket acceptance of religious dogma. He made absolutely no attempt (it felt like to me) to understand where I was coming from, never mind empathise.

He literally said I was entitled to believe whatever I liked but I couldn't express that at work! The implication was very clear - my thinking was wrong and I was some kind of bigot to have these thoughts.

He then went on to explicitly lay out that if I didn't adhere to BBC policy it would be a disciplinary matter, up to dismissal (he used the word).

I tried to argue that believing in trans ideology was just a belief with absolutely no basis in reality so why did it trump what I thought and felt? He didn't really address that but made some comment about it being possible to be discriminatory without meaning to do so. I took umbrage to this and had a bit of a mini-rant about how I lived in Asia for many years and was subjected to everyday casual racism, was married to an Asian woman and had a mixed-race child so how dare he accuse me of that.

The conversation drew to a close with him telling me that he'd taken notes and they would be recorded on the HR system! So much for an "informal chat"... I expressed concern about this and he assured me that only he (as my line manager) would have access to this. I find this unlikely - HR staff won't be able to see? He told me it would only be held for a limited period of time, he thought for six months, I again expressed some concern about data security.

And that was that. I was quite shaken up by the experience as it definitely felt like I had been given a dressing down for wrong thinking.

I got an email from my boss to confirm what was discussed in our "chat". A comment he made kind of explained somewhat his actions, although to me did not justify them. I have managed people in previous jobs and I would never have handled the situation the way he did. He remarked that he thought from my comments that if there ever was a trans person in the team I would refuse to use their pronouns.

I am polite to everyone, but what bothers me is the compelled speech to comply with something that's objectively a lie. To give a bit more context, when I started with the BBC there was a trans member of staff. But, it was a bloke with slightly long hair who wore vaguely androgynous clothing but he expected other people to use she / her.

He even sent a message to the team requesting this. Not that using feminine pronouns would make him feel more comfortable about himself or anything but that what we all think (and can see with our eyes) is wrong and bigoted. Luckily, he was quickly transferred out of the team so it was never an issue.

Since this incident, I have reflected on what I would do if eg, he rejoined our team. I think I would simply avoid using pronouns whatsoever and use his name every single time I referred to him.

So, anyway, my manager consulted HR, reprimanded me and recorded the meeting over a hypothetical situation where he made an assumption about my behaviour... Wow.

He did make a comment sometime during our conversations that policy decisions were above his pay grade and invited me to contact the department boss (ie exec level management) if I felt it was flawed. Yeah, I'm really going to do that.

OK, apologies for the wall of text and I'm not really sure what if anything you can do with this tale of woe but like I say it really just hit me that we are very much in an emperor's new clothes state of affairs. This was the first time that these sort of issues went from a Twitter row to real life for me. When my manager tells me that refusal to subscribe to a completely unscientific belief could endanger my employment - all in the name of "inclusivity"! Going to stop writing now. I just wanted to relate an example of how this nonsense has taken root in the Beeb.