This is a knockout letter from Mumsnet that combines a stirring argument and some smart activism. Brilliant women like Sunkisses and her friend are the real reason the Gender Stasi wants to shut the site down. I hope Sunkisses won’t mind me reposting it here.
This is an email a friend wrote to a law firm about how seeing pronouns in their staff emails makes her feel, as a woman. Apparently, it may have worked as the male lawyer stopped putting pronouns in his signature. She wants other women to adapt it. She set up a gmail account in another name as she didn't want her email to result in negative treatment from the staff, but wanted the firm to know how statements of allegiance to gender ideology makes her feel.
Dear XX
I am a client of yours but I am sending this from an anonymous email account as I do not feel safe sending this from my real account, and fear it will have repercussions on my treatment by your staff.
I wanted you to know that two of your staff who I deal with have she/her and he/him in their email signatures. I don't know if this is a standard practice and encouraged by XX, or if this is peculiar to these two staff.
I see the statement of pronouns in email signatures as a political statement on an extremely controversial and divisive issue. It makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable, alienated, and quite fearful that I may not receive fair treatment if I disagreed with your staff on this issue. I wanted XX to know how I feel about this, and how many people are likely to feel.
The two staff are clearly female and male, and there is absolutely no reason for them to add these pronouns to their email signature apart from to make a clear political statement on their position on a very divisive issue. I do not believe your staff should be inserting their political positions into their communications with clients, especially on uniquely divisive issues. You would not expect to see staff stating their position on Brexit in their email signatures, with "Leave" or "Remain" added under their contact details. Or people stating "Christ is Lord" or "Allahu Akbar". Or "Vaccinate now" or "Lift lockdown" added.
I profoundly disagree with gender identity ideology. I see it as regressive, sexist and homophobic. I do not regard it as progressive in the slightest. I regard much of gender identity activism as extremely authoritarian and a threat to freedom of thought, belief, and expression, and a threat to the rights of women and girls. I profoundly disagree with the attempts to redefine what a woman is, and what same-sex attraction is. From conversations I have, most people agree with me but many are too fearful of saying so as this issue is so controversial and trans activists are incredibly aggressive and target people in their workplaces.
When I see your staff acting as activists with political statements in their email signatures it does not make me feel comfortable at all, and makes me feel like they would not treat me fairly if they knew that I profoundly disagreed with their political views on the importance of women's rights. It makes me feel they oppose the rights of women and girls, and it makes me feel alienated and completely excluded.
I ask that XX reconsider whether it is appropriate for staff to have political statements such as pronouns in their email signatures, and whether staff should be using their workplace as a forum for their activism.
Yours, XX
Me again. Hey, please do share this one. I think it could help a lot of people express their concerns around gender ideology without putting themselves or their liveliehoods at risk.
Every time I see pronouns used by any company, I am going to annonymously email the organisation concerned using something similar to the above. It seems such an obvious thing to do, but I would never have thought of it, or been able to word it so well. Thanks for posting it Graham.
I sent this through to the Victorian Department of Health, COVID-19 Response Division a couple of months ago. I haven't received an full explanation of policies as yet.
"Both in the initial processing stages for my first dose and in the survey post vaccination regarding symptoms (voluntary), I was asked what 'gender I identified as'. My sex is female. As this is a medical procedure, questions should be limited to those of a physiological nature and be relevant to the procedure.
My concern is that the credibility of the COVID vaccination program is diminished by including questions that are not relevant to the specific type of health service being provided, such as questions about a person's subjective opinion of their gender identity.
If the purpose of this question is to make people feel safe and included while getting this procedure, it did not make me feel this way. In fact, I felt the opposite. This question made me feel like I was in the hands of a health service entirely captured by unscientific ‘gender woo’. It is an issue of credibility and that is worth considering as the government sinks so many resources into convincing people to get vaccinated."
I'm not as brave as some, but try and push back in little ways. I continued to be inspired by the activism of women like these. Thanks!