Bank of England staff have been told to share their pronouns at the start of meetings and use “gender neutral” language when speaking to customers. The Telegraph has the details.
Threadneedle Street employees were also advised that it is a “microaggression” to state that “everyone is born a man or a woman, it’s science”.
The lessons, delivered to staff as part of a “trans inclusion” training session, also encouraged the Bank of England to promote a “trans day of visibility”, a “trans day of remembrance” and a “trans awareness week”.
Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, has written to Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England’s Governor, about the training.
He told Mr. Bailey that “while fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective”, he believed that training courses like the one given to Bank staff are “ideologically driven”.
“As a result, they may have the unintended effect of fostering an intolerant workplace culture in which some employees feel they cannot express certain, perfectly legitimate points of view,” the letter said.
“Our primary concern is that the ‘Trans Inclusion’ course appears to promote gender identity ideology while stigmatising gender critical beliefs, which are protected under the Equality Act 2010.”
The FSU’s letter highlighted a part of the training that stated “using the wrong pronouns” is another example of a “microaggression”.
It also mentioned the section telling staff to use language such as “cisgender” to refer to an individual who identifies as the sex they were assigned at birth, or “Enby” to describe people who do not identify exclusively as a man or woman.
The Bank of England defended the training, with a spokesman saying: “Our objective is to ensure monetary and financial stability for the UK. We encourage a welcoming environment for our colleagues working hard to achieve this – as such, we offer inclusion training on an optional basis.”
Mr. Young said: “The Bank of England, like so many other pillars of the British establishment, has been infected by the woke mind virus.”
“This kind of training creates the impression that believing in the biological reality of sex is discriminatory, when in fact it’s a belief that’s protected by the Equality Act and the reality is that any employer punishing an employee for expressing such a view would themselves be guilty of discrimination.”
Worth reading in full.
You can read the FSU’s letter to Andrew Bailey here.
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