Is It Worth It?

Would you be willing to be fired for “misgendering” a fellow employee?

Unsurprisingly, Christians disagree on this one. One school of thought is that it’s “unloving” not to use a fellow employee’s designated pronouns, that it presents an unnecessary barrier to sharing the gospel. Others feel that actively validating someone’s cultivated false image or delusionary impression about themselves is a form of dishonesty, and Christians ought to be committed to truth. The third (and probably largest) group of Christians just hopes the whole issue will go away before they have to confront it in a situation where there is anything financial at stake.

Well, good luck with that, fence sitters. The fence is already wobbling under you.

The Science is Settled? Again?

Christians who consent to using inaccurate designated pronouns out of a desire to be kind can point to articles like this one in Scientific American to back their claim that people may be hurt if we fail to use the language they have told us to:

“Misgendering — that is, addressing someone by the incorrect pronoun or honorific — is a form of microaggression. The act of misgendering denies the gendered and human legitimacy of trans people, and causes significant negative psychological effects, including reduced sense of self-worth, anxiety, depression and a feeling of hypervigilance and surveillance.”

To bolster its claim about significant negative psychological effects, SA refers the reader to this study. It’s also noteworthy that the writers of this article reject proposals from some quarters to rid the English language of gendered pronouns, because that would rob trans people of the affirmation they claim to need:

“For many trans/GNC people, gender is an important part of their identity and actively avoiding the act of gendering manifests as another form of violence.”

So no, those who hope to handwave the issue away are out of luck. If people like the writers at SA have any say, gendered pronouns are here to stay, and using or not using them will be a choice every Christian employee (and employer) is eventually compelled to confront.

The Cost of Non-Compliance

In Canada at least, challenging the woke narrative about gender now comes at a cost. A Vancouver woman was recently evicted from a shelter for women who are victims of domestic violence after she voiced concerns about the behavior of a trans resident who was unquestionably biologically male and insisted on providing unsuspecting eyewitnesses with the evidence. [The linked story is not for the faint of heart.] This particular institution is only interested in protecting “non-transphobic” women from violence or fear. But the woman’s eviction from the shelter also brings up the issue of trolling, Accommodating self-identified trans people is allowing a steadily increasing stream of predators and dangerously unstable men to ogle, humiliate, terrify and physically dominate women with impunity and even government support. No Christian should be on board with that, not in the name of kindness or anything else.

Also in BC in 2021, the provincial Human Rights Tribunal awarded $30,000 to a transgender restaurant worker fired for creating workplace conflict by being “too militant” in her insistence on being correctly addressed. The applicant’s lawyer says, “It should be a signal that employers need to be respectful. Correct pronouns for individuals are not optional. Employers are not free to address people by the pronouns employers choose to.” Apparently, a new right to foment workplace conflict has now been enshrined, and it will definitely be milked for everything it’s worth.

Taken together, the two incidents send a strong message. The rights of a trans person to complain about their treatment by others will be defended by the state, while the right to complain about the behavior of a trans person, however egregious, does not exist.

Looking Over Your Shoulder

Most institutions in Canada are caving pre-emptively to the self-appointed language police rather than fight the tide. At least one major Canadian bank has a three-strike policy in place for misgenderers, even if they insist their offense is unintentional, after which the next step is termination. An unsaved friend ran afoul of her employer’s Human Resources directives on designated pronouns recently despite repeated attempts to comply. A self-identified “non-binary” employee insists her co-workers use “they”, “them” and “their” when referring to her. My friend made every effort to do as instructed while on the job, but as she puts it, “She sounds like a woman and she looks like a woman. I can’t remember!” With two strikes against her already, she worries she ought to be updating her resume. Talk about a policy that causes “a feeling of hypervigilance and surveillance”!

This is a major problem with trying to enforce unnatural language on people. Last year I wrote about a trans person who says she’s “exhausted” by policing her friends’ language. It just doesn’t work. Even people who like her and intend to accommodate her slip up all the time. They’re not trying to be mean or hateful. They just don’t have enough bandwidth to keep her demands front and center in every conversation at every possible moment. Her solution? Get rid of friends who don’t comply. “If that’s true,” said one acquaintance, “Kels is going to live one lonely life.”

Precisely. And if friends trying to make her feel comfortable in her chosen identity can’t be counted on to get it “right”, how much more the general public with no skin in the game? The middle road is not going to work for Christians for long, and even attempting compliance presents its problems.

Universal Positive Affirmation

Back to our original question. Is opposing such enforced unreality worth it? Would I be willing to be fired for misgendering a co-worker? Absolutely. Hey, I’m willing to make an effort to be polite. I won’t use designated pronouns no matter what, and I won’t designate pronouns for myself, but I’m happy to make the effort to substitute a person’s name for a pronoun for as long as I can remember to do so. It sounds painfully awkward and will probably give as much offense as misgendering once the pattern is noticed, but at least it has the virtue of being truthful. The alternative is, as one Christian working for a major institution said to me recently, “I simply won’t talk to or about such a person at all.”

That may work … briefly. But as the Scientific American article makes obvious, the goal is not to protect emotionally vulnerable employees from distress but rather to compel universal positive affirmation of aberrant lifestyle choices.

Affirmation is something no loving Christian can do in good conscience. A loving microaggression beats actively enabling sin any day.