Stonewall: ‘Give staff different emails for different gender identities’

LGBT lobby group Stonewall has come under fire over reports it told employers to permit staff to have multiple email addresses so they can use different ‘gender identities’ and names at work.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the application form for Stonewall’s 2023 Workplace Equality Index contained the recommendation for employers seeking to improve their position in its annual ranking of top 100 LGBT ‘inclusive’ workplaces.

Guidance suggested that employers could “consider removing gender markers and titles from your systems altogether”, and asked whether they have a “formal commitment to introduce gender-neutral facilities in all buildings”.

‘Denies reality’

In addition, the form asked if employees are trained to “become trans allies”, and suggested that if an employer signs a contract with a business partner it could “include a broad diversity and inclusion slot in contract monitoring meetings”.

Christian MP Miriam Cates commented: “This guidance is frankly absurd and it is extremely concerning that major employers are seeking to adhere to it.

“Any policy that allows employees to have multiple identities is clearly open to abuse, quite apart from being completely unworkable in practice. This has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with trying to deny the biological and social reality that sex is binary and men and women are different.”

‘Extremism’

Sir John Hayes, chairman of the Common Sense Group of MPs, added: “It is undesirable for NHS trusts and police forces to be associated with this kind of extremism. I will certainly be writing to the Cabinet Office to ask them to recommend that public bodies, if they go down this road, spend their own money — not public money.”

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Assistant Editor Michael Deacon called Stonewall’s guidance “utterly surreal”, and highlighted the “risks” of allowing employees to use multiple email accounts.

It is undesirable for NHS trusts and police forces to be associated with this kind of extremism.

Despite the criticism, a Stonewall spokesman stated that the lobby group was “incredibly proud” of its schemes, and claimed its guidance makes “modest improvements to create a more welcoming environment so that everyone feels comfortable”.

Discredited

Earlier this year, a Freedom of Information request revealed that Stonewall told Oxford University to “expand the definition of ‘mother’” and avoid using ‘she’ in order to improve its ranking in Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index.

In 2020 the University ranked 76th overall and 11th in the education sector. Stonewall praised the University’s “gender neutral” family policies except for the use of the word ‘she’ in its maternity policy.

Stonewall’s discredited ‘Diversity Champions’ scheme has also been mired in controversy for months.

Public sector organisations including the Department for Work and Pensions, the Crown Prosecution Service, Ofcom, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Department of Health and Social Care have quit Stonewall schemes in recent months.