The Folly of Preferred Pronouns Policy in Irish Higher Education

On the 5th of October 2023, the Irish Times reported that South Eastern Technical University (SETU) lecturer Colette Colfer will refuse to comply with its new gender identity policy because it describes refusal to use students’ or staff members’ preferred pronouns as an example of “unlawful discrimination or harassment.” Colfer, a lecturer in world religions, said that while she had no personal objection to using anyone’s preferred pronoun or name, her main issue of concern was the compulsory nature of the policy.

I support the broad aim of the policy, but not the methods. All students should be treated fairly and equally. But the methods of this policy could result in discrimination against those who do not subscribe to gender identity theory.

Colette Colfer in the Irish Times article

Shortly after the Irish Times article was published, the Irish Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee was asked on national radio about SETU’s gender identity policy claims regarding Irish law and preferred pronouns. The Minister said that refusing to use a person’s preferred pronouns is not illegal and that it will not be illegal under new Hate Crime legislation she is currently bringing through the Irish parliament.

SETU’s new policy is part of a wider bid for the university to advance Athena Swan Charter accreditation. Participation in Athena Swan is compulsory for Irish higher education institutions (HEIs). Notably, although Athena Swan is a UK initiative, it is not compulsory for UK HEIs due to the onerous bureaucratic overhead involved in acquiring Athena Swan accreditation and awards. Athena Swan is required for research funding from all of Ireland’s major research funding bodies. When it launched in 2005, the stated aim of Athena Swan was to support women working in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, maths, and medicine (STEMM). However, the inclusion of gender identity into Athena Swan in 2015 has shifted the focus from sex equality to gender identity equality. Colfer has written in detail about the unintended negative impact of Athena Swan across Irish higher education here and here. Research into the impact of Athena Swan in UK Universities published in 2023 found that it did not meet its originally stated aims of improving equality for women in higher education. Athena Swan awards were not associated with an increase in the number of women in senior positions. On the 17^th Of October 2023 in the Seanad (the Irish Senate), Senator Sharon Keoghan called for Simon Harris, Minister for Higher Education, Innovation Research and Science, to debate the appropriateness of attainment of an Athena Swan award as a prerequisite for research funding. 

In the Irish Times article, Colfer stated:

I really want to stress that I will support policies that are evidence-based and that allow for a diversity of viewpoints. But if we are going to have policies in HEIs, they must be based on evidence and the latest research. Otherwise, we fall into an ideological trap which has negative consequences for everyone, including young people with gender dysphoria.

SETU’s Preferred Pronouns Policy and the Evidence

The SETU Gender Identity & Expression Policy states: “This policy is underpinned by the key principle of respect for all current and prospective students and staff,” and that “examples of unlawful discrimination or harassment because of a person’s gender identity or gender expression include … Refusing to address a person by their correct gender pronoun or new preferred name.”

As Colfer has shown, SETU are not the only Irish HEI making claims about preferred pronouns that the Irish Minister of Justice is on the record as having said are incorrect: University College Dublin, the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and Trinity College Dublin have all issued gender identity policies making similar claims.

The SETU policy states that “gender is complex and multifaceted and there is no predetermined or “correct” way to transition or manifest one’s gender identity.” The policy cites six references that it claims “provide additional relevant background information.”

Three of the six references cited were documents on transgender inclusion, written either solely by or in partnership with transgender advocacy groups (Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI), Stonewall UK and the American Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC)). All three documents were based on anonymous online surveys of transgender and gender minority populations asking them about their experiences. These studies were concerned only with the perspectives of transgender students or employees. The studies did not consider impacts on other students or staff. The other references cited in the policy were a link to helpful terms and definitions provided by TENI and a chapter from an out-of-print book published in 2007 called Transgender Oppression Curriculum Design.

The final document cited by SETU was an article issued by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2015, whose stated purpose is “to assist psychologists in the provision of culturally competent, developmentally appropriate, and trans-affirmative psychological practice with trans and gender nonconforming people”.

It is not clear how guidance for psychologists to treat patients with gender identity issues is relevant to or can be applied to a university policy that is meant for all students and staff.

The APA document also states: “This document will expire as APA policy in 2022 [emphasis added]. After this date, users should contact the APA Public Interest Directorate to determine whether the guidelines in this document remain in effect as APA policy.” SETU cited this expired document to support their policy in March 2023.

None of the six SETU references provide any evidence of research on positive or negative outcomes of programmes or policies that mandate the universal use of preferred pronouns within organisations for either gender minority individuals or the wider organisational population.

Preferred Pronouns: A Deeper Look into the Evidence

In May 2021, Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) Roderic O’Gorman launched a research report by the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) that reviewed all relevant research on LGBT+ youth (defined as under the age of 26) in Ireland and Europe between 2000 and September 2019¹.

The DCEDIY NUIG report included 126 research articles. On the issue of pronouns, the DCEDIY NUIG report said that “LGBTI+ young people feel more included if service providers use appropriate terms and language (e.g., refer to the adolescents by the preferred name and pronouns)” and cited three papers as evidence for this statement.

The three papers cited by NUIG collected data from anonymous online surveys and small sample focus groups with young transgender people. The young people said that they feel more included when their preferred names and pronouns are used.

This is very preliminary research on preferred pronouns. The evidence cited does not provide any outcome data of the benefits or harms of any programmes that mandate the use of preferred pronouns for either gender minority students or the wider student and staff population. We do not know if the universally mandated use of preferred pronouns is of long-term benefit to gender minority students or what impact mandatory preferred pronouns policies will have on other students.

Brain maturation and identity development continue for most people through to their mid-twenties. According to Transgender Equality Network Ireland, “Social transition describes when trans people take social steps to express their gender identity. This could include using a nickname or different pronoun or changing their style of clothes or haircut to more accurately reflect their gender identity.” The 2022 interim Cass report issued to the UK National Health Service England as part of the UK Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People noted that it is important to view social transition as an active intervention because “it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning … There are different views on the benefits versus the harms of early social transition. Whatever position one takes, it is important to acknowledge that it is not a neutral act, and better information is needed about outcomes.”

Within education, some well-intentioned wellness programmes have been found to be ineffective at achieving their aims of improving student well-being and, in some cases, have been found to be harmful to some students. Therefore, it cannot simply be assumed, without supporting evidence, that mandating the use of preferred pronouns is universally beneficial.

Moreover, a key concern with whole-organisation policy recommendations based solely on feedback from organisations representing minority groups or their community members is that this feedback is only concerned with what those stakeholders believe is in the best interests of the small minority group they represent. The beliefs of one group may conflict with another group’s beliefs. Policy guidance that affects all members within an institution, such as a university, must consider and assess the impact of policies on all affected members and not just one small minority group.

Gender Identity is Fluid

According to Harvard Medical School: “For some youth, gender fluidity may be a way to explore gender before landing on a more stable gender expression or identity. For others, gender fluidity may continue indefinitely as part of their life experience with gender.” This means that a person’s gender identity may change multiple times. So a person could change their preferred pronouns multiple times.

One of the studies cited by SETU is a Higher Education Resource Guide developed by TENI, the National LGBT Federation of Ireland (NXF) and the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Unit, which found that 38.84% of Irish 3rd-level gender minority students surveyed identify as non-binary. It is common for people who identify outside the gender binary to use pronouns other than he/him and she/her. Many nonbinary people prefer they/them or a combination of pronoun types, for example, he and they. A study in 2020 found 4% of nonbinary people use “neopronouns,” including ze/zir, xe/xim and fae/faer, or combinations of these terms with other pronouns. The use of neopronouns among some members of the gender minority community is a relatively new phenomenon.

The SETU policy document cites a Transgender Inclusion Resource for Employers issued by the American Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC). The HRC guidance on pronouns is as follows:

Neopronouns are also pronouns … As one’s pronouns are ultimately a reflection of their personal identity, the number and types of (neo)pronouns a person may use is limitless [emphasis added]. Examples of neopronoun sets include: xe/xir/xirs, ze/zir/zirs and fae/faer/faers.

Using neopronouns in a sentence is complex in terms of sentence construction and comprehension. A recent article published by the Museum of Childhood Ireland titled “Reflections on Supporting Transgender and Gender Diverse Students in the Classroom” includes an example of the use of neopronouns in a sentence:

In this essay, ze discuss zir experience of encountering and embracing the label “genderqueer” and rethinking zir gender identity as a result.

SETU policy describes refusal to use students’ or staff members’ preferred pronouns as an example of “unlawful discrimination or harassment.” Since the SETU policy states that there is no correct way to manifest one’s gender identity, we must infer that SETU pronoun policy includes neopronouns and that the policy applies no matter how many times an individual changes their preferred pronouns or neopronouns as they explore and manifest their gender identity.

Stating that not using a person’s declared preferred pronouns or neo-pronouns is unlawful discrimination puts students who cannot or will not comply at risk of being bullied themselves by allies of anyone declaring pronouns or neopronouns. Students with minority religious beliefs and those with additional educational needs are particularly vulnerable to having difficulty with preferred pronouns and neopronouns and being targeted for not using these novel linguistic terms correctly. A 2021 peer-reviewed study from Finland found that having a transgender or non-binary identity is associated both with being bullied and being a perpetrator of bullying.

The SETU policy is intended to apply to current and prospective students. A 2023 study by the Ombudsman for Children found that 2% of the random sample of over 2,000 Irish secondary students surveyed identify as non-binary, 2% identify as “another gender identity,” and 2% declined to select their gender identity. Based on this data, it would not be unreasonable for Irish universities to expect up to 4% of prospective students to use a variety of pronouns to reflect their gender identity.

Making the use of preferred pronouns compulsory makes pronouns a divisive issue. As the number of students using preferred pronouns grows, this policy risks fostering resentment among students and staff who may feel that the attention given to ensuring that every student’s change of preferred pronouns is respected is a distraction from the university’s primary purpose, which is education.

The SETU Gender Identity & Expression policy, March 2023 states: “This policy is underpinned by the key principle of respect for all current and prospective students and staff.”

Given the lack of evidence provided by SETU to show the benefits of this policy and the legitimate concerns highlighted here that the policy risks having unintended negative consequences, it is hard to see how this policy shows respect for any students and staff in SETU.

1. A PubMed search in October 2023 for any newer articles published since 2019 on outcomes of preferred pronoun policies did not find any newer relevant research. ↩︎