Minister McEntee confirms it is NOT unlawful to use ‘incorrect pronouns’

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has confirmed that is it not against the law to use “incorrect pronouns” or to refuse to use “preferred pronouns”, after it was revealed that some of Ireland’s leading universities had told staff that it was “unlawful” to refuse to use preferred pronouns.

This week Ms. McEntee told Newstalk’s Ciara Kelly that “misgendering somebody will not be a crime” – and that hate crime legislation was concentrated on where hatred or violence was incited.

Asked “is it against the law to not use the correct pronouns or to refuse to do so?”, the Minister replied  “It’s not.”

"Misgendering somebody will not be a crime." Minister for Justice Helen McEntee on @NTBreakfast. pic.twitter.com/gzayKpaiCb

— NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) October 13, 2023

Last week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he “couldn’t imagine” the State prosecuting anyone for using “the wrong pronouns.

Lecturer Colette Colfer highlighted last week that five higher institutes of education – University College Dublin, Trinity College, the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI), Dundalk Institute of Technology and South East Technological University – claimed that refusing to use preferred pronouns amounted to unlawful discrimination or harassment.

I've gone through Gender Identity Policies and Equality Policies of all 19 Higher Education Institutions in Ireland that have Athena SWAN awards. In total, five HEIs have Policies stating it is unlawful discrimination or harassment to refuse to use preferred pronouns.

— Colette Colfer (@ColetteColfer) October 9, 2023

Ms. Colfer said that she has no issue with using preferred pronouns for individuals, but she took issue with the compelled speech aspect of the claim, and the assertion that to use the wrong pronouns was actually unlawful.

Writing for Gript this week, Dr. Matt Treacy said that despite the assertions of the universities “no such law on the use of pronouns seems to exist.”

The universities’ claim therefore appears to be misleading, it could be called misinformation, maybe even disinformation, and the decision to assert the claim on pronoun use looks co-ordinated.

The way in which their policy is framed clearly implies, if not directly states, that someone who refuses to use an individual’s preferred pronouns, based on their subjective decision that they are of a different gender than they were biologically born into, may be subject to criminal prosecution under various acts of law.

The Trinity College Dublin Gender Identity and Gender Expression policy document refers to the Employment Equality Acts and the Equal Status Acts as the basis for their claim that “discrimination, harassment, and victimisation on the basis of gender, which encompasses gender expression and gender identity, is unlawful.”

That includes “refusing to address a person by their preferred gender pronoun or new name.”

The UCD Gender Identity and Expression Policy uses very similar language when it claims that “Under the Employment Equality Acts 1998-2015 and the Equal Status Acts 2000-2015 discrimination, and gender-related harassment, which encompasses gender expression and gender identity, is unlawful.” It specifically refers to such potentially unlawful behaviour as including “[r]efusing to address a person by their correct gender pronoun or new name.”

The Royal College of Surgeons Ireland claims that “Irish discrimination law” similarly means that “[r]efusing to address a person by their correct gender pronoun or new name” constitutes an example of “unlawful discrimination.”

The Dundalk Institute of Technology in its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion document includes as an example of “unlawful discrimination,” any discrimination related to “Gender identity (a personal sense of one’s own gender. This can correspond to or differ from the sex we are assigned at birth).”

And of course the South East Technological University, which is at the centre of the controversy involving lecturer Colette Colfer, uses exactly the same template in stating that “(e)xamples of unlawful discrimination or harassment” include [r]efusing to address a person by their correct gender pronoun or new preferred name.”

As Ms. Colfer had done, he pointed to the role or influence of the English NGO Advance HE, and their Athena SWAN Charter:

If you think that all of the above sound familiar then you would be correct because they are all the creatures, not of any groundswell of opinion within academia, but of the English NGO Advance HE who, through their Athena SWAN Charter, have been given an effective veto over research funding for Irish third level institutions.

This point cannot be emphasised enough: unless Irish universities agree to the nonsense of gender ideology and compelled speech as prescribed by an English NGO, Athena Swan, they won’t get all-important research funding – a requisite put in place by the Higher Education Authority under diversity grounds.

As previously alluded to, this situation was set out by Simon Harris in the Dáil on April 7, 2022 when he stated that:

Among our main research and innovation related actions is a requirement to promote gender equality to access research funding. Only higher education institutions that have at least an Athena SWAN bronze institutional award can apply for funding from Ireland’s main research funders.

And to cap it all, the claims that not using someone’s preferred pronouns constitutes a criminal offence appears to be without foundation.

Last week, Ben Scallan of Gript pressed Equality Minister Roderic O’Gorman on the issue, accusing him of evasion for refusing to say whether or not “misgendering” someone at work could constitute unlawful discrimination or harassment.

"That's not an answer to the question": Ben Scallan accuses Irish Equality Minister Roderic O'Gorman of "evasion" for refusing to say whether or not "misgendering" someone at work could constitute unlawful discrimination or harassment.#gript pic.twitter.com/MDONaRHfTs

— gript (@griptmedia) October 5, 2023