Halifax bank invites bigots raging against inclusive pronoun badges to close their accounts

A Halifax employee wears a blue blazer and name badge which includes the name 'Gemma' and her pronouns 'she/her/hers' as well as the blue Halifax logo

Halifax has come out swinging for the LGBTQ+ community and invited anyone angry at the bank’s new pronoun staff badges to close their account. 

The company shared an image of a badge belonging to an employee named Gemma with the pronouns “she/her/hers” in a post on Twitter Tuesday (28 June). The post, which comes days before Pride Month comes to an end, simply added the statement “Pronouns matter” and the hashtag “#ItsAPeopleThing”.

The post highlighting Halifax’s new inclusive badge quickly drew the ire of narrow-minded people on social media. Several users rather pathetically took issue with people sharing their pronouns and piled on the bank for protecting staff from being misgendered at work, predictably decrying the company for being ‘woke’.

But Halifax wasn’t too bothered by ignorant people on social media threatening to close their accounts with the bank, and it instead showed them the veritable door by pointing them in the right direction. 

The bank wrote to one user that it strives for “inclusion, equality” and is “quite simply” just “doing what’s right”. 

“If you disagree with our values, you’re welcome to close your account,” the bank added. 

Several people on social media celebrated Halifax for creating a more inclusive environment and decried those in Halifax’s comment section to taking issue with the pronoun badges. 

 

A spokesperson for Halifax told PinkNews that it wants the business to be a place where everyone can be themselves and feel included, which is why it was important to give people the option to let others know their preferred pronouns. 

“We want to create a safe and accepting environment that opens the conversation around gender identity,” the spokesperson said. “We care about our customers’ and colleagues’ individual preferences so, for us, it’s a very simple solution to accidental misgendering.”

 

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