Calling female colleagues “guys” is a microaggression that can be reported to managers, staff at a top City law firm have been warned.
Hogan Lovells is cracking down on perceived discrimination with a new reporting system for so-called microaggressions.
Microaggressions are intentional or unintentional acts or subtle slights that can lead to employees feeling marginalised.
Hogan Lovells is relying upon a list of microaggressions that include saying “you’re pretty strong for a girl”, referring to a mixed-gender group as “guys” and describing younger colleagues as “kids” or “babies”.
Other examples include assuming an older colleague is technologically challenged, using “heteronormative language without considering diverse identities” and using “ableist language without awareness”.
The Anglo-American law firm – which is the sixth biggest in the world – has told UK staff that they can now anonymously report any microaggressions to be “reviewed internally”.
Ah, Americans. They always are so enthusiastic. Whatever it is it’s always done to excess. Like puppies, really.
Of course.
It should be “Hows about that then, guys and gals ?”
( Waves cigar )
I wonder if it’s really anonymous enough that someone can safely report being forced to call men in dress “women” as a microaggression.
“You don’t sweat much for a fat lass.” can be offensive.
When we spent a week on an American base in Germany in the early 80s we had an introductory briefing about life in the US Army and on their camps by a female master sergeant and she said quite explicitly that guys was a gender neutral term. She was the sort of no nonsense person you don’t mess around with, so if it was OK for her it’s still good enough for me.
Calling female colleagues “guys” is a microaggression
Well I’m glad that we’ve got that cleared up and that Damon Runyon was correct: Guys & Dolls it is then.
Is it microagression when it is a female speaking?
but forcing the interns and juniors to work 100 hour weeks is totally ok.
No wonder these firms have to pay £150k a year for junior lawyers.
It’ll be interesting to track their performance over the next few years against other law firms that don’t do this.
They’re presumably expecting it will appeal to the woke youth, so help their hiring of trainees & juniors, but are the ones this will appeal to the ones that can cope as City lawyers? And how many of your more senior staff will leave (either before or after they are investigated for micro aggressions)? Plus of course the overhead of managing it all.
“They always are so enthusiastic. Whatever it is it’s always done to excess. Like puppies, really.”
and they (i don’t mean Americans per se, but corporate type sub set) – when they introduced dress down fridays, all the Usians in our company turned up with their chinos and polo shirts, the brits with coloured jeans and football shirts. Which lead to a re-jigging of the rules so that effectively the rules for friday were everybit as restrictive as the rest of the week. A successful exercise in pointlessness.
“Microaggressions are intentional or unintentional acts or subtle slights that can lead to employees feeling marginalised.”
So the very word “microaggression” is itself a microaggression, then?
It’s a law firm but it evidently doesn’t respect the rule of law or due process if it encourages and accepts anonymous accusations.
Pavlik Morosov would have lofed it.
Waiting for their ‘internal’ complaints system to collapse in 1….2…3
and she said quite explicitly that guys was a gender neutral term
The two that I usually use in that context are either “chaps” or “girls”…
@KJP, no no no. That’s body positivity, that is.
Calling female colleagues “guys” is a microaggression that can be reported to managers,
What about when I call male colleagues “cunts”?
Yeah BiND. When I visited my niece in Germany many years ago, she insisted that this was the case.
Since she was attending an American school in Amberg, I could only assume that she was right and I was wrong.
On reflection: it’s probably true on November 5th
TMB’s comment reminds me of a pun that was so tortured it resembled Guy Fawkes after a session in the Tower.
Private Eye used to refer to an editor of The Times as “Dame” Harold Evans.
When he was about to be sacked by Murdoch, Evans went missing ( probably on a bender ).
The Eye entitled the story ‘Dame on run, yarn.’
Otto, I’m glad you can remember the Richard Ingrams’ version of Private Eye when it was funny and iconoclastic. I’m blowed if I know why anyone buys it now.
“Doll” is the most flattering kind of female “guy” for Runyon. There’s also “Judy” (the older sort of Doll) and “Tomato” (for the cantankerous crone). There’s always a resolution in his stories but it’s the narration that makes them.
I read ‘On Broadway’ a few years ago and thought it hilarious. Runyarn’s use of language is mimicked exactly in the musical.
“What is here occurring ?”. Those Italo-Yiddish constructions transliterated into Americanese
Except for… Little Miss Marker – a story that so dripped with mawkishness, it deserved to be turned into a Shirley Temple film.