JENI O’DOWD: Australian workers face threat of unemployment as pronoun wars move step too far

One wrong word. One quick apology. One pink slip. That’s the reality now in Australia’s pronoun wars.

In Perth, a 63-year-old worker was sacked after calling a non-binary colleague “he” instead of “they” and refusing to write a formal apology.

The Fair Work Commission told him a public fight could bring “violent social backlash”, so instead of a court showdown, it was quietly moved into confidential conciliation.

No names. No ruling. Just a clear warning that a single slip can cost you your job.

Should the worker have been warned? Absolutely. A mandatory HR course? Sure. But losing his job? That’s a step too far.

The Fair Work Commission didn’t set a sweeping legal precedent this time, but you can feel where the wind’s blowing.

In Canada, misgendering can land you in front of a human rights tribunal. In the UK, teachers have been sacked for refusing to say “they” over “he” or “she”.

Of course, if someone wants to be called by different pronouns, that choice should be respected. It’s basic manners. Most of us manage it without issue. But courtesy works both ways, and intent should matter as much as outcome.

There’s a vast gulf between courtesy and dragging someone through HR or a courtroom over a slip of the tongue or the misuse of a word.

In the Perth case, the man apologised immediately. Weeks later, a formal complaint landed on his desk and a demand for a written apology.

He refused, arguing no one should be compelled to call someone “they”. Younger co-workers mostly sided with the colleague. By March, the company, which didn’t even have a formal pronoun policy, launched an investigation and fired him.

In most workplaces, you won’t get sacked for swearing. Even dropping the F-bomb, sometimes the C-word, passes without dismissal (or even a raised eyebrow) as long as it’s not aimed at someone.

Yet here, one pronoun slip, followed by an apology, ended in unemployment.

The danger is that once this is written into workplace policy, it can be weaponised.

We’ve already seen it with sexual harassment claims. Most are genuine, but every HR veteran knows the occasional one is made in bad faith.

Sometimes it’s to settle a score, block a promotion or force someone out. Even if it’s baseless, the damage to a reputation is instant and often permanent.

The same risk applies here. A pronoun slip could be used as ammunition in a broader workplace feud.

And when that risk hangs over people, it changes behaviour. Colleagues, especially older ones, stop chatting freely and steer clear of social events, worried they’ll say the wrong thing (especially after a few drinks).

The Perth incident isn’t an isolated spat. It’s part of a broader cultural shift where language is being engineered by policy. We’ve gone from “be polite” to “say these words or lose your job”.

The dictionary is on board with the new language. Merriam-Webster made singular “they” official in 2019.

And now the language gatekeepers are serving an all-you-can-eat buffet of “neopronouns”: ze/zir (he/him or she/her, but with a z), ze/hir (she/her with a twist), xe/xem/xyr (he/him/his starting with an x) and ey/em/eir (they/them/their minus the “th”).

Most of this you couldn’t drop into a sentence without a script in front of you. Yet it’s in the dictionaries, which means the courts can follow.

Language has been shaped by culture before. Eminem’s 2000 track Stan hit such a cultural punch that by 2017, Merriam-Webster had added “stan” as slang for an obsessive fan.

Last week, Stans the movie landed worldwide. The difference? “Stan” entered the language because millions of people wanted to use it.

But new pronouns are being pushed into the language at high speed, stapled into workplace policies and backed by the threat of unemployment.

That’s not how language evolves. That’s how it’s enforced. And if we keep heading down that road, the real fight won’t be over what we say, it’ll be over who’s allowed to say it.