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Federal employees ordered to remove pronouns from email signatures in “ridiculous” move
February 04 2025, 08:15

Federal employees were met with a surprise on Friday, January 31, when internal memos instructed them to remove any gender-identifying pronouns from email signature blocks by 5 p.m. that day. 

Two days prior, instructions were sent out by the U.S. Office of Personal Management (OPM) to departments and Agency heads ordering federal agencies and departments to remove references to gender ideology in all official documents, including emails, in compliance with Donald Trump’s executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”  

Related

Existing passports won’t be affected by Donald Trump’s anti-trans order, White House claims
Renewed documents, however, will reflect trans and nonbinary people’s sex assigned at birth.

This order has been criticized as an effort to erase the legal recognition of transgender people and laws protecting them. Others have pointed out the hypocrisy in his claims of protecting women’s rights.

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The memorandum from OPM asks that all heads and acting heads of departments and agencies send emails to all employees announcing that they would be complying with the executive order and to review agency email systems such as Outlook and turn off features that prompt users for their pronouns by no later than 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday, January 31, 2025. 

Among many demands, they also asked that any employees whose description involves promoting gender identity in any way be put on administrative leave and that employee resource groups or special emphasis programs that promote gender ideology be disbanded.  

Many federal employees have reported receiving notifications of these changing policies through emails and sometimes printouts. One such printout from the State Department has been leaked to the public.

The leaked memo, from State Department Under Secretary of State Management Tibor P. Nagy, was posted to X by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein. It details plans to not only comply with removing any gendered language from documents, and public media representing the department but to have their employees obey this standard as well as with the direct order being underlined and put in bold font stating 

The memo says that in order to comply with Trump’s executive order, the State Department is “reviewing all agency programs, contracts, and grants that promote or inculcate gender ideology” and that “outward facing media” that discusses trans people will also be removed. 

“All employees are required to remove any gender-identifying pronouns from email signature blocks by 5:00 PM today,” the memo reads. 

State Department now ordering diplomats to remove pronouns from email signature blocks, per memo leaked to me pic.twitter.com/TId9ADEJbC

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) January 31, 2025

The State Department has already gotten attention for one particularly egregious modification of “outward-facing media.” Its page of recommendations for queer travelers used to discuss “LGBTQI+” but now it only mentions “LGB” people. That term is also associated with a far-right hate group and is often used by regressive forces to show disdain for transgender people’s inclusion in the community.

HRC denounced the State Department’s anti-pronoun policy change.

“Every one of us deserves to be treated with respect at work. Sharing your pronouns is just a way to make it easier for others to know how to refer to you, and that benefits everyone,” said HRC spokesperson Delphine Luneau in a statement to LGBTQ Nation. “The Trump administration is so obsessed with controlling every aspect of people’s lives that they are using this innocuous gesture as a political weapon.”

“Amid all the chaos and ramping up of policies that take away people’s rights since this administration came into office, this ridiculous ban is more evidence of the Trump administration’s willingness to police what we’re even allowed to say about ourselves.”

Many federal workers have also leaked memos on Reddit through the subreddit r/fednews. The subreddit made for federal employees to congregate online has lately become a place for many of them to vent their frustrations towards the Trump administration following recent policies. Some are even filing a lawsuit against OPM for breaching data privacy.

Some had very strong words for their opinions on this, such as this user who presumably works for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Some users were pointing out the unconstitutional nature of such policies, like this user who presumably has connections with the CDC.

Many workers are unhappy with this change, including non-gender conforming employees expressing their concerns and many in the community offering support and consoling them in this difficult time for the trans/non-gender conforming community.

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