(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) In a press briefing on Thursday, a State Department spokesman appeared caught off guard when asked about the agency’s reported new policy regarding pronoun usage in emails.
A contentious war of words erupted when Associated Press reporter Matt Lee asked Vedant Patel about State Department emails suddenly requiring the inclusion of pronouns in internal email exchanges, the New York Post reported.
When Lee questioned Patel about whether he had noticed the difference in the “from” line of the emails, the State Department talker appeared frustrated and said that he was not aware of any changes.
The reporter noted the “State Department’s internal email system added pronouns to people’s … not their signature … but to where it says from,” Lee said. Then Lee asked Patel, “Why?”
Patel said that he was not aware of any changes and claimed he had no knowledge of the “phenomenon.”
“Men are being identified as women and women as men … and this has “nothing to do with whatever transgender or anything like that … but it’s ridiculous,” Lee said during the exchange, noting that in the examples he had seen “the problem is that a lot of them or at least some of them so far, as I’ve been able to tell, are wrong. They’re giving the wrong pronouns.”
Patel added during the conversation that individuals have a right to use their own pronouns when Lee interrupted and added, “I don’t have a problem with doing it and if people want their pronouns attached to it, it’s fine! But it should be a choice. Not something the State Department imposes on people, especially if it’s wrong,” he said.
As Patel exited the briefing room, he stated to the reporter, he would “look into it.”
The State Department issued a response to Lee’s question on Twitter later Thursday, claiming that the department’s Outlook server involuntarily added gender pronouns to employee emails.
“The State Department’s Bureau of Information Resource Management is aware of the recent issues with user profiles on Microsoft Outlook and working to remedy the situation,” tweeted Spokesman Matthew Miller, and added it was an “unintentional change.”
The state department "unintentionally" added mandatory pronouns to every outbound email then canceled it when exposed. https://t.co/A7uEIkm01q
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 19, 2023
