‘I have no regrets’: Defiant council worker who was sacked for ‘AdultHumanMale’ instead of he/him tells how he’s been forced to use his retirement savings to pay legal bill

A councilor was handed a £12,000 bill after a tribunal battle over preferred pronouns and said: ‘I don’t regret it’.

Jim Orwin, 67, who was sacked by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council for using the email footer ‘XYchromosomeGuy/AdultHumanMale’, has also denied being homophobic or transphobic.

The IT project officer joined the council in 2018 and experienced no problems until April 2022, when bosses sent an email suggesting staff add pronouns to their internal and external emails.

Mr. Orwin decided to adopt ‘XYchromosomeGuy/AdultHumanMale’ instead of he/him, she/them, and so on.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline from his home in Hull, East Yorkshire, Mr Orwin explained: ‘It wasn’t mandatory, the idea was to put in pronouns if you wanted to. It was my decision to do it.

‘There was a drop-down menu with the following options: he/him/his, she/her/hers, they/them/theirs, don’t show or other. And under ‘other’ you could fill in whatever you wanted, and I chose that.’

Mr. Orwin said he never asked to use pronouns at the end of his emails. The issue only started because Caroline Lacey, chief executive of East Riding of Yorkshire Council, suggested staff ‘consider adding pronouns’.

After receiving the email, Mr Orwin “quickly concluded” that this was done to “facilitate self-identification” – specifically gender.

Before this issue, Mr Orwin signed off on his name and position within the council.

Employees were given a link to mypronouns.org to help them choose.

Mr Orwin, who previously worked as a painter and decorator for 34 years before joining the council, said: ‘I went to that website and read every page and it said people should be able to put anything they wanted in the footer of a e-mail. and that could change.

“There are neopronouns that people can make up, and if you wanted to use one pronoun for one meeting and then a different pronoun for another meeting, you could do that.”

Sitting next to his wife Julie, 66, Mr Orwin said he clicked ‘other’ and discovered there were no restrictions on what you could put in it.

“After reading everything, I wanted to post something that only referred to me and in no way referred to anyone else,” he said.

‘I felt like if I put something in there that was derogatory to someone else, which I wouldn’t do anyway, someone would immediately pick me up.

“So I put something in there that refers to me and is basic facts.”

Mr Orwin was invited by his line managers to change the pronoun but he refused and was subsequently suspended and later dismissed from his £27,000-a-year job in August 2022 after being called to a disciplinary hearing.

In May, he took the authority to a tribunal, saying they had discriminated against his beliefs and that he had been unfairly dismissed, as if he had remained silent he would have “facilitated the steady creep of evil.”

The panel heard that the council’s reason for introducing the policy was to ‘promote the inclusion of people who identify their gender in a way that is not necessarily consistent with their biological sex’.

Mr Orwin said at the hearing: ‘If the email had contained a genuine invitation for colleagues to add pronouns to email signatures and had not facilitated self-identification, I would have chosen the ‘Do not show’ option to avoid display pronouns.

“Because I firmly believe that announcing pronouns in emails or before meetings is a political gesture designed to intimidate anyone who does not embrace the controversial ideology of gender identity.”

Mr. Orwin therefore “interpreted” the email to allow employees to add their own pronouns instead of choosing from a list, and decided to add the words “XYchromosomeGuy/AdultHumanMale.”

After adding it to his signature, he contacted his manager to give him advance notice.

When asked why he couldn’t just choose the “other” option of pronouns, Mr. Orwin replied: “Not adding a pronoun would be accepting this nonsense, and it’s not an option I can choose.”

Mr Orwin said he thought the only way to challenge the policy was to “deliberately adopt provocative pronouns”.

Although the tribunal panel dismissed his case and found he had not been discriminated against, it did accept that his gender-critical beliefs amounted to a protected ‘philosophical belief within the meaning of section 10 of the Equality Act 2010’.

Employment judge Ian Miller concluded he had not been discriminated against by being told to change his pronouns.

He said, “The real reason for that [Mr Orwin] decided to add ‘XY chromosome-male/adult-human-male’ in protest.’

Mr Miller added: ‘The footer was intended to provoke and, we believe, given his acceptance of potentially offensive behaviour, to offend.’

The judge called the implementation of the policy “poorly thought out and poorly executed.”

He rejected his claims of discrimination, saying: ‘None of the treatment he received was because of his beliefs (or the expression of beliefs).

Mr Orwin’s claim of unfair dismissal was also dismissed as it was ‘well within the range of reasonable responses of a reasonable employer’.

In awarding costs, the judge found that Mr Orwin had pursued the claim ‘solely’ because he ‘found objectionable both the concept of gender self-identification and the council’s decision to adopt a policy which indicated that they believed that the ideology of gender self-identification was valid. .’

Mr Orwin has been ordered to pay £12,000 to the council after an employment judge ruled his claim at the tribunal was ‘vexatious’.

He is now enjoying retirement with his wife of 48 years and can spend more time with his seven grandchildren.

He said he will have to dip into his pension savings to pay the £12,000.

‘I think it’s all crazy. I’m sad that I no longer work for the municipality, but if the same thing happened to me, I would do the same. I don’t regret anything I did,” Mr Orwin said.

‘I think people should be able to identify what they want, but I don’t think it should be imposed on other people to address them that way.

‘I’m not homophobic or transphobic. My one strong belief is that everyone should be able to live their own life within the law, as long as they do not physically or mentally harm others.”

The supportive Mrs Orwin said: ‘I’m sad for Jim. He really liked that work. He put everything into it.

“He’s always been a very decent guy.”