A Chicago-based AdTech company is requiring all of their employees to attend training sessions steeped in pseudoscience about transgender ideology.
Basis Technologies, a software provider for marketers, sent an email out to all employees on October 31 mandating “diversity, equity and inclusion” training to become a “trans ally.” According to an email obtained by The Daily Wire from a whistleblower at the company, “attendance is required” for two training sessions in December.
“As one of the many steps in our journey of inclusion at Basis, we’re excited to announce our partnership with [PFLAG] to introduce ‘Becoming a Trans Ally and Going Beyond the Binary’ training,” the email reads.
Image provided to The Daily Wire
The AdTech company partnered with Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), an “LGBTQ+” organization that developed “a national outreach and education project” called Straight for Equality. The program includes lessons on “Becoming a Trans Ally and Going Beyond the Binary.”
The email states that the intent of the training is to educate employees on “what gender identity and expression mean, what people who are trans and nonbinary experience, why personal pronouns matter, or what role allies can play.”
According to the educational materials found on the Straight for Equality website, participants will learn about the pseudoscientific concept of “gender identity.” While studies of the brain show evidence of same-sex attraction, as well as autogynephilia, a paraphilic disorder in which a man becomes sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female, there is no scientific evidence to definitively support the existence of “gender identity” or gender dysphoria in the brain.
Nevertheless, guidance from Straight for Equality claims that “a lot of experts in the field believe that awareness of gender identity is experienced in infancy.” The materials include concepts like “assigned sex,” the idea that doctors arbitrarily dictate a person’s biological sex rather than observe and record it. Participants are encouraged to “accept that people have the right to define their gender, regardless of assigned sex.”
Participants will learn about “gender-creative,” “gender-colorful,” and “gender-expansive” people, as well as a “third sex” and “nonbinary” to denote “anyone who does not conform to the gender binaries.”
The education materials provide guides on how to use “gender-neutral pronouns (like ‘ze’, ‘hir’, and ‘they’)” or even “to use no pronouns at all.” An example for how to subvert the English language and avoid using pronouns altogether they offer is, “rather than saying ‘his office space’ you’d say ‘Drew’s office space.’”
Image from Straightforequality.org
As their source of purportedly authoritative information, Straight for Equality references the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an organization denounced internationally by medical and mental health professionals for its “adherence to ideological views unsupported by evidence, its exclusion of ethical concerns, and its mischaracterization of basic science.”
Basis Technologies was formerly called “Centro,” and two of its prominent investors include FTV Capital and the Neuberger Berman Group. According to the whistleblower, the tech company employs around 1,000 employees, which is corroborated by a GlassDoor entry.