Life-Long Charity Volunteer Fired For Not Understanding Pronouns

A woman who has volunteered at a charity organisation for 60 years of her life was told she is no longer welcome after she became confused when asked to reveal what pronouns she goes by.

90-year-old Fran Itkoff was dismissed by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in California following an email exchange in which she was asked by a worker to use her pronouns when signing off.

“I had seen it on a couple of letters that had come in after the person’s name. But I didn’t know what it meant,” Mrs Itkoff told Libs of Tiktok’s Chaya Raichik.

“So when I finally talked to her, I asked what it meant… and she said that meant they were all-inclusive, which didn’t make sense to me,” the elderly woman added.

“Because it sounds like you are labelling for females, not males, if you are just putting in she/her,” Mrs Itkoff further noted.

She then received an email a few days later informing her that she was no longer welcome because of “a failure to to abide by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guidelines.”

“We appreciate your dedication and contribution as a Self-Help Group Leader with our organization. As we discussed earlier during a phone conversation, after a thorough review of our guidelines and standards, it has come to our attention that there has been a failure to abide by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guidelines during your time as a volunteer,” the email stated.

It concluded, “Unfortunately, based on the situation, we have made the difficult decision to have you step down from your volunteer position, effective immediately.”

“I was completely shocked when I read that. I couldn’t believe that. I had to read it a couple of times to see if I’m getting what she said,” Itkoff said.

Not only has Itkoff given six decades of her time to the non-profit group, but in addition her late husband had MS and ran the Long Beach Lakewood MS support group, which she took over 20 years ago in his honour.

To turf her out over something so meaningless, essentially barring her from being able to do good, and punish her for a lifetime of kindness and dedication is truly sickening and shameful.

Her daughter, Elle Hamilton, urged that the MS Society appears to have “lost their focus on finding a cure for MS and helping the patients.”

“It’s sad that they are discriminating against her because MS doesn’t discriminate. It can happen to anybody to get the disease, and yet they are discriminating against her just because she asked a question to explain what the pronouns were, ” Hamilton added.

Incredibly, following the interview, the MS Society doubled down by sending an email to other volunteers in which the executive vice president of the group’s general counsel suggested that the 90-year-old was let go because others shouldn’t have to feel “unsafe” at work.

The group then tripled down on Itkoff’s firing, noting “We believe that our staff acted with the best of intentions and did their best to navigate a challenging issue.”

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