JAMIE FORSSTREOM IS EXCITED. TOMORROW THEY MAKE THEIR debut flight with Virgin Atlantic as part of the cabin crew on a plane to San Francisco. Forsstreom will be wearing a burgundy trouser suit designed by Vivienne Westwood, with their pronouns - "They/ them" -on a lapel badge. Forsstreom comes from Finland, a country where gendered pronouns don't exist in the language. "I've learned English since I was nine years old, so I've always known about them, but in terms of using them to define my own gender identity, I was quite late to the game," they say. It wasn't until Forsstreom moved to London six years ago in their mid-20s, and started to work exclusively in English, that they decided to make the change and honour a nonbinary identity that they have been clear about since early childhood.
In September, Virgin Atlantic became the latest company to throw itself into a quiet revolution sweeping through the institutional world. The airline's announcement that it would be possible for staff and customers to travel under the gender of their choice caused little media furore but a big run on its elegant pronoun badges. Within a month, the 10,000 printed out for distribution on planes and in its travel shops had been snapped up. A second batch is currently on order.
It was all different from the fuss that erupted last year when Marks & Spencer, that bastion of no-nonsense British values, announced that it was giving staff the option of adding personal pronouns to their name badges. A couple of months later the story rolled on to the British Library, with reports that the library ignored internal warnings that a similar initiative could make it seem too "woke". In the event, more than 100 British Library staff took up the option of pronoun badges.
Denne historien er fra December 02, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra December 02, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
I hoped Finland would be a progressive dream.I've had to think again Mike Watson
Oulu is five hours north from Helsinki by train and a good deal colder and darker each winter than the Finnish capital. From November to March its 220,000 residents are lucky to see daylight for a couple of hours a day and temperatures can reach the minus 30s. However, this is not the reason I sense a darkening of the Finnish dream that brought me here six years ago.
A surplus of billionaires is destabilising our democracies Zoe Williams
The concept of \"elite overproduction\" was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs.
'What will people think? I don't care any more'
At 90, Alan Bennett has written a sex-fuelled novella set in a home for the elderly. He talks about mourning Maggie Smith, turning down a knighthood and what he makes of the new UK prime minister
I see you
What happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads? A new clinical trial reveals some surprising results
Rumbled How Ali ran rings around apartheid, 50 years ago
Fifty years ago, in a corner of white South Africa, Muhammad Ali already seemed a miracle-maker.
Trudeau faces 'iceberg revolt'as calls grow for PM to quit
Justin Trudeau, who promised “sunny ways” as he won an election on a wave of public fatigue with an incumbent Conservative government, is now facing his darkest and most uncertain political moment as he attempts to defy the odds to win a rare fourth term.
Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have discovered a lost Maya city containing temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.
'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital
Armed fighters advance into neighbourhoods at the heart of Port-au-Prince as authorities try to restore order
Reality bites in the Himalayan 'kingdom of happiness'
High emigration and youth unemployment levels belie the mountain nation's global reputation for cheeriness
