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An elderly California woman claims she was forced to step down from her volunteer position of 60 years after she asked for clarity on the use of pronouns.
Fran Itkoff, the 90-year-old leader of the Lakewood/Long Beach Self-Help Group, was told her organization would no longer be affiliated with the National MS Society after her “failure to abide by our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guidelines.”
Itkoff, who has won multiple awards for her and her husband’s work with the organization, became confused one day after she saw several people sign their emails and letters with their names along with their chosen pronouns.
“I was confused, I didn’t know what it was, what it meant,” Itkoff told the social media account Libs of TikTok. “I’ve seen it on a couple of letters that had come in after the person’s name they had the pronouns, but I didn’t know what that meant.”
Fran Itkoff was told to step down as a volunteer by the National MS Society after asking for clarity on what pronouns were.
The nonagenarian, however, did not get a clear answer.
“Finally I was talking to her and thought I would ask ‘what does it mean’ and let her tell me,” Itkoff said. “She said that it meant ‘they were all-inclusive,’ which didn’t make sense to me.”
Itkoff was confused about how the “she/her” pronouns could be labeled as “all-inclusive” if it was referring to females and not males.
A few days after the conversation, on a Friday at 4:58 p.m. Itkoff received her “pink slip.”
“At the end of the day, end of the week, I got an email from her saying ‘they were sorry, but they had to ask me to step down as a volunteer for the MS society,” Itkoff claimed.
“The verbiage she said was you didn’t abide by their diversity, equity and inclusion, so they had to ask her to step down and she can’t be a part of the MS society as a volunteer.” Itkoff’s daughter Elle Hamilton said.
Hamilton pointed out the irony in the statement as they were excluding a “90-year-old disabled woman who volunteered for over 60 years.”
“I was completely shocked as I read that,” Itkoff said about reading about her termination. “I couldn’t believe that, I had to read it a couple times to see if I’m getting what she said.”
Itkoff’s family has won several awards for her work with the MS society including her own Volunteer Lifetime Achievement award in 2008.
Itkoff’s husband was flown out to the White House to meet President Jimmy Carter while he was still in office after he won the National MS Father of the Year.
“It’s sad that they’re discriminating against her. MS doesn’t discriminate, it can happen to anybody, and yet they’re discriminating against her trying to help just because she asked a question to explain what pronouns were,” Hamilton added.
The outraged daughter blasted the society’s entire mission, and wondered if they were too focused on inclusive talk and not working to fight MS.
“I don’t know what’s worse, if the MS society is focusing on these words and these pronouns and they’ve lost their focus on finding a cure for MS and helping the patients,” Hamilton said.
“It’s a sad day.”
Itkoff said she will continue her leadership role with the self-help group because the “patients that come want to keep going.”
The determined volunteer says she will continue her work while hoping there is a way to alleviate and straighten out the situation between her and the society as she continues the work she is doing.
