According to internal documents obtained by The Daily Caller, Google employees are furious that the term was used while discussing a product aimed at children.
They complained that the term “family” implied that families have children. A Google vice president had to step in to address the anger, saying that employees should rather work to make the company become “more inclusive”.
One employee stormed out of the March 2017 presentation after the speaker “continued to show (awesome) Unicorn product features which continually use the word ‘family’ as a synonym for ‘household with children,’” a source told DC. Linking families to children is “offensive, inappropriate, homophobic, and wrong,” he ranted.
According to the Google employee, the use of “family” as a synonym for “with children” has a long-standing association with deeply homophobic organisations.
Other Google employees also noted their displeasure with the term denoting the bond between a man and a woman. “Thanks for writing this. So much yes,” one wrote.
At least 100 other Google employees upvoted the post, signaling their agreement. Many said they felt excluded.
“Using the word ‘family’ in this sense bothers me too,” wrote another employee. “It smacks of the ‘family values’ agenda by the right wing, which is absolutely homophobic by its very definition,” she wrote, adding: “[I]t’s important that we fix our charged language when we become aware of how exclusionary it actually is. As a straight person in a relationship, I find the term ‘family’ offensive because it excludes me and my boyfriend, having no children of our own.”
Google vice president Pavni Diwanji stepped in because use of the term “family” had sparked “concerns”.
“There are families without kids too, and also we needed to be more conscientious about the fact that there is a diverse makeup of parents and families,” Dwiwanji wrote.
