The Foundation Is Not Transphobic

For those of you who don't know me, I am Dr. Jeremiah Cimmerian, Site-17's Ethics Committee Liaison. Due to recent events, I have been brought by Site Director Graham to answer questions, hear comments, and reaffirm Foundation policy.

Put your hands down. I will not be doing two of those things; no questions, no comments, you will just listen. Instead, I will be discussing last year's containment breach.

News spreads fast amongst the sites—faster amongst the Ethics Committee—and rumors spread even faster than that. It has come to our attention that many at this site are dissatisfied with how the SCP-6113 project was handled.

Yes, yes, murmur all you want; you know who you are. However, I am not here to accuse and shame. I simply want to take this opportunity to educate those who hold these grievances. To explain why the Foundation they work for is the way it is.

So, let me start by making something abundantly clear: the Foundation is not transphobic.

Put your hands down, please.

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Transgender Foundation staff are treated with the sensitivity and courtesy deserving of their identities. Foundation healthcare policy offers full coverage of any gender-affirming procedure and medication, usage of preferred names and pronouns are encouraged in every part of the workplace, and HR's door is always open if someone gives you grief.

To the higher-ups, providing these benefits is imperative to keeping our staff content and free from distractions. We don't hide it either, some of you were certainly drawn to this job when reading the hiring brochure. In a similar way to how we treat our staff possessing anomalous attributes, we understand that a great mind is of no use if the policies that govern them are incompatible with their identity. Some of our most famous assets—Clef, Kain, Moose—are anomalous in and of themselves.

If we did not accommodate their anomalous nature, some other organization will, and their talents will be lost to us. The same is true for our transgender staff.

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Then, why are the anomalous individuals we contain who happen to be transgender not afforded the same privileges? Unfortunately, the harsh truth lies in a fundamental facet of preserving site security and personnel safety.

By virtue of working for the Foundation, you have a position of power over the objects in our care that must be respected and maintained. The name the Serpent's Hand gives us, while reductive, is not entirely wrong. You must remember that every day, you get to go home, see your family, cook your own meals, and live your own life. Those contained at Site-17 cannot say the same, and many of them hate you for this.

For most of them, their only offense was being cursed with the reason for their containment. Yet, sapient or not, objects are objects. And, a crucial distinction must be made between the objects we contain and the people we employ.

You must be careful in how you interact with a sapient object. If the barrier between object and researcher is ever broken, the best case scenario is a visit from the Ethics Committee. The worst case is a containment breach like the one we saw last year, or with 105.

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Even then, some of you may still have your reasons to decry our treatment of sapient objects such as SCP-6113-3— remember, that is not her name.

I ask you this, has a transgender object ever been treated poorly specifically for their being transgender? To call any singular way we treat an object as transphobic is to say our general treatment of anomalies as a whole is transphobic. This is simply not true; remember that we are "cold, not cruel."

In fact, on the topic of how to refer to SCP-6113-3, did anyone here, in interacting with her, ever use her deadname? No, because that would be cruel. Now, did anyone here ever use her preferred name? No, because that is policy.

Across the Foundation, you have no trouble referring to an object only by their designation. This should be no different when an object has expressed their desire for a different name. Using said name would be yet another way of breaching the barrier between object and researcher. It establishes a personal relationship that one should not have with an object in containment. So long as it is not cruel, equal but cold treatment is still equal.

All this to say that I am reminding you to stick with an object's official designation when referring to it. An exception was made for SCP-6113-3's pronouns. At the next Ethics Committee meeting, I will be bringing up the re-standardization of "it/its" as the favored pronouns for all anomalies in documentation and interviews going forward.

Dr. James Park was the only person at Site-17 to use SCP-6113-3's preferred name. I understand the desire to sympathize with Dr. Park, but, with his help, a little girl in our care was abducted by a dangerous anomaly.

Yes, his help. We cannot assume that the woman who appeared during the containment breach is the same person as Dr. Park. We also will not assume that Dr. Park's preferred name and pronouns have changed since his disappearance.

That would be transphobic, which the Foundation is not.

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Still, I have yet to address the real issue here. In our investigation of the dissent at Site-17, we came across a more troubling belief shared amongst the staff. We are disappointed to hear that many of you are questioning whether containing—or should I say, seeking to contain SCP-6113 is itself transphobic. If SCP-6113 should be allowed to establish itself as an aspect of baseline reality, as idealistically proposed by Dr. Park.

What do we do at the Foundation? No, there's no need to answer that, it's painted on the wall right above me. We secure, we contain, we protect.

Why? Because, the mundane world cannot be privy to what's beyond the Veil. We do what we do so Mr. Joe Schmo the Third can sleep soundly at night knowing there are no monsters under his bed. Even when we occasionally contain a benevolent anomaly, "better the world" is crucially not in the acronym.

Our job is not to weigh the cost-benefits of utilizing an anomaly for the "greater good," however benficial it may be. Our mission was determined long ago to be one inherently that of reduction, not improvement. We, at the Ethics Committee, determine what that "greater good" may be; that job lies in ethics, not morals.

If containing SCP-500 is not ableist, then containing SCP-6113 is not transphobic. Just because SCP-6113 happens to assist transgender individuals is irrelevant, we contain all anomalies regardless of what it does.

If that isn't our mission, then what the hell am I doing here?

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After careful consideration, the Ethics Committee has determined that past and current Foundation practices do not constitute as acts of transphobia.

Notwithstanding the fact that a world with transphobia is regrettably within normalcy, radical self-change is one of the most prolific and dangerous threats to the Veil. We do not and will not engage with transphobia, but it is not our place to stop it.

In the interest of transparency, you may have heard that those in Records are busy cleaning up after SCP-6113-1. Since we cannot undo SCP-6113's effects on subjects, we have to settle for removing the reason for their visitation by -1 in the first place. Once amnesticized, their previous identity as a transgender individual will no longer be relevant; transphobia itself will no longer be pertinent to them at all.

I'm currently looking into additional break room privileges for those working in Records as SCP-6113-1 becomes more active. I will let you know if these are approved.

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Hopefully you now recognize where the Foundation stands on anomalies such as SCP-6113. But, if not, let me summarize it for you: official Foundation policy on transgender individuals is that of tolerance, nothing less. There are no plans amongst the Ethics Committee to change this anytime soon.

Thank you for coming, you are dismissed. I said no questions.