Rachel Meade, Social Worker, being suspended for 'transphobic' Facebook postss

Rachel could do with some more 🥕🥕🥕 if anyone has some spare to contribute.

Tribunal Tweets @tribunaltweets
Rachel Meade v Social Work England and Westminster Council Employment Tribunal discrimination case update: there is an administrative hearing on Tuesday, 29 March. She was sanctioned by SWE & may lose her job for questioning GRA reform during the consultation.

#MeadeSWETribunal

Rachel Meade (RM) is a trained nurse & social worker who was investigated over fitness to practice by SWE due to a complaint being made by a former colleague who screen shot posts RM shared in a private Facebook group over 2 years. >

The posts were about the proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Many were from National newspapers such as The Telegraph and The Guardian as well as women's rights advocacy groups such as
@fairplaywomen and @WomansPlaceUK

twitter.com/tribunaltweets/status/1507497219364163588

Tribunal Tweets say the admin hearing starts on Tuesday

@Datun I agree I have no idea of what it's like to be

1. a man
2. a man who thinks he's a woman

I don't understand how any man can feel he is just like me, as I cannot be just like him.

Sharing a fundraiser on Facebook titled “Thank you to Glinner”.
Just to put this in chronological context, as someone mentioned glinner's substack up thread. I think this means that this post by Rachel was back when glinner was on twitter, before he went on substack and before the lesbian dating app thing. There was a fundraiser at one point, and I'm sure it was back then when he was a twitterer.

Re the “Friends” or not, people do attach themselves to your FB profile precisely to monitor you and cause trouble.I never click yes when she’d to be friends but occasionally one slips through. Just like here in fact.

Whatiswrongwithmyknee. That's a better analogy. That's more in line with how I see it.

I quote: Sharing a fundraiser on Facebook titled “Thank you to Glinner”. This post appears to refer to Graham Linehan who publicly denounces the rights of transgender people. The case examiners are aware that this individual was issued a police caution and cease and desist order relating to his harassment of a trans woman online. Concerns have also been expressed regarding his views of women which have been described as “misogynistic”.

If that was the original wording that Glinner challenged it sounds like it came straight from a gender ideologist source. Maybe the examiners themselves are, maybe they just googled.

No man has any experience of womanhood. It's physically impossible.

Every single thing he does is being experienced as a man, irrespective of what it is.

If I eat a Boneo I'm not experiencing what it's like to be a dog. I'm experiencing what it's like to be a human eating a Boneo!

One of the core arguments of so-called ‘gender critical’ ideology is that trans women cannot be fully ‘accepted’ as women because their experience of womanhood is not identical to that of cis women and trans women can therefore not fully comprehend or empathise with the supposedly universal subordination of women. This argument rests on the fiction of a single female experience, a fiction which has routinely silenced and side-lined women who experience racism, colonial domination and other forms of oppression that cannot be singularly attributed to their gender

I've read some clueless waffling shite about what I supposedly think as a feminist but that takes the biscuit. We don't think they have a different "experience of womanhood" because we don't consider them women in any way, shape or form, because they are male and women are female. They have a different experience of being male. Which I'm not particularly interested in, tbh. I only care because they are forcing themselves into everything which is for women, a very male-socialised thing to do. If they lived and let live, so would I.

Sorry, also meant to say that explanations are tricky in a world where not agreeing with men carries with it significant risks of threats of violence, driving you out of your job etc. If she had an explanation how would she know whether trans ideologists would twist that to be another evidence of her failing to abide by their decrees? Our society is no longer safe for women.

If the fact of pleading guilty then follows you around for life with people feeling like they have the right to spit on you and call you a murderer you absolutely do get the right to fundraise for an appeal.

Ooh so many exclamation marks.

(!)

You don't then get to fundraise to appeal because the court got it wrong in finding you guilty. You plead guilty!

Yeah, I'm still bothered by it perhaps not being a change of heart, but being a change of understanding over what constituted guilt!!

"Yes I said that transwomen are men and they shouldn't be in women's spaces, and I've been told that's transphobic. Guilty as charged!"

"I now realise that's not transphobic. Not guilty as charged!"

It doesn't tie up, and that bothers me.

If it bothers you, I completely accept that you have good instinct. Your expertise is well known!

In any event, even if there's a bit of jiggery-pokery going on, I still hope that this sort of case will provide a measure of forensic scrutiny over what is deemed acceptable for women to say.

I genuinely, wholeheartedly, believe that the gender critical position is defendable on every single point.

But also, I would like to see some sunlight shed on the inequality of opposing positions. Rape threats, violence, preventing access to meetings, etc, compared to rudeness or being a bit offensive.

The fact that women, who are constantly on the attack, are deemed in the wrong for displaying even a fraction of the aggression carried out by transactivists needs to be addressed.

And if what Rachel has said is deemed transphobic, then let's get a definition of what the hell that is.

You don't then get to fundraise to appeal because the court got it wrong in finding you guilty. You plead guilty!

Although the impact of this is considerable on other social workers in practice, who are still not clear on how much they are allowed to participate in a national debate, particularly one that has implications for safeguarding in practice.

This needs to be picked apart in order to clarify that.

An analogy... if you're charged with, I don't know, shop lifting say. And you plead guilty. There isn't a trial where the evidence is unpicked, and it's decided that you stole the chocolate but not the carrots. That trial doesn't happen because you plead guilty.

You don't then get to fundraise to appeal because the court got it wrong in finding you guilty. You plead guilty!

It feels like that's what she's doing and, in the absence of any explanation, that bothers me.

Is it the lack of explanation that's bothering you?

Yeah, the lack of explanation in the face of what seem like quite significant changes in her position.

I totally understand why she'd agree her posts were unacceptable and accept a warning to make the regulatory process go away. I get that. But she's now attempting to fight that as unfair. I don't know but I assume she would have had legal advice at the point of deciding to accept the case examiners decision. It would be unusual if she did not. So it was an informed decision.

She had the opportunity to take it to a hearing and argue her case, and she decided not to. Which is fine - it's her choice. But I don't understand why she's now trying to have a second bite of the cherry in the employment tribunal.

If it's that her understanding has changed in light of the Forstater judgement then I think she needs to explain that. Instead, she makes no mention of the fact that the SWE outcome was an agreed one.

It doesn't tie up, and that bothers me.

The difference is that Marion Miller vehemently denied doing or saying anything wrong. RM admitted to her regulator that her posting pattern was unacceptable and agreed to accept their warning. The two aren't really comparable.

Motorina but could that because she was frightened over the very fact that someone had made a complaint about her posts? Could it not be that she complied out of fear? And maybe a genuinely held belief that she was being hurtful. It's not uncommon for even the most vehemently gender critical woman to waver when instructed to be kind.

I understand that a next step to that could be to explain it, though.

"Look, I accepted the warning because I was frightened and pressured and thought I was in the wrong. But now having looked at things like the maya Forstater judgment, I don't think I was".

Is it the lack of explanation that's bothering you?

This is not that case

I disagree. I think there's enough about this case that just doesn't sit right & RM is as entitled as anyone to ask for support. No one is compelled to do so, but she's at risk of losing her livelihood. If that's not a good enough reason to challenge what's transpired, then I'm not sure what is.

Reading the discussion, I think that there might be some confusion about the role of the case examiners. I say that because there have been a number of comments about their determination being brief and incomplete. Or that the regulator found this or that.

The case examiners are not a tribunal. Their role isn't to make a definitive decision where there's a dispute. They're basically a screening committee, almost a bit like the CPS.

Their role is to basically to decide if a hearing before a panel is necessary.

The case examiner stage was put in for those cases where everyone agreed something had gone wrong, and agreed on the best way forward. Where there was no need for a tribunal to make decisions, because everyone was in agreement.

The case examiners haven't unpicked all 70 posts because it's not their job to do so. It's their job to say, "We've looked at it all and we think there's enough here that its realistic a tribunal may find against you."

In this case, RM accepted that her posting pattern was inappropriate and agreed that a warning was the right outcome. If she hadn't it would have gone to a full panel. Where sunlight would have been shed. The reason it hasn't been is because RM agreed that the concerns the case examiners identified were valid.

Their written determination reflects that decision making process. They haven't done the full unpicking and assessment of evidence that a panel would do, that we saw with the Harrop case. That wasn't necessary, because the outcome was agreed.

A page or two back, @Datun rightly highlighted we've had cases before where the allegations have turned out to be stuff and nonsense. Most notably Marion Miller. So we all have an instinctive reaction that, when someone with GC views is accused of transphobia, the likelyhood is they've been unfairly targetted. I totally agree.

The difference is that Marion Miller vehemently denied doing or saying anything wrong. RM admitted to her regulator that her posting pattern was unacceptable and agreed to accept their warning. The two aren't really comparable.

I would have liked that RM, on her crowdjustice page, say that she accepted the warning and why she did so. There may be a reason. There must be a reason. But, right now, from the outside, it reads like she told SWE one thing, and is fundraising based on something else.

I want the flagship GC case to go forward. I want someone to be brave enough to argue that, yes, there are conflicts between the rights of women and transwomen. That we need to have difficult conversations about those conflicts. That there are potential safeguarding issues with self-ID.

This is not that case.

So we punish people for what MIGHT have happened now, so if you nearly (but don't) hit another car when driving you should be prosecuted because you could have caused an accident? Is there any evidence at all that any of her clients or any trans people actually saw them and were adversely affected?

Yes and even if this was deemed acceptable it's speaking absolute volumes that the fear and discomfort which other clients may equally feel if they saw posts which pledge allegiance to an ideology which thinks it's acceptable for lesbians to be retrained to accept cock and women to be raped by males who identify with their version of what being a woman is, is not considered worth of attention. It only matters if your generating a negative emotional reaction in a trans person.

The regulator found that Meade had “engaged in a pattern of discriminatory behaviour which persisted over an extended period” by sharing social media posts more than 70 times. She was also criticised for signing petitions and donating to organisations that were alleged to have discriminated against specific groups.

If, as I think, these were all feminist groups and petitions, they were legimately supporting women’s rights. Only transactivists and their supporters call defence of women’s rights ‘discriminatory’, so that’s not an independent viewpoint. A regulator should be independent. GC views are not illegal, as Maya’s case has established.

She agreed with their findings and said, "I feel that I may have been swayed by the mistaken view of other prominent feminists who felt that promoting transgender rights would impede on women’s rights. This was a gap in my knowledge base and this training has shown me how to work in a much more inclusive way".

This is quite something. Her training tells her it's a 'mistaken view' that trans rights impede on women's rights? The JR on the MOJ trans prisoner policy confirmed this is the case - the judge stated "... that some, and perhaps many, women prisoners may suffer fear and acute anxiety if required to share prison accommodation and facilities with a transgender women who has male genitalia, and that their fear and anxiety may be increased if that transgender woman has been convicted of sexual or violent offences against women."

If part of the outcome of the original case was that she underwent training to fill a "gap" in her knowledge, it's a huge problem if that "knowledge" training itself is biased & based on false claims or contested ideas. It helps no one if the solution is itself promoting a one sided, contested, view of what is going on in wider society.

The judge in the JR of the MOJ trans prisoner's policy also stated "the policies permit, and indeed require, the necessary balancing of competing rights. The concerns of the Claimant are of course understandable, but are not the only concerns which the Defendant had to consider." The courts have confirmed that trans rights do 'impede' women's rights. Even if the state thinks this is an acceptable compromise (leaving women in prison to "suffer fear and acute anxiety"), it's absolutely correct to state that trans rights can & do impede women's rights. The difference in view is whether or not you think women's concerns are important or not, not whether there's a conflict at all.

I suspect the original case rests upon a lot of biased assumptions & ideological based claims in respect of the alleged 'transphobia' of the SW, along with claims of 'fact' where contested ideas remain unresolved. If there have been as many errors in how the complaint was handled as I suspect there might be, then I absolutely welcome the challenge & happily 'dig' to help out. Sunlight on the whole process from start to finish, including what she actually posted, would be a good thing.