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

Thanks midcenturyclegs. That is a fascinating article.

fascinating article @MidCenturyClegs

I can just imagine the @MargaritaPie 's and @barleybadminton 's of the time, talking down those women

'well, there's no smoke without fire, why are they in prison?'
'their actions are unpatriotic, they should wait until the war is over'
'is it really reasonable for women to demand the vote now?'

That link seems to be broken. Has it been removed 🙀

That is generally thought to have been a bad thing but I can see who here would have been at the front of the recruiting queue

Yes it's quite a shock to realise so many of these personality types still walk amongst us. Chilling really. History didn't teach them anything.

You know what’s really interesting about Rachel’s Crowdjustice appeal? Around 50% of the contributor-commenters are men and you can tell from their comments they get it. The wider population are waking up to this and they are as affronted by it as feminists. Same in the Times comments, the below the line commenters in the NY Times article posted in another thread, the Lia Thomas articles. There are donations from Australia to Rachel’s appeal. The push back against the TRAs’ massive overreach and grab for women’s rights has started. 🙂

Morning Barley, Margarita and co! 👋 Thanks for all your fundraising efforts and the important job you do in bringing more women on side.

So we punish people for what MIGHT have happened

I am assuming that some posters here would also argue that a SW should not have a real life conversation with a friend because that could be overheard.

The entitlement is astonishing. Why do Maggiepie and Barley repeatedly appear to believe they have the right to disrupt and control women’s conversation. Perhaps they could tell us.

At one point I think something like 1 in 3 East Germand was reporting in friends family and neighbours for the Stasi.

That is generally thought to have been a bad thing but I can see who here would have been at the front of the recruiting queue

MidCenturyClegs

Barely "Reades facebook page was not private according to the findings of Social Work England. Any of the families she worked with could have found these posts quite easily."

Can you prove that? It's my mis-understanding that these were on her private facebook page and it was a 'friend' that took screenshots of everything she shared. Please prove otherwise?

Facebook pages are not private. There is no evidence anywhere I can see that the posts could not have been seen by the general public and Social Work England's findings were based on the fact that had these posts been seen by both trans people and other members of the public they would be seens as derogatory and discriminatory.

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?

Ahhh yes let’s silence women….

Don’t share your views, even with your friends.

Maggie, you never fail.

IMO it makes zero difference if the person who reported her was on her Facebook friends list and her profile was set to friends-only.

It's her responsibility who she has on her Facebook and whether she has a FB account at all.

We don't know that she lied. She may have reflected (good practice) and come to a different perspective or she may have based her original view on a premise she later found was incorrect.

There is also a lot "missing" from the report.

70 allegations but very few are detailed and to be fair very limited inclusions on her defence (2 paragraphs).

The relevance of her FB being private is an interesting aspect of this case and I do think that warrants "sunlight".

Simultaneously I appreciate your point that if a fellow SW has information that they believe means another is in breach of the COP then they have a duty to report it.

Again what's unclear here is if that person was a practicing SW.

RM refers to them as a former colleague and the report as a member of the public.

So ambiguous if that person was a practicing SW.

What's very worrying is the concept that SW's can't talk about controversial topics amongst themselves for fear of being reported by each other.

Debate and discourse are vital in challenging our perceptions and evolving our understanding and practice.

That's not going to happen if we are all in fear of "wrong think" and can have very serious consequences if the requirement to be "on message" becomes a higher priority than safeguarding - as has been a factor concluded from from some serious case reviews.

I wonder what the tone of the posts were that lead Rachel to block them?

Yes I wonder too... 🤔

I think it's important to be sceptical when discussing possible safeguarding risks don't you? You can't just take someone's word for it.

So you would agree with Rachel that you cannot take the word of a man that they are not seeking to exploit transwomen status for neferious reasons?

It was also noted that this person had tried to engage/discuss but RM blocked her.

I wonder what the tone of the posts were that lead Rachel to block them?

I think it's important to be sceptical when discussing possible safeguarding risks don't you? You can't just take someone's word for it

Yes I absolutely do think it's important to be sceptical. And consider all the possibilities. Maybe you should take your own advice and do the same ☺️

I'm not even sure the distinction is that relevent anyway, there are private facebook groups with hundreds of thousands of members, and depending on the nature of the group it's quite possible that someone on her caseload might have seen the posts.

Well you would say that Barley. There's a preference for activists to blame rather than seek truth and fair justice when someone else views are not in line with group think.

Let's hope this case gets to the truth, and is in line with the law. Everybody has the right to a fair hearing. Even those people you don't agree with.

*She'd locked her FB account to friends so it wasn't widely accessible to the public

So she now claims yet strangely there is no mention of that in the Case Examiner's report, and we know she appears to lie, even to regulators. So I'm afraid I'd take all her claims with a pinch of salt from now on - as will the courts I expect.

Not that it's inappropriate to discuss in good faith and respect differing views, but the tone in the report came across to me in the "educate yourself" vein of discourse.

Yes I took issue with this as well. There was something extremely unpleasant about it. Particularly as this was not in a workplace where there might be an expectation to discuss, but instead in someone's private personal space. It's extremely intrusive.