Stonewall leader wants dog and mum to sit next to him in court

But it's a great thread nonetheless. I live to be invited to that dinner - foie gras and garlic potatoes, and lamb, and beef and Saint-Emilion.

Old rights-hoarding dinosaur that I am.

Yes I was slow off the mark there

There's just no knowing these days!

@ExMachinaDeus

It's hilarious. But it's a parody thread.

The start of the thread.

twitter.com/archer_rs/status/1525047527371833345?s=21&t=GdP38Ej1aOJQLYMayY76tQ

I've just been reading a jaw dropping twitter thread which includes the requirements to cater for a support parrot.

twitter.com/archer_rs/status/1525190581969993729?s=21&t=GdP38Ej1aOJQLYMayY76tQ

The problem with giving in to people's outrageous demands is they just come back with a more outrageous one.
We really need to get back to simply saying No on a regular basis and meaning it, starting in childhood.

Thanks for the share token OP. Wow.

“The dog wrote my homework”

😂😂😂

Do you think Kirrin required the dog, Mom and emotional support to write the letter calling for Allison to be sacked?

It was certainly a dog's dinner of a letter.

I don’t know about Germaine Greer, but the appointment of a transwoman at Newnham was some time in the 1990s.

Oh right - thanks @IsItShining Whenever it was, I remember agreeing with Greer, that women aren't just men with their dicks cut off. And the rather more soberly expressed arguments about growing up with masculine socialisation & privilege, whereas the Cambridge & Oxford women' s colleges were specifically to redress the centuries of inequality in women's education.

I must say that my sympathy for KM does dip somewhat when I remind myself that he’s happy enough to trouser the salary and sling the mud around. This is a ‘Head of’ with considerable agency.

Mental health issues don't incubate you from bad behaviour or malicious acts. Do you think Kirrin required the dog, Mom and emotional support to write the letter calling for Allison to be sacked?

"I disagree. Why should people with autism be excluded from participating in life like everyone else? We might need adjustments to do so and the law allows this".

The key word in the law is reasonable adjustment. It's NOT a reasonable adjustment to have 3 levels of emotional support for a zoom call related to your professional duties.

@JulesRimetStillGleaming
I have spent most of my career in the tech sector and have worked with many people on the spectrum so, please do not tell me I am being judgmental. I was replying to a comment that work places needed to adjust and pointing out that for most, allowing staff to have a support person with them in order to perform duties was unfeasible. Presumably in the case of KM, he was eligible to have either a union or HR rep present. Expecting, at 34, to be allowed to bring your Mam to work is unreasonable.

I don’t know about Germaine Greer, but the appointment of a transwoman at Newnham was some time in the 1990s.

Agreed, @ExMachinaDeus .

Oh, right thanks @SpringBadger - I'm just catching up here intermittently, so got that wrong.

But I still think to describe KM's witness appearance as part of a SW conspiracy is too strong - it's a whole lot of smug echo chamber stuff, of course, but I think it's all terrible, awful incompetence, and smugness. You only had to hear Nancy Kelley on Woman's Hour, or Ruth Hunt et al. to realise they are all so sure they are right, we're transphobes and bigots, and they are doing - as you say - God's work.

KM is a Head Of, not a director. I would assume they report into a director - have skimmed the "Who we are" Stonewall web page and would guess they report into the Director of Programmes, or if not then perhaps the Director of Communications and External Affairs.

I do get the impression that it's cock-ups all the way down. I also think they are all true believers surrounded by other true believers, existing in an echo chamber. Anyone not on board would have quietly left by now. The leadership and trustees seem to be on the young side. They may genuinely have thought that KM would be a good witness and not have realised that the various support beings should be OKd by the court. I don't imagine they take very kindly to the idea that anyone's stated needs should have to be gatekept by anyone else, not when that person is on the side of the angels doing God's work anyway.

@Mandodari being a witness in court isn't in the usual proceedings of most people's jobs. Don't judge all autistic people by the actions of one in exceptional circumstances.

Also another autistic person has been referred to as "extremely vulnerable" in proceedings today. He is a barrister.

I'm really unimpressed with Stonewall as an organisation - obviously for the ludicrous gender woo, but then for looking like they are trying to pin senior policy decisions onto a single, vulnerable individual.

Except that he's [?] a Director - this suggests a level of responsibility and seniority. I would expect a Director to report directly to the CEO, be part of senior management team, and participate in the decisions taken by the team, both strategic and operational.

Certainly, that's the way it works in my workplace (a university).

I'm a believer in cock up rather than conspiracy, though, and I think this is just more of the same cock up instigated by Ruth Hunt and her colleagues - and I presume one of those senior colleagues is Medcalf. I think that several decisions they made way back when re focusing on the trans, have snowballed. I imagine SW may well be thinking that a lot of what's going on now are unintended consequences.

But they are all individually and collectively, responsible for these consequences, whether intended or not.

Simon Edge's novel about all this is both hilarious and chilling. His ending is far more optimistic than I feel we can be, but it is a ray of hope. And he skewers the situation of the last couple of years brilliantly.

If only we had been more vigilant in, say 2010, when Professor Germaine Greer was standing up against a transwoman being given a post at Newnham which to that point had been single sex ... I agreed with her then, but it wasn't the kind of national debate it is now. Although she got denounced for not #beingkind

I also wonder who the support worker was who didn't want to be seen on camera. Might have entirely innocent reasons for wanting to protect their privacy of course. But it leaves the suspicion that they may have been someone who viewers would have recognised and whose presence would have been questioned.

The fact that they left rather than be seen on camera is rather sinister to me. There is every chance that the "support person" could have been someone from SW who was there to ensure Kirrin stuck to the script. Let's not forget that poor woman in the US during Covid court proceedings where they realised her abuser was in the house with them.

Being even more cynical, if SW cared for KM's mental health at all they'd have first clarified exactly what support was appropriate, and then agreed it with the tribunal. The farce that ensued was most likely quite distressing and not the best way to start as a witness but conveniently created a side circus for SW.

I'm not trying to be uncaring but if you are unable to cope with the stresses work throws at you and need emotional support humans to undertake your duties, you need to be in a less stressful environment. How could any organisation be expected to facilitate support humans. They are not employees, how does that work for insurance, confidentiality and all the other aspects of employment.

Maybe that includes Kirrin, if he/she/they’s a transman.

Not a "trans man" per se. Non binary female sexed person who considers themself "trans masculine".

And I reserve my sympathy for those children with autism who have been conned into thinking their discomfort or feelings of difference mean they're 'in the wrong body'.

Maybe that includes Kirrin, if he/she/they’s a transman. (Is that the case? I find it harder to tell that way round, as female transitioners tend to look like slightly beardy adolescent boys.) I think anyone who has made permanent body changes in pursuit of the ideology is going to find it agonizingly difficult to change tack, or to see that there were other possible options.

I really hate this idea you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want to be. You can't. Life isn't like that and people with any kind of disability know that more than most.

Some facts make you unsuitable for certain jobs. I'd love to be a tennis champion, that's all I've ever wanted to be, but I'm fat and middle-aged and have no noticeable athletic talent (and didn't even when young and slender). No, I can't do that job, I can't just identify into it. No matter how many adjustments are made.

If I demanded that I do that job, everyone else would have to make so many adjustments that it would substantially harm their ability to be themselves and in fact prevent even the possibility of them being exactly what they wanted to be and achieving what they wanted to achieve. The opposition would have to lie down on the grass for a substantial part of the match and do nothing for me to even have a chance at winning.

Making 'reasonable adjustments' surely means adjustments that can be made without massively disadvantaging everyone else?