MS society removes 90 year old for breaching diversity and inclusion policy

There are some interesting things about MS.

If you are born in the tropics and live there until puberty, then your chances of developing MS are much lower than if you are born - or move - to a temperate zone before puberty.

Children born to people from tropical areas in the UK have as much a chance of getting MS as someone born to people born here.

There are tantalizing links to sunlight, vitamin D etc etc, but I suspect ultimately it will be a multifacted puzzle.

But none of that matters a jot if peoples pronouns are muddled. Let's sort the serious things first.

I'm sure it'll be money well spent.

A quick Google seems to suggest that it's m2f transitioners that have the increased risk compared to... other males (eek! transphobia). Although you have to check, some institutions may be so captured that man/woman or even male/female might mean the exact opposite.

They will double down and blame the readers for not understanding. History tells us this.

I think the risk is over and above the normal for a natal female, but it was a while ago and there's so much junk in this area. When Madeup University discovers that changing your pronouns doesn't identify you out of the risk will they still publish?

Perhaps I'm misremembering, but wasn't there something about women who have wrong sex hormones apparently having an elevated risk of MS?

MS affects females twice as much as males. Although I believe Madeup university have started research on some exciting pronoun research into the issue.

Perhaps I'm misremembering, but wasn't there something about women who have wrong sex hormones apparently having an elevated risk of MS? I think Stephen Whittle is a sufferer. It's not something I would wish on my worst enemy.

The apology, is a proper one at least. But not the slightest acknowledgement that not believing in GI is viable in the organisation. She just needs to be educated more. I'm seeing a vision of painted on smiles.

Imagine the outcry if they were doing all of this without having cured MS ?

If she returns to the fold, will she still be required to declare her pronouns? Seems they’ve doubled down on their commitment to the pronoun scene with this statement. It reads to me as “we should have educated Fran before we took this decision”. So if they’d educated her on the importance of EDI, yet she’d reiterated her view that declaring pronouns made no sense to her, would she still be welcomed back with open arms? I doubt it.

While they may now genuinely regret upsetting their dedicated volunteer of six decades, this apology has only come about after receiving a massive backlash from outraged members of the public. A cynical view is they fear losing out on donations, hence the hasty olive branch.

I agree. Plus the guff about them not discriminating.

That reads: "We were wrong not to try to brow beat her into submission, before we decided to sack her."

The apology

https://www.nationalmssociety.org/About-the-Society/News/Statement-from-National-Multiple-Sclerosis-Society

If the UK MS Society is anything like other charities, no doubt they will be issuing their own statement soon to say they would have sacked the 90 year old volunteer too.

I've reported it and asked MN to clarify it's not the UK MS Society.

@SamW98, the OP on the other thread on this reported it to ask MNHQ to change the title so that it was clear it was the US society, not the UK one. Can you do the same?

Is this there statement in response or is there another one?
https://www.nationalmssociety.org/About-the-Society/News/A-Statement-from-the-National-MS-Society

If it is then is it shocking. Whose inclusion are they prioritising.

Doesn't matter is she is 19 or 90, inclusion should mean being able to accept that some (probably all) believe that women are biological females.

The irony that MS is more a female than male disease is probably wasted on some.

I suspect the current erasing of sex in medical research is setting any treatment back a couple of decades.

I see in their response statement that they plan to speak to the lady concerned. In other words, she'll be 're-educated' by ideologues about 70 years younger than her. This is clearly one of those moments when the MS Society should stop and think 'are we the baddies here?', but I doubt they will.

Being a volunteer manager can be a thankless task.

I remember having to report a volunteer to ours for racist comments. Of course it was a volunteer who had been involved with the charity since it's founding and was massively popular with all the other volunteers.

The comments were likely normal for his social circle but absolutely beyond the pale for a professional environment and there were multiple witnesses.

It caused total uproar as basically the whole volunteer body felt he had been badly mistreated and all the staff were upset by the racism and wanted him to go.

With very long term volunteers they can feel some sort of ownership of the organization but of course over decades, everything changes.

That said, if this elderly lady simply asked why pronouns were now interesting, it's a massive over reaction by the charity. I think the PP who suggested there was more too it and the charity wanted to get rid anyway has probably nailed it.

I suspect this is just an excuse to get rid of her because they couldn't bring themselves to tell her her time was no longer needed or wanted. I have to do this with volunteers in my own organisation, for myriad reasons, it's not always because the volunteer has done anything wrong. It's always awkward and difficult to break it to someone that even though the organisation appreciates the time they give up and the obvious passion for the "cause", their time is no longer required. It's not quite as difficult when they have done something wrong because then you can give them a concrete reason why, but sometimes the penny doesn't drop straight away and they find it really difficult to grasp that they are essentially being told they are no longer welcome.

There are certain strictures placed upon third sector organisations that use volunteer labour by their commissioners, and we have to ensure the volunteers work within those parameters at all times. There are certain scenario I can conceive of whereby a volunteer might be expressing a point of view or an opinion that is perfectly reasonable in a normal setting, but due to the conditions of our funding would be completely inappropriate for them to air while carrying out their function as a volunteer part of the organisation, and in that case, I would have to terminate that relationship.

It does rather seem in this case that they have over-reacted massively to someone simply asking questions.

@redboxer321 I only did a year because I was trying to impress the boss of my actual paid job with my charidee work 😂

@Fallenangelofthenorth
You did far better than me, I didn't even get close to lasing a year!

I still get flashbacks whenever I hear anything about MS. Unbelievable really but there it is.

Me too! They were really fucking rude and ungrateful I found. I only did a year - the relief when I resigned was immense.