Helen Joyce asks very pertinent questions about SEEN.

So rather than getting practical help from Sex Matters, all these vulnerable, harried, volunteers who are putting their livelihoods on the line and not getting paid for their work for SEEN should ALSO alongside all this extra volunteering, do what the (fully paid) members of SM say about reflective practice? Patronising much?

Reads very much to me that the SEEN groups said 'yes, we're not your employees and aren't going to do what you tell us to' and this is the result.

Helen makes some brilliant questions that absolutely should be answered when a group sets up.

But I disagree with her I think, or perhaps don’t think i would draw the same conclusions from it that she has (but I’m honestly not read up enough in it to confidently give an opinion. I’m just contributing to a discussion here)

She puts her point across with the network rail LGBT+ example. And I think the key point here is what is LGBT+? Most people still think it’s gay rights not enough of us can see the conflict in supporting trans agendas with gay rights. The other movements she describes were also seeking equal rights where many argue T+ is seeking to remove women and gay rights not seek equality as they already have equality.

She says
“It would be awful to create a bunch of new Stonewalls, organisations that have achieved their policy goals but are too venal and self-serving to shut up shop and go home.”

But she also says
“The new SEENs seem to me to be most like the early affinity groups for black Americans, in which a denigrated and discriminated-against group comes together to advocate with employers and for mutual support and protection.“

The American civil rights movement is not an area I can claim much knowledge on. But…… if the SEEN groups are setting up in similar ways to the black Americans of the civil rights era are they such a risk? Do black peoples now dominate white peoples? Have they even successfully gained equality? Legally perhaps but we all know racism and institutional racism is still very much alive.

In the same vein I personally disagree with those saying stonewall achieved its end and should have closed. Legal equality/policy isn't the same as living equality. Maybe I don't understand what stonewall was set up for but was it for more than policy and legal equality? I guess if they only ever wanted legal equality then shifted to tackling homophobia more generally and prejudices they would still be guilty of shifting their focus but it's still seeking equality as it's what straight people have. The mistake they made was to change the group of people they stood for.

Once these groups achieve their aims they will be needed still to keep us from loosing what has been gained. I mean it’s not just American civil rights- look at what's happened to woman's rights now we don't set fire to post boxes or jump in front of horses? Men were always going to try to claw it all back once the suffragettes stopped the fight. Some women have always been telling us this (germaine Greer said women have little idea how much men hate them back in the 70's?) but feminism was infiltrated and subverted so many women don't even want to be called a feminist let alone know what it means. Now we have male feminists centring men within woman's rights at the expense of the women.

The same as what happened with stone wall? It's not gay rights it's erasing gay people making them sterile or life long medical patients, pressure to have sex with men as a woman or you a lesbian are homophobic.

The dominant group be that strait men wanting access to gay women or just men wanting access to women’s events/bodies/opportunities etc have infiltrated the groups. It’s not the groups themselves that is the problem. The problem was thinking we won once we got equal rights and not realising this is an eternal battle that will need maintenance to not loose what was hard fought for

Yes, it was an LGBT network from the start, it was just that very few people paid very much attention to the T, or knew what it was. I remember a meeting when someone gave a talk about transgender issues, that would have been in about 2012 maybe. And I'm sorry to say I didn't see any harm in it at the time. It didn't make a lot of sense to me, and I remember thinking (and asking) about what it meant to identify as the opposite sex and didn't that reinforce sexist stereotypes, but I didn't get any further than that. I thought it was an entirely fringe issue and if it made a few sad people a bit happier, I couldn't see the harm. Yes, I've come to bitterly regret that, but there were questions I wasn't pursuing back then, and of course looking back I wish I had. I wasn't particularly involved with the network, because it seemed to me that by the time it came along, homophobia was much less of a thing than it had been earlier in my working life, and I didn't feel the need for it, but I was glad it was there for anyone who did want it. I think it got captured because a few zealots wanted it and saw the possibilities with it, and no-one as far as I know could see any reason to stop them until it was too late.

The lesson I've tried to learn from that is to be a whole lot more critical, pursue lines of questioning rather than assume that someone else will, and just because something appears to be wholly virtuous and "right side of history", not to assume it will stay that way.

As I've said, I hope the SEEN groups flourish, and I wish all the volunteers well in their very difficult, against-the-odds, task. And I think Helen Joyce's questions are helpful and relevant.

I think it's going to be a long time before SEEN develops any kind of oligarchy. I know the issues with affinity groups, but I don't see any of the GC groups being in particular danger of going the way of Stonewall. The material basis just isn't there.

Thinking of my (large public sector) employer, there's an extremely prominent LGBT+ network that's heavily invested in gender woo, and the women's network is actually a gender network that appears to be joined at the hip with the alphabet network. It's hard to judge SEEN because you have to look quite hard to find it, and I don't believe its existence would be tolerated at all if not for recent court cases.

The end game for all GC groups should be to make themselves redundant. We aren't close to that yet.

I’m taken aback by this.

If I was paid for what I do for my SEEN then perhaps I might agree with Helen, as it is I have taken a risk with my career and volunteered time I don’t have for something which i think is important. We have had to build something to defend ourselves and our fields and it’s been done without funding.

She’s right, transparency matters. Which raises a question - who funds Sex Matters?

I know @TheMamaBear. But I think safeguarding (and preventing the state from falsifying documents) comes first and therefore I'm pro-Repeal, not pro-making a deal with AGPS.

SEENs are necessary for protecting people who work with the most vulnerable, in order for them to speak at work. But - like Sex Matters - that can't be the end. We have to keep going.

Watch out @ResisterOfTwaddleRex,there's some on here who seem to think SM are beyond reproach.

Another purity spiral

When my own workplace instituted an LGBT network (about 15 years ago) I thought it was a very good thing. Similarly, if you'd told me that network would become almost entirely a vehicle for promoting gender woo, represented on all relevant committees and claiming to speak for all "LGBT+" employees, listened to by management and a core part of my workplace's EDI strategy, I wouldn't have believed you.

Did you really have an LGBT network 15 years ago? In 2009? I think it was far more likely you had an LGB network. I was involved with Stonewall in 2009 (on one of their regional committees) and the T wasn't appearing attached to LGB at that time.

The question that needs answering is when, and how and who added the T to your network, and why did those of you involved let it happen? Did you vote to allow the T to join? Did you protest at the time? Far more important to understand how that happened and to be sure you won't let it happen again than speculate on the basis that because Stonewall, with its huge financial resources and staff and friends in high places went to the bad, SEEN's volunteer workforce will do the same. It's a false analogy. Stonewall adopted the T in 2015 because its LGB work was done and it needed something new to work on. SEEN has emerged in response to a pressing need.

Really though, we might ask the same of Sex Matters. Especially after KPSS closed. And given no other groups like SM supported SSA and James Esses in their efforts to hold a public inquiry into gender ideology after Cass - a window we've now arguably missed. IIRC FPFW did retweet SSA but that was all. Everyone else pretended it wasn't happening. Why? Would such an inquiry remove the need for SM and similar organisations? Maybe stimulate a conversation about their "exit strategy"?

The "pertinent questions" are helpfully set out by Joyce:

"what are they for? In the short term, are they aiming to gain the same benefits, voice and access to decision-making as the existing LGBT+ group and women’s group – or are they hoping to limit those groups’ influence? What’s their medium-term plan to avoid becoming a toxic virtue-signal, an oligarchy or a parallel power?
And finally, in the long term, what would success look like, and what’s the exit strategy?"

I don't think anyone is "railing against SEEN". We're in a dire situation in many workplaces, and a means for people to come together to try to reverse the policy capture and underlying false consensus in their institutions is certainly welcome and needed. But that's not to say there aren't good and relevant questions to ask about the end game.

I'm old enough to remember Stonewall being a force for much good in workplaces. I got into trouble many years ago for distributing one of their questionnaires in my then workplace (it was a questionnaire about workplace discrimination, it was the mid-90s and they were planning to campaign for a Sexual Orientation Discrimination Act). It would never have occurred to me then that Stonewall would become part of the establishment, a bullying organisation arguing against the rights of the very people they were set up to promote.

When my own workplace instituted an LGBT network (about 15 years ago) I thought it was a very good thing. Similarly, if you'd told me that network would become almost entirely a vehicle for promoting gender woo, represented on all relevant committees and claiming to speak for all "LGBT+" employees, listened to by management and a core part of my workplace's EDI strategy, I wouldn't have believed you.

I hope the SEEN groups flourish and do well. I hope they're the beginning of bringing sanity back to our captured institutions, and I'm full of admiration for the volunteers who are working so hard, in difficult circumstances and without resources, to set them up. But I don't think that should stop us asking the questions that Helen Joyce raises, about the end game. As I understand it, her piece is a talk she gave at a gathering of SEEN activists, organised and resourced by Sex Matters. It's about discussion and debate, not trying to undermine or stop anything.

The OP hasn't actually specified what it is these pertinent questions are. They are just vaguebooking to flick shit on anyone who might be wanting to try and get this vile ideology out of the workplace.

I've not observed anyone senior in any of the places with a SEEN, loudly and proudly saying they're a SEEN ally, brandishing a lanyard or a badge, or gushing about their SEEN on SM.

Seems the SEENs are just about tolerated. Not expecting those "oligarchy" days to happen in my lifetime.

👏👏👏

I suspect that anyone planning on contacting a SEEN group for their profession tomorrow will already be well acquainted with the tactics used against anyone standing up for women’s right to single-sex female-only provision, both against individuals standing up for women and groups standing up for women. If they haven’t already been deterred by whatever smear campaign has been mounted against SEEN in their workplace, then I’d be surprised if this “oh no! what if SEEN end up continuing to exist as a network even after discrimination against women, same-sex oriented individuals and those with gender critical beliefs has been eradicated in the workplace?” thread would deter them.

For what it’s worth, I found HJ’s article interesting, as it articulated some patterns of behaviour I’ve observed in staff networks and it applied a description/ concept to those behaviours/patterns.

It strikes me that, if the OP had titled their thread “pertinent questions about workplace staff networks” instead of focusing it on SEEN specifically, the thread could have developed into a much more interesting discussion.

Once they've finished being sued on a personal basis, I'm sure it's next on the list

Exactly. But don't join SEEN, you can't be certain that they don't have plans for total global domination.

Imagine this is your union:

PCS
PCS Union Conference had 2 motions saying Cass Review was just woke war - one brave woman spoke against both - Jan Baxter www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/5083781-pcs-union-conference-had-2-motions-saying-cass-review-was-just-woke-war-one-brave-woman-spoke-against-both-jan-baxter

NEU
x.com/journalismseen/status/1776503043359424642?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

BMA
www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/bma-to-undertake-an-evaluation-of-the-cass-review-on-gender-identity-services-for-children-and-young-people

What are you to do?

What do you think someone reading this thread, who was thinking of contacting their relevant SEEN tomorrow, will think after reading some of the paranoid nonsense rolled out on this thread? 'OMG', perhaps? 'Can't trust anyone, clearly. If Helen Joyce is warning against them I won't get involved...'

Really annoyed with Helen. I said earlier that her lack of hinterland on this subject shows at times, and this is one of them.

The article the OP linked is clearly about the nature of affinity groups.

Neither HJ nor anyone here is suggesting shutting down any affinity group this instant.

You however seem to be trying to shut down any discussion of whether the concept of workplace affinity groups is problematic or unworkable.

I mean, how do people generally deal with workplace issues?

Unions, generally, I guess, though they are shitty at it now.

What amounts to two unions, with no responsible leadership, duking it out? Either the employer will have to decide to mediate their dispute, or it will come down to which has the most power to influence the employer or even force a certain decision.

Well, one thing you aren't to do, apparently, is set up a group for concerned colleagues whose voices have been silenced individually in the hope that together you will be heard. Because if you do that you're apparently halfway to taking over the world and doing something terrible. Apparently. Best to sit back silently and suffer.

If that's true, setting up yet another group on the same model may not actually be the best solution - what should happen is these groups need to be looked at as a whole to see if the model is actually useful. Or what would need to happen to make them robust, if such a thing is possible.

And in the meantime? In the 5-7 years it'll take to implement any useful change?

SEEN is a temporary antidote to the madness going on as a result of the transgender takeover of so many DEI departments. No one I've ever met via the SEEN network has indicated that they expect SEEN to keep going once the pendulum has swung back and everyone once again accepts that sex is real, people can't change sex and women need to have single sex spaces.

This OP's opening thread didn't suggest a theoretical debate about the nature of affinity groups in organisations and how you support minorities who are still on the receiving end of prejudice and discrimination. The OP was specific about SEEN and fears for where it might end up.

Posters here, and Joyce, railing against SEEN, aren't coming up with solutions. Imagine this is where you work:

DEFRA
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13216821/lawyer-defra-seen-sued-gender-critical-beliefs.html

HMPPS
x.com/noxyinxxprisons/status/1594111361692225537?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
news.sky.com/story/nurses-suing-their-employer-for-allowing-trans-women-to-use-their-changing-rooms-13160104
NSPCC/Childline
uncommongroundmedia.com/nspcc-employee-films-himself-masturbating-at-work/

GIDS
www.thetimes.com/uk/article/gender-identity-clinic-whistleblower-wins-damages-for-vilification-cwj2m3t0s

What are you to do exactly?