#biologylosingwomen.
Definitely feels like End Times approaching when the official home of biologists try to actively silence (female) biologists for referencing facts of biology. WTF?
I also don’t think we can assume that organisations tweeting the sexist, misogynistic, homophobic views of genderism are just the result of having kids in the Comms department though.
I mean, the unprofessional ‘BYE!‘ might be because of that... but the substance of this tweet shows that the climate in the RSB office is such that whoever it was, thought it was a good thing in the Society’s name, to try to silence a female biologist for saying something factual that they felt the RSB didn’t agree with politically. 
And if you I look at the diversity policy of RSB, the tweeter wasn’t deviating from official policy actually: they weren’t doing anything wrong.
So whoever is in charge at this membership society, this tweet is just a small symptom of a serious failure of leadership vision and of organisational values clarification.
So in response to the excellent feedback they are currently receiving on Twitter- it’s absolutely not acceptable for RSB to say they’ve told off an inexperienced junior and taken them off the Twitter account, or that theIr account was hacked, or to make any other diversionary excuse.
This tweet evidences this membership body’s existing political organisational capture, and evidences active sexist and homophobic values in action at their office that are the natural consequence of that political stance they have already taken.
So the CEO and Chair need to write a public statement, which also goes to all their members, to defend enlightenment values, free speech and scientific enquiry, to commit to anti sexist and anti homophobic working in their own organisation (starting by reviewing their own diversity and equality policy!) and then they need to bloody well stick to those values in practice. This will be a major change.
Perhaps as a start, they could offer to invite WPUK or LAWS or another gender critical group in, to host a debate about the biological fact of sexual dimorphism and how scientific and research culture needs to regain it’s free speech and commit to how the RSB will support women/researchers to have that freedom? And RSB invite their female members to suggest other ongoing actions they can take? Could allow all members to contribute to reinstating sex in their policies? Could organisationally demand that Athena swan reasserts sex and not gender? (RSB are not the only scientists with this problem, clearly)
RSB have a whole diversity statement on their website though committing to inclusive ways of working, so all this shouldn’t be too much of a stretch...
Oh wait, they’ve been stonewashed:
‘The Royal Society of Biology is committed to ensuring that it is accessible to everyone regardless of gender, ethnic or national origin, nationality, disability, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic background or age‘
So RSB won’t acknowledge biological sex, which is a fundamental, can’t get past it cultural problem they have created for themselves. Their commitment to women is already built on sand, despite talking about how they ‘have successfully used targeted recruitment initiatives and other means to improve low female representation within our Fellowship of 6.5% in 2007 to 21% in 2014. However, gender inequality is just one aspect of inclusion.’
Quote was taken from this page (scroll down)
www.rsb.org.uk/policy/policy-issues/equality-diversity
RSB need to understand that while they subscribe to ‘gender‘ that is a recipe for baked-in sex and sexual orientation inequality. (And for anti-science)
Anyway- plenty of organisations over the course of 2020 have shown that they can make values statements about lots of different social issues and work differently, so we need this one to start doing so about biological sex.
Who better to lead that type of change, than a membership organisation of scientists whose work depends on understanding that there are sex differences? Who have already signalled publicly that they want to be inclusive..
And that’s bloody great CheeryTree that your DH is cancelling his membership. The conversation he has with them about that will be really important. Often these attitudes are taken by non-membership organisations which can shrug off criticism, but surely those with a membership have to either be accountable to them, and stand by what they’ve said (which is incompatible with good science and inclusion so RSB can’t do that) OR they need to start a serious, publicly-conducted programme of cultural change.
Hope all members follow your DH’s suit, cancelling is personal choice obviously but engaging with RSB on this is key to reversing this entirely self-destructive political direction that RSB are going in.