SUBMISSION AND COMPLIANCE: risks for Stonewall Champions

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/02/01/submission-and-compliance/

Someone FOId Edinburgh Uni on their submissions to Stonewall and these have been analysed, as have potential issues with companies signed up to Stonewall on general.

You have to hand it to Stonewall. It’s an astonishingly audacious, skilful and successful operation. In summary, it goes like this:

"You pay for lots of Stonewall training.
You pay for membership of a scheme that wins you the privilege of being – by turns – patronisingly congratulated and sanctimoniously nagged about how well you’ve absorbed and implemented that training.
You lavish management time on embedding that training in every aspect of your operation, from Board to suppliers, from clients or users to middle management. You pay for more Stonewall training along the way.
Stonewall set you a lengthy open-book examination on how well you’ve done that.
You spend hours and hours plodding through that examination, meekly uploading your policies, giving examples of initiatives, training sessions, social media engagement etc.
Stonewall mark your submission and give you feedback on areas on which you could improve your compliance with their every demand, very likely involving more Stonewall training.
You do the same again next year."

Really good article

I have heard a fair few employers are ditching the stonewall champion thing because the paperwork involved is so very onerous.

I didn't realise until I read the piece that the paperwork so much! I had naively assumed there was a couple of tick box surveys.

"Question 4.5 asks:

Does the organisation support all non-trans employees (including lesbian, gay and bi employees) to become trans allies through training, programmes and/or resources?

The University describes the training:

A couple of our Allies continue to present training on what they had learned from their training, covering topics such as the gender-bread person"

I'd never actually seen the gender-bread person so I looked it up. It's incredible to think that this guff is being taught to adults and public bodies are paying for it.

Wasn't there a police force that made the news for no longer signing up to the champion scheme. Nottinghamshire or something wasn't it?

Even then it sounded like they paid £££ and spent hours to do all the work themselves. Seemed a waste of time and resources.

It's a racket.

Does the organisation support all non-trans employees (including lesbian, gay and bi employees) to become trans allies through training, programmes and/or resources?

I assume there are similar questions about non lesbian, gay, and bi allies?

Wow. That’s really blatantly showing where their priorities lie, isn’t it. Even for Stonewall, that’s some front!

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

Does the organisation support all non-trans employees (including lesbian, gay and bi employees) to become trans allies through training, programmes and/or resources?

I assume there are similar questions about non lesbian, gay, and bi allies?

It's the height of enough when they can't even define any of these terms. Male born lesbians, female born gay men. It's ridiculous. Why do none of these companies ever ask?

I assume there are similar questions about non lesbian, gay, and bi allies?

There are no required political stances to take for those people, nor one sex which must be privileged over another to demonstrate compliance (with their submission.)

I came to say the thread title sounded like a safeword should be included.

It's a self indulgent, self absorbed gravy train that has no care for vulnerable groups or individuals
Remember - this is an organisation that work with children in schools (earning a significant amount in the process) while they openly appointed an individual who had a formal enquiry voice serious criticisms about their involvement with a paedophile and lack of awareness of safeguarding children. In full knowledge of this, Stonewall appointed them to their Trans Advisory group. Had a school or local authority done this, Ofsted would have been investigating them. But for some reason Stonewall are able to transgress child safeguarding boundaries and everyone turns and looks the other way.
At one time, safeguarding children was a priority

I’ve just read the full piece. Wow. I’m speechless.

I didn’t think my opinion of Stonewall could sink any lower, but it just has.

So taxpayers are paying Stonewall direct grants, paying for Stonewall training in our public service organisations, paying the staff in this organisations to spend a lot of time doing the training AND making submissions to Stonewall to be assessed for more training. Then also paying staff to train out their training to other staff we are paying to receive that training.

Then we are having to crowdfund the court cases to fix the false information given out as an intrinsic part of that training.

That’s quite some gravy train!! Did I miss anything?

I'm neither British nor a lawyer, so I might be completely off-base here... but would it be possible to start a "Stonewall Law is Bad Law" awareness campaign, directed towards the Stonewall Champions? The article the OP linked to above lists some of the ways Stonewall Law can go wrong and and leaving the organisations who followed their advice badly exposed.

the demands Stonewall makes go beyond what the law requires. Sexual orientation is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, as is gender reassignment (which doesn’t get a mention in Stonewall’s catechism). But “gender identity” and “gender expression” are not, and it’s far from clear what they mean. If “gender expression” is about performing gender stereotypes – whether of dress, make-up, behaviour, interests, or in any other way – then it is impossible and undesirable to ban all discrimination on grounds of gender expression. Some workplaces will justifiably require long hair to be tied back or covered; high heels will be inappropriate or dangerous in many environments. Interrupting, ignoring and talking over women is a core part of many men’s gender expression, but employers are entitled to – and indeed should – take steps to control it.

I imagine the mountainous paperwork is deliberate so details like this get lost in the shuffle.

I am hopeful that lots of companies have their eyes on the negative financial implications of Covid-19 and the issues with bedding in Brexit. They will be looking very carefully at all this stuff. Fine to have fluffy cool add ons when you're flush with money and hoping to look good, but business people are pragmatic. Fingers crossed

I think it's a fantastic expose of the way this works and why so many ordinary people who you'd expect to have seen through this are either silent on the subject or fearful or plain bamboozled. They've been forcibly recruited for pro-transgender ideology training and been presented with half-truths and bias and told it's the law.

And of course it's a brave woke company that will let its Diversity Champion badge go. Not that it's proper diversity, just pro-trans diversity. Lesbians, ethnic minorities, disabled people, women — they're irrelevant except as trans allies. Shocking and sexist, I'd have thought.

@gardenbird48

So taxpayers are paying Stonewall direct grants, paying for Stonewall training in our public service organisations, paying the staff in this organisations to spend a lot of time doing the training AND making submissions to Stonewall to be assessed for more training. Then also paying staff to train out their training to other staff we are paying to receive that training.

Then we are having to crowdfund the court cases to fix the false information given out as an intrinsic part of that training.

That’s quite some gravy train!! Did I miss anything?

Fundraising in schools. Which is frankly grotesque, especially in light of that leaked transcript of the cosy chat between Stonewall's ex-chair and one of their 'allies' in the banking sector!

This is an excellent piece of work.

Can anyone help with the wording for Freedom of Information requests as to how much it costs, both in time any money, for the public bodies who are part of these schemes. County councils, police forces and NHS trusts are on the list of Stonewall diversity champions.
Here's a list of the diversity champions.
www.stonewall.org.uk/diversity-champions-members

It's available via Companies House under Stonewall Equality Limited previous called THE STONEWALL LOBBY GROUP LIMITED. 2020 accounts are not available yet but 2019 financial statement (Pg 23/24) show all their income. They do not list which champion pays whay but they list income they received in 2019 from fees(£3,269,477) ,programmes ( £633,954) and events (£385,87) It also shows that they recieve donations and publicaly funded grants from the Department for Education. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, NHS Scotland and the Welsh Government. We are paying for them to lobby.

FOI requests need to be well-formulated to get the right info and to avoid wasting time. I think there are a couple of regular posters who have done it successfully, can't remember their names?
It's a good idea to use the wordings of successful FOI requests as a template.

I think this is the one discussed in the article
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/matters_related_to_stonewall#incoming-1602110

It's over £150,000 pa from Welsh Government; paying Stonewall to undermine the rights of women in Wales.

We are in the process of FoI-ing to understand the relationship and impact better. It's genuinely frightening. Being a Stonewall Diversity Champion, as the article points out, actually means that every action is first checked to ensure that it meets Stonewall priorities regardless of the broader equalities aim.

Women are being entirely sidelined by our 'feminist' Government.

Copies of this article need to go out to every LA and public body asap.

Just sent this to DH as his employer is a Stonewall champion. First thing he said was 'you didn't mention Stonewall in the email did you?' - genuine concern that his emails might be being monitored for 'wrongthink'. That's how bad things are. We were discussing how hard it would be for organisations to pull out of this once they're signed up, you can just imagine the headlines. He said concerns have been raised by staff about the fact that diversity/equalities training in recent years has been 100% focused on trans awareness to the exclusion of all other protected characteristics but no action has been taken.

That's a great article, and effective in the way it builds up its scenarios - the worst one being a girl's neck being broken because she's forced to play rugby against a transgirl.

[quote Procrastinator3]This is an excellent piece of work.

Can anyone help with the wording for Freedom of Information requests as to how much it costs, both in time any money, for the public bodies who are part of these schemes. County councils, police forces and NHS trusts are on the list of Stonewall diversity champions.
Here's a list of the diversity champions.
www.stonewall.org.uk/diversity-champions-members[/quote]
A few requests have already been made on What Do They Know. You could just copy the wording from one of the successful requests.

University of Edinburgh (request in the OP) pay £2500 (+ VAT) p.a.
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/matters_related_to_stonewall#incoming-1667284

Welsh Government currently pay £6000 (inc VAT) p.a. Total since 2011: £54000.
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/stonewall_cymru_diversity_champi#incoming-1690501

LNER pay £5000 p.a.
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/stonewall_champion#incoming-1664922

The Home Office currently pay £3000 p.a.
www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/amount_paid_to_stonewall_in_the_2#incoming-1640802