I just came out as GC at work, to the big boss and I feel a bit sick

[JustcameoutGC]

I have NCed for this. I have just outed myself as GC in work to the big boss (and some others cced in).

I was asked to sign off on something that I just couldn't and I said so, and explained why.

I literally feel sick. Like I have put a big fat GC target on my back. My org is totally woke. I wonder how many times my response has been forwarded already.

This is an interesting thread. I hadn’t quite put it together, but a few years ago a female colleague was repeatedly sexually harassed by a transwoman colleague. The outcome of the disciplinary action against the transwoman was that the transwoman was redeployed to another department, and my colleague was told to attend diversity training

See, that's just age old misogyny isn't it? Just the same as all the previous sex abuse scandals in churches, schools, charities, where the male sex offender is merely 'redeployed'; quietly moved on.

Wasn't unusual for victims to be blamed in those cases either. Easy to speculate that in this case her 'crime' was to name her harassment as she experienced it, and as it was, as the age old case of a woman being sexually harassed by a male.

I am still confused as to why you would "come out" as being GC? Has something happened in your work place in particular? It just seems a strange turn of phrase. Excuse my ignorance, I have really never heard of this!

The OP's additional posts give more context (use see all at the foot of her OP) - and the term 'come out' was introduced by a different poster (discussed upthread).

I am still confused as to why you would "come out" as being GC? Has something happened in your work place in particular? It just seems a strange turn of phrase. Excuse my ignorance, I have really never heard of this!

Because, remarkably, there is such objection to women wanting to talk about the fact that they experience the world differently from men because of their sex, there is such objection to this that women fear suffering professional penalities, social stigma, and abuse or threats of violence if they do. Hence, getting the courage to 'come out' as having these views. In other words, women are being bullied for talking about women as the female sex and why this matters.

@wasthataburp

Sorry having gone back and actually read the thread I now know what it means. I think. I have honestly never heard of this term before!

I am still confused as to why you would "come out" as being GC? Has something happened in your work place in particular? It just seems a strange turn of phrase. Excuse my ignorance, I have really never heard of this!

It takes some gumption to state your opinion in the workplace when it differs from the rapidly changing political landscape that says transwomen are women, self identification is the way forward, and everyone should announce their "preferred pronouns".

To go against the grain is scary. You can be ostracised, accused of being a bigot, and encouraged to attend diversity awareness training or subconscious bias training to correct your opinions.

It depends which sector you work in to what extent this will affect people. But it's gradually creeping in everywhere.

🦡🌈🤍

Hence why many people prefer to stay quiet and keep their head down.

Well done to the OP for refusing to do so.

🏆

🦡🌈🤍

Then there is the opposite problem to this which is the personal. Due to the explosion of trans-identifying individuals, there are more people now who know someone who is trans, and they base their opinion solely on the basis of the people they know, they take it as a personal attack on their friends or family when GC men or women try to exclude them, they cannot seem to comprehend that it is the same as me excluding my husband even though everyone who knows him knows he's a good bloke

I think that's very true Muddling. See also politicians continually referencing the young trans person in their constituency that they know.

It just shows that they have no idea what safeguarding and in particular the management of risk is about.

my response to this is always along the lines of "my DH is lovely, he'd never hurt anyone, so you'd have no problem with him running a cub pack without a DBS check then, I mean if I say he's harmless that should be enough right?" and if it's not enough then why must i take the say so of other people that this particular man is harmless because he has long hair, wears make up and goes by a female name?

So she was told to have diversity training after she was sexually harassed? That's insane if so. Do you know if she complied?

Yes. The disciplinary action related to a couple of other misconduct issues as well (refusal to do certain work tasks properly, shouting at the supervisors etc. - nothing gender identity related) and the recommendation from HR was that a chunk of the department underwent diversity training. Of course it’s possible the investigation found that there were some discriminatory behaviours from some of the staff (this was another part of our department so I don’t know - but I do know this was not true of the harassed colleague), but lumping the sexual harassment (witnessed) in with that was just outrageous.

Fortunately our big boss took the “I’ll take it from here” approach and sanity was restored. No re-education was imposed. The big boss is female, scientifically literate, and very smart, so I suspect she is GC, or would describe herself as such if she read this thread.

@Dontcallmewifey

I am still confused as to why you would "come out" as being GC? Has something happened in your work place in particular? It just seems a strange turn of phrase. Excuse my ignorance, I have really never heard of this!

Because, remarkably, there is such objection to women wanting to talk about the fact that they experience the world differently from men because of their sex, there is such objection to this that women fear suffering professional penalities, social stigma, and abuse or threats of violence if they do. Hence, getting the courage to 'come out' as having these views. In other words, women are being bullied for talking about women as the female sex and why this matters.

I think you have this spot on.

there is such objection to this that women fear suffering professional penalities, social stigma, and abuse or threats of violence if they do.

And there are PP on this thread who seem disappointed that they're not in the OP's workplace so unable to report her for reeducation for wrongthink and to nominate her for disciplinary action both in the workplace and any relevant professional bodies. For wanting to ensure there is unambiguous language that conveys a clear message.

This thread is so interesting in terms of how people new to the Gender Criticism have been brought in due to the thread popping up on Active. It's great to see women asking what things mean and learning more. So interesting to see people's surprise at how a seemingly honest and straightforward statement can get them in so much trouble in certain workplaces or online spaces. After all, we all know what a woman is, right?

As regulars here we use a lot of jargon and shorthand, but it's so nice to see people ask for explanations and get lots of encouraging replies. Of course lots of forums use their own jargon, I had a first peek at Style and Beauty the other day and, as a woman who doesn't use make-up and wears nothing but jeans and t-shirts, they might as well have been talking Japanese for all I understood!

Oops meant to say well done OP. Hope you're feeling bolstered by all the support here.

Thanks @unwashedanddazed, I posted on FWR so didn't think twice about using jargon and shorthand. I wasn't expecting this to trend, and I think using terms that people didn't instantly understand actually brought some very welcome new traffic to these pages.

I have spoken up, now I need to follow through and check what our organisational response has been. I suspect I will be coming back to these hills for support in the weeks ahead.

I suspect I will be coming back to these hills for support in the weeks ahead.

This is surely a good thing. We all want to know how it goes continue giving our support!

It’s also very easy to use wrongspeak

• a well known gay trans ally recently stated that he was broody and joked about being on the hunt for a lesbian couple. Why would he specifically need a lesbian couple? Why would a lesbian couple need him if one was a “sperm producer” and one a “uterus owner”? Why not a straight couple where both partners had the same reproductive organs?

A successful actress/singer and trans ally also recently committed wrongspeak , she was talking about being bisexual but said she preferred women to men as boobs are more attractive than balls - implying that only women have boobs and only men have balls. It is very confusing though when on one hand you have two females in a relationship, where the one who has a beard says “do we look like a lesbian couple?” and on the other hand there are a couple of well known bearded males saying things like “your mental description of woman is narrowly inaccurate” and they’re “expanding the bandwidth of what being a woman looks like” and telling you they are a lesbian.

@risefromyourgrave

for you OP.

I am a well educated woman, but I swear to you that until my late twenties, after I had had 3 children, that I thought wee came out of your vagina. I couldn’t understand why tampons didn’t get soaked and need changing every time you went to the loo.

So I can well understand that people don’t know whether they have a cervix. Clarity of language when it comes to medical matters is vital.

Yup. I thought the same thing until my early 20's. Was quite surprised when I realised, so I totally get women not knowing if they have a cervix. On that note, the nurse said I had a 'helpful cervix' at my last smear test.

Well done OP, and really glad the trending thread has highlighted the madness to others.

I've had a minor victory in getting gender replaced with sex on a workplace form with zero fuss; I think the key might be making your initial comment brief, factual and quoting the Equality Act. Save the long paragraphs and links for further down the line, if needed.

I should have said “ Why not a straight couple where both partners had female reproductive organs?”
I’m not even sure why he couldn’t just partner up with a man who has female reproductive organs 🤷🏻‍♀️

I raised a concern about internal policies not following the EA2010 at work some time ago and got a patronising reply about how approaches to equality and inclusion have moved on (we know the law but we think our way of doing things is better). Despite the initial brush off, I’ve noticed greater precision in my employer’s language and overt reference to sex as a protected characteristic in documents recently. Formally logging the omission means the organisation cannot pretend they weren’t told.

@BettyFilous

I raised a concern about internal policies not following the EA2010 at work some time ago and got a patronising reply about how approaches to equality and inclusion have moved on (we know the law but we think our way of doing things is better). Despite the initial brush off, I’ve noticed greater precision in my employer’s language and overt reference to sex as a protected characteristic in documents recently. Formally logging the omission means the organisation cannot pretend they weren’t told.

Excellent work, Betty!

I think a lot of the very dubious work policies were based on the infiltration by interested parties, without anyone stopping to consider exactly whether or not they were within the law, and discovering now that they're not, they're having to reconsider their policies. Which is a good thing!

Wow wasp can your cervix do the washing up?

There are some fabulous comments on here. I am always in awe of the capacity for depth and well reasoned argument. Thanks to the OP for giving a subject worthy of such excellent debate so that the women on here to show their skills

bloody hell, that's posted way out of sequence and might not even relate to this thread. I'll get my coat

I missed the name of the poster who gave the German examples but I thought that was a brilliant way of making the point.

I don't speak German but I would have no problem understanding the sign 'fur Frauen' whereas the other one was just baffling to me.

I do speak French and Spanish and I'm still not entirely sure I'd understand 'people with cervices' in those languages.

@WiseUpJanetWeiss

This is an interesting thread. I hadn’t quite put it together, but a few years ago a female colleague was repeatedly sexually harassed by a transwoman colleague.

The outcome of the disciplinary action against the transwoman was that the transwoman was redeployed to another department, and my colleague was told to attend diversity training.

At the time we were bemused and thought the HT department was just a bit shit, but looking back from here, I can see my colleague had been found guilty of wrongthink.

That's awful!!!

Talk about victim blaming. FFS

Well done, OP! Your courage is amazing.

@MeltsAway

It will take a while, but these new laws will not survive the sunlight of publicity. This will be seen, in time, as a moment of collective madness, when a group of men claimed (against all logic and reason) that they were women, and for some incomprehensible reason, governments went along with it

I certainly hope so, @AnyOldPrion - I really appreciate your optimism and rationality. I view a future dominated by gender ideology extremist ideas with a sense of heavy deja vu - I remember the news reports of legislation such as equal pay, abolition of rape in marriage, maternity leave at work, and all sorts of other steps forward to recognising women as fully human.

I think a lot of young "woke" activists who call themselves feminists, don't quite realise how fragile their rights are, because they've not lived in a world without them, nor seen the work required to fight for those rights.

Yes. Not only do they not know how fragile our rights are, and how easily taken away, but they actually see themselves as privileged for having them, instead of grasping that in fact it only puts us (at best) on the same footing as our male colleagues/fellow citizens.