EHRC cuts ties with Stonewall.

[Novina]

Has anyone else seen this? From Sex Matters:

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/press-release-equality-and-human-rights-commission-cuts-ties-with-stonewall

Nancy Kelley has retweeted this embarrassingly unprofessional tweet. So even the CEO is endorsing this style of SM comms?!

I’m truly agog.

.... But you see, this has WORKED for so long. This kind of tactic - bullying, threats, ridicule....

And this is learnt in schools and at home, because this WORKS on teachers whose hands are tied by enabling parents.

[quote Leafstamp]It’s so worth reading the comments here:

mobile.twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/1396374108955455491[/quote]
Haha, if you're not blocked 😂

Although I have read the replies by searching Stonewall then looking at the @ column, I am not blocked from reading the replies....

Maybe they feel they have nothing to lose anymore...

I seem to recall from the initial #dontsubmittostonewall FOIs that other orgs were also not renewing their memberships. I suspect the EHRC may just be the most high profile so far.

They are losing memberships, and perhaps more importantly they are losing credibility. Unless they sort themselves out this really is the beginning of the end for them.

Then, astonishingly, they followed up with this

Are they actually on glue? Do they think that this is an appropriate, never mind adequate response?

Mind blowing. Gonna get on with reinforcing the idea that Stonewall are not fit for purpose by posting like a sixteen year old’s closing lines before slamming the door to their bedroom because GOD MUM YOURE SUCH A FUCKING KAREN.

Tick Tock

I was coming here to post that Stonewall tweet. I'm actually shocked by the tone of it. So inappropriate in tone.

*Are they actually on glue? Do they think that this is an appropriate, never mind adequate response?

Mind blowing. Gonna get on with reinforcing the idea that Stonewall are not fit for purpose by posting like a sixteen year old’s closing lines before slamming the door to their bedroom because GOD MUM YOURE SUCH A FUCKING KAREN.*

They are using the language of random teenagers on Twitter to manage a crisis. It won't serve them well. Meanwhile in the real world it's unraveling.

There's an article in the Scottish section of The Times that contains some pieces of the jigsaw:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/warnings-that-organisations-policy-could-breach-laws-on-trans-rights-l92zw6bsw

Nancy Kelley, Stonewall’s chief executive, insisted that the Equality Act protected anyone whose gender was other than the one assigned at birth. “The statutory code of practice to the Equality Act, published by the EHRC, states that ‘gender reassignment is a personal process, that is, moving away from one’s birth sex to the preferred gender, rather than a medical process’.

This means that in addition to "woman" being redefined to mean a feeling in a man's head, "gender reassignment" likewise isn't an actual real world process but is just a feeling in someone's head*. Having been caught out, Stonewall are now rewriting the law on the hoof.

• This business of deconstructing real world things into individual internal truths when it suits is very postmodern isn't it?

Within the last year I took a job with a large academy trust serving 17,000 children and young people all in deprived areas.

The application form had 'stonewall diversity champions' emblazoned on it. As a result, I almost didn't apply as I was worried how being members of this scheme may have affected the children.

A month ago I was browsing the vacancies and noticed stonewall was no longer emblazoned on the application form. Handily, a FOI request had been made regarding the trust's membership of the scheme and the trust is no longer part of it.

They joined for a year then left in March 2021. I don't know why, but I do know that's 17,000 children out from under stonewall's influence

Surely any normal charity would be horrified and be rushing out press releases about internal failings and learning from their mistakes, rather than doubling down and saying everyone else is wrong and the world is against them.

This comes back to that article in the Sunday Times by Matthew Syed shared by pp about organisational narcissism. Stonewall believe themselves to be beyond reproach - which is precisely the point at which they should be subject to even greater scrutiny.

They joined for a year then left in March 2021

March. The same as the EHRC. I wonder if Stonewall memberships run April-March every year. Which would mean that by May they really should be updating the (now hidden) list of members.

I'm wondering if one of the reasons for hiding is that the list is rather shorter this year...

Stonewall has moved away from its original purpose and I am glad the EHRC and many others have realised this.

This tweet may not wrap them up, but I think it's the turning point. How could anyone take them seriously and think them trustworthy after reading that?

Let alone want to be one of their 'champions'?

Who fucking left the teenagers in charge of Stonewall? Yeah, I’m going to take them really seriously now.

“U ok hun?”

@NecessaryScene1

This tweet may not wrap them up, but I think it's the turning point. How could anyone take them seriously and think them trustworthy after reading that?

Let alone want to be one of their 'champions'?

It won't. It is likely to continue rolling in the money for somw time yet unless somwthing else happens. Given the scrutiny LGB Alliance were placed under by the charity commission it is high time they examined stonewall under the same lens

It's encouraging to see news like this but there is a need for a cautious overview.

Stonewall has enviable financial resources and lots of their supporters everywhere in the Civil Service and various organisations (look at the way Garden Chambers fell in with them and were cowed by them unless the runes are completely wrong about this). They have a remarkable power base and influential reach.

It will take a lot of work to disentangle that which is why there's such a need for a public enquiry.

The insistence that they are still advocating for LGB people is remarkable.

I will never understand how they thought they could get away with the claim that, eg, a lesbian couple could be two women, two men or a man and a woman. How they could change the definition of homosexuality and still expect the EHRC to endorse them.

Apart from anything else, they would be flying in the face of every gay, lesbian and bisexual person in the country. Surely, even if you're just thinking in terms of numbers, it makes absolutely no logical sense at all.

Not to mention the fact that the long hard slog of making the public subscribe to the born this way ideal, was something they thought they could just dismiss and say 'nah, not really, lol.'

I wonder if it is staffed entirely by people who don't actually remember the reasons it was started in the first place.

Yes, public criticism of Stonewall will be very easy to frame as homophobia, oh and also transphobia of course, and it will take more revelations for the balance to tip and for the Establishment to move from support, past neutral, to critical.

The Allison Bailey case would have been really helpful in this but frustratingly it's been pushed forward a year into 2022.

@Grellbunt

I REALLY hate the way they co-opt language traditionally associated with sexual matters.

THIS isn't "creepy".... we know what is creepy, and it isn't this.

Yes this ^.

It's on a par with oh my God, you think trans girl children are rapists. And you want to check what's in people's pants.

It's a tactic designed to appropriate the language of abuse to stop women talking.

It doesn't work and, certainly in my case, due to the efforts of women like R0wantrees and LangCleg, we all know what DARVO means.

@nauticant

Yes, public criticism of Stonewall will be very easy to frame as homophobia, oh and also transphobia of course, and it will take more revelations for the balance to tip and for the Establishment to move from support, past neutral, to critical.

The Allison Bailey case would have been really helpful in this but frustratingly it's been pushed forward a year into 2022.

It's true it's frustrating about Allison B's case being moved to 2022, however the big positive to take from it is the reason it has to be moved was the amount of evidence to sift through and the fact that Stonewall were refusing to submit evidence in time. All looks very bad for them and Garden Court Chambers.

Fingers crossed for Maya.

@nauticant

Yes, public criticism of Stonewall will be very easy to frame as homophobia, oh and also transphobia of course, and it will take more revelations for the balance to tip and for the Establishment to move from support, past neutral, to critical.

The Allison Bailey case would have been really helpful in this but frustratingly it's been pushed forward a year into 2022.

It only works as long as they continue to evade answering questions about who they say they are advocating for.

As the Daily Mail hints, once the general public realise that the country's leading advocates for lesbians claim that a lesbian can be a fully intact male, the game is up.

Whaaat?? Her case has been pushed forward a year? I missed that! WTF.

@newnortherner111

Stonewall has moved away from its original purpose and I am glad the EHRC and many others have realised this.

Their current slogan, 'acceptance without exception', introduced in 2015, clearly indicates that they're now a trans-focussed organisation. It's a slogan that reads as being all about self-ID, TWAW and the breaking down of women's boundaries, safe spaces and language by those in their ever-expanding 'identities' umbrella.