Following Maya's call to be brave today, I recently used "Courage Calls" as an alias for an anonymous letter calling for my employer to review their membership of Stonewalls Diversity Champion's programme.
The organisation has a constitution that allows employees to express their views anonymously "without fear of repercussions" and to receive helpful replies from the most relevant manager. Letters and their replies are published in the internal staff magazine, but it seems that my letter based upon Kate Grime's published article in the Health Service Journal, has been rejected.
Today's intranet has the following message regarding my letter which has not been published.
Editorial note: this letter has been edited with the chairman's agreement. as it commented on controversial content that is unrelated to [Organisation]. While much of the letter has been edited, we have been careful to retain the writer's main point about [organisation]'s relationship with stonewall. The Pseudonym of this letter has also been edited as it has been brought to our attention that - whether or not it was the writer's intention - it could be construed as having transphobic undertones. We remind all [staff] to be respectful of others and of the letters guidelines.
So two things. I can't see that even an edited version of the letter has been published, either on the intranet or in the printed version of the magazine, but this is perhaps not a total surprise. And secondly, how the fuck do you construe "courage calls" as transphobic?
I've name changed for obvious reasons, although I clearly need to find a new job. Any thoughts I may have had about working from the inside are done with now.