'Stonewall can no longer play judge and jury'

[MiladyBerserko]

Sarah Ditum in The Times

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bec8f37c-3111-11ec-afd6-aa3ee2eb8a34?shareToken=be76d3e05816fcaf856b0250ba4fae77

@Rhannion

An aside to Sarah’s article and a trigger warning.

The radio presenter mentioned was Stephen Clements at BBC Radio Ulster. He was hounded after his remark, he already suffered with depression, and subsequently killed himself leaving a wife and two children.

I'd no idea. Depression or whatever the underlying contribution is cruel beyond measure.

I can't think why Ofcom consider Clements to be such an outstanding example of their intervention that they're happy to continue publicising it. I can't believe that they know - but if they do, I think even less of them.

@Rhannion

An aside to Sarah’s article and a trigger warning.

The radio presenter mentioned was Stephen Clements at BBC Radio Ulster. He was hounded after his remark, he already suffered with depression, and subsequently killed himself leaving a wife and two children.

That's dreadful. Poor chap.

It comes out first in" view all podcasts"

Excellent article. I`d like someone with the knowledge and skill to forensically "follow the money" - its been suggested many times that this comes from people/organisations in the US which hope to benefit financially. Thats usually the thing that comes first and the rest is just (for various reasons) cheerleading.

Men are the class with the power. They should be the ones changing this.

The same way it’s the responsibility of white people to address racism.

Expecting women to fix being powerless is a sort of contradiction.

Yes in theory men getting ‘credit’ isn’t a positive, but it doesn’t change that the class in the position of power not only can change things but have a responsibility to do so.

Imho.

@Crankyoldboiler

Yes it's well written. But a big part of the problem is that mainstream media journalists now wait until the tide has well and truly turned before they even consider getting their swimsuits on. They leave it up to the brave folk who research, speak out on SM, post on you tube, write blogs, get shouted down, sacked, vilified, threatened and abused and then when it is safe and only then, they voice an opinion. The increasingly pusillanimous mainstream media is one of the main reasons this whole damaging gender ideology has gone so far. She gives a passing nod to Nolan who is the real heto here but doesn't explain her years of silence on the issue. Hypocritical lickspittles and grifters all.

What years of silence?

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

There's one thing that's puzzled me for years about the unthinking acceptance of training and advice given by Stonewall and similar organisations. Many large organisations have legal departments staffed by people with law degrees and professional qualifications. Now, I accept that these people are often snowed under with work and maybe policies were never run past them. But didn't they, or for that matter other senior employees, consider that if they were introducing a policy based on legislation, e.g. the Equality Act, it might not be a bad idea to go back to the legislation itself just to check they'd got the essential details right?

UK laws have been freely available online for anyone to read for a long time now. Anybody googling the Equality Act can find the list of protected characteristics and see contrary to what they were told on their compulsory equality and diversity training, that gender identity isn't there. Sex is, along with gender reassignment.

So why have so many organisations accepted unthinkingly the Stonewall/Mermaids/GIRES version of the Equality Act, which often drops 'sex' and replaces 'gender reassignment' with 'gender' or 'gender identity'?

I know for a long time activists pushing for reform of the Gender Recognition Act took it as read that they would win and the Equality Act would change as a consequence, but how did we get to the point where large organisations across the UK changed policy on the strength of an assurance that the law was about to change, without grasping that it actually hadn't and therefore they were in breach of the law?

The sell has always been that they are the ones who are experts on the topic, I think that's been touted as one of the advantages of joining their schemes. You don't have to pay your own people to do this stuff because you are supporting the subject matter experts to do it for you. It will keep you up on best practices and make sure you have the best advice.

@Crankyoldboiler Sarah Ditum is certainly not guilty of years of silence! She spoke up right at the beginning when Germaine Greer was being ‘cancelled’.

This felt strangely appropriate in relation to this thread caption:
libquotes.com/lewis-carroll/quote/lbq3l9k

I find myself wondering, didn't anyone ever ask, does SW really have that expertise? ... When they say they are subject matter experts, what are they measuring that against?

As far as I can see, Stonegrift bought in their 'expertise' from Genderered Intelligence in 2015-16 and then repackaged themselves as the 'go to' outfit for training and advice etc with the Vision - acceptance without exception report covering its planned scope and activities 2017-22.

@Rhannion

An aside to Sarah’s article and a trigger warning.

The radio presenter mentioned was Stephen Clements at BBC Radio Ulster. He was hounded after his remark, he already suffered with depression, and subsequently killed himself leaving a wife and two children.

That is shocking. As NI radio is a small community, I wonder if that is part of the reason why Nolan and Thompson made these podcasts. They have seen how transactivists operate.

I didn't know that about Stephen Clements. I bet they both knew him. No wonder they did the podcast.

Bloody hell. I was astounded in particular by the part about the radio presenter, but that's beyond awful.

Institutionalised bullying to get some sort of brownie points.

As a general question though, who DOES question the training received by so-called experts?

At a private company workplace I sat through equality training that referred to a (different protected characteristic) group of people with a really weird and counter-intuitive phrase, that I have asked other EDI professionals about and they were equally baffled. I've googled it and it's not in popular usage at all. A colleague asked HR and were basically mocked for thinking they could know better than the expert training company. But surely anyone can just set up as a training provider? Just like anyone can set up as a homeopath or nutritionist (as opposed to dietitian).

If it turned out we'd all been told it was always fine to call gay people 'queer folx' or something (made-up example) it could be potentially disastrous.

@SpindelWhorl

I find myself wondering, didn't anyone ever ask, does SW really have that expertise? ... When they say they are subject matter experts, what are they measuring that against?

As far as I can see, Stonegrift bought in their 'expertise' from Genderered Intelligence in 2015-16 and then repackaged themselves as the 'go to' outfit for training and advice etc with the Vision - acceptance without exception report covering its planned scope and activities 2017-22.

I wonder though, if we shouldn't go back farther than that. Because i am not convinced the structural issue is that they happen to be wrong about gender ideology.

What about SW as the expert on LGB inclusion? Yes, obviously they represented a large number of LGB people, but they were always lobbying for a particular position and set of policies. They didn't ever have real democratic accountability even to LGB people.

So who gets to decide that their expertise is in fact expert? Or that any group should be the go-to for how to best manage anything? What if, for example, there was a very well-funded environmental lobby that became the organisation companies and even government agencies were encouraged to see as setting the bar for good practice?

that poor journalist RIP and his family
maybe it will be discussed in the podcasts

I find myself wondering, didn't anyone ever ask, does SW really have that expertise? ... When they say they are subject matter experts, what are they measuring that against?

Such a good point - think of schools. Stonewall (and all the other lobby groups) "advise" about pastoral care, the curriculum, school organisation, PE etc with zero qualifications in education, child development, safeguarding, child psychology etc. Which is why so much of their advice is catastrophic for children at different stages of development.
In contrast when I look at advice coming out of Safe Schools Alliance or Transgender Trend for example I can see that it's written by educators or other professionals with relevant experience and qualifications. It centres children's needs and is knowledgable about schools.

For anyone who doesn't have the time to listen to all of them, FPFW has produced condensed transcripts of all 10 episodes.

fairplayforwomen.com/stonewall-transcripts/

Thanks @EmbarrassingHadrosaurus really good to see Debbie Hayton on there. A TW and a realist, who does not want women to be put out or used as shields against men, wish all TW could face the truth.