Janice Turner Interview with Rosie Kay

[Igneococcus]

Rosie resigned from her own dance company after accusations of transphobia:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3935bc4a-5858-11ec-a3f7-65d2d47c7fea?shareToken=b7d8e07dfee7cb3f54df6487999e9a82

I just don't think they've thought that far ahead.

The gardening is now set up for this I've just dug

Yes exactly - didn’t it occur to them what they were doing to their own job? And that if you were casting performers in the arts, whatever you think of the issue itself, you’d be thinking twice before employing someone who has been that destructive and reckless?

It’s very much like they know it’s a kind of play activism - they want to call names and smear and make complaints, but they also want it not to be serious enough that it actually destroys the very thing they’re depending on. Like they assumed that they weren’t doing anything really serious and someone else was going to just come in and sort it out.

You just know they will all be high on their own righteousness and simply not seeing any problem with it. It’ll all be someone else’s fault.

They just haven’t grown up and realised they’re in the real world. Take a complaint like this to a teacher or a lecturer and you’re not going to shut down the university and end up without an education. You’re going to be pandered to, made to feel special and nurtured through.

Some pandering certainly went on here but the end result was never going be the HR person putting on the show to triumphant acclaim and everyone feeling marvellous. The result was no job for anyone.

I think they think they will be rewarded as brave whistleblowers against the oppressive terf.
They will have spent far too much time online during the pandemic and that is a world where finding offence is rewarded by likes and follows. It’s how you get status.

I agree countess, I think they thought she would just be removed and probably one of them could arrogantly take over. It really is shockingly childish, spiteful and there’s such a nasty element of self righteous glee running through it. Shame on them.

A complaint to the Board by one of the dancers at the party – a young political activist – led to a four-month investigation by my board which it has botched, first exonerating me, then, when that led to more complaints, opening a second investigation which still hasn’t concluded. I cannot endure this humiliation any longer.

Fucking spineless wankers.

‘ I think they thought she would just be removed and probably one of them could arrogantly take over.’

• yes, that’s another aspect of lack of experience, not appreciating the vast amount of talent and work it will have taken Rosie to have got where she is.

Their philosophy encourages this because in their minds she will have simply been privileged.

I'd never heard of the company or Rosie, but respect to her. Why on earth should she put herself through an inquisition in her own company so she could continue working with these crybullies? Far better to walk away and let the company implode by not being able to perform any of its signature work anymore.

The dancers all deserve to be out of work. Not because of their beliefs (which are protected), but because they are bullies.

That's an absolute disaster for a clearly brilliant woman. In some ways it's a puzzling account of how she was brought so low, and unsupported by a lawyer; where she agreed to apologise and go for training, yet speaks of not giving in. What strikes me is that they wouldn't accept her authority and most of them were men...that's an old, familiar and sadly, continuing problem for women at work even when they are the boss. We don't know all the facts and facets of this but on the face of it, the lawyer seems incredibly defeatist and that's not how pioneering female lawyers took the cases and took the fight, where women had previously been silenced and ashamed, to establish the nature and fact of sexual harassment and sex discrimination in the workplace. We're going through the same process now and there has already been an advance made in the tribunals on this front so she does seem to have a basis in law for a viable case. And it says she IS taking a case of constructive dismissal to the tribunal, so it doesn't add up.

I've given turnips.

@Chrestomanci3

Interesting comparisons in Times articles today. There is the story of the golfer, cleared of sexual assault because they could not control their actions. Contrast this with the story of the choreographer, who has been forced to leave their job after being accused of sexual harassment for using the words penis and vagina. Hmm, do you think you can guess which of these people is male and which is female?

I hadn’t read about the golfer. What a perfect comparison, not cherrypicked but right there in today’s news.

My god, no wonder so many girls don’t want to grow up into women.

And it says she IS taking a case of constructive dismissal to the tribunal, so it doesn't add up.

It's all very odd, but I think it might be this (tho obvs I don't know):
I think the first 'tribunal' was going to be an internal process. Maybe a disciplinary panel of some kind? They presumably don't havean in house HR department, so they contracted some external company to run the process for them. Rosie got legal advice, and her lawyer said the the 'tribunal' will end up smearing her, and won't find in her favour. Whether that was because of facts of the case the lawyer knew of, or because of the way it seemed to be set up, or because it was instigated by complaints after the first investigation, idk. So at that point she quit. Now she is saying all of that shenanigans amounts to constructive dismissal.

She's at almost 5k already

That was some very bad legal advice. Especially in view of the Maya judgment that found gender critical beliefs are protected in law.

She has a strong constructive dismissal case but it is sad she resigned.

What a horrible betrayal by her students. This ‘encouraging students to report teachers for thought crime’ is very, very typical of the Nazi and Communist dictatorships.

What are their assets? Money in the bank I guess. I'm not sure they'll be able to touch the cash. Couldn't she argue that all of it came through her own artistic talents and given her protection of property rights, they (trustees) may now be restricted in what can be used. Couldn't she put a hold on the money? Have no idea about intellectual property rights but I'm sure she is in a strong position. I'd really love to hear from one of the idiots who started this, just to see how hard of thinking they are

I found this really devestating to read about. You think you are used to the misogyny in this movement and then it hits you afresh. What a way to treat a talented woman who is training you. Incredible. The Free Speech Union on twitter have posted directions to her garden.

This person on twitter has posted a screen shot of another write up of the case in the paper.
mobile.twitter.com/genderisharmful/status/1468887602057158659

It says the trustees told the charity commission and arts council that she was being investigated for transphobia, and requested an external hr consultancy to investigate.
mobile.twitter.com/genderisharmful/status/1468887602057158659

The company say they are surprised by the account and strongly resist the interpretation of events.

I will be digging because I think this all needs to be out in the open, and hopefully it will show other employers that they need to be fair with peoples reputations when it comes to a clash of views like this.

This link is the trustees, some connected with other organisations,

register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/sector-data/top-10-charities/-/charity-details/5079863/trustees

Thanks @Livelifeinthebuslane

As well as a bit of digging I think a flurry of Adult Human Female postcards is called for if I can track down addresses.

Puzzling account of how she was brought so low, and unsupported by a lawyer; where she agreed to apologise and go for training, yet speaks of not giving in

I suspect that initially she may have thought she had done something wrong if she was unaware of this brave new world.

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

Puzzling account of how she was brought so low, and unsupported by a lawyer; where she agreed to apologise and go for training, yet speaks of not giving in

I suspect that initially she may have thought she had done something wrong if she was unaware of this brave new world.

Yes, that would be my guess.

And I can absolutely imagine that she said something utterly innocuous and reality based, and other people went off alarming.

We see it all the bloody time.

@OperationDessertStorm

That’s chilling. She gave them an amazing opportunity, training, a platform to perform, invited them to her own HOUSE for a social gathering, treated them like grown ups and equals in conversation and they’ve just shit all over her. For what? Their performance got cancelled and now they’re all out of a job.

The moral high ground they’re standing on is actually a pyre of women’s careers.

Absolutely this. Do they feel they have so little control over any other aspects of life (housing, climate, perhaps) that they get satisfaction destroying the careers of the very people who can give them opportunities!

I'm trying to imagine the process. I never want to end up saying 'youth of today, yuk' because it's lazy and wrong and we miss important change that way. I feel in my generation we thought if we spoke up things would change, and what was wrong was silence (silence=death etc). Now young people who have been taught to speak up do so, and I am right there with others saying, well, we don't think you should have said THAT, that's not what we meant.

And yet... as a woman of 52 I know that I remain painfully and sometimes joyfully aware of my sexed body. Im sure Rosie Kay is as well, more than me. To find that I am suddenly not supposed to speak that awareness out loud is really frightening. How can I even explain what is happening to me if I can't say how the world is? When RK said 'boy jumps, girl jumps' and said she liked boy jumps she was expressing in a friendly way an exploration of what sexed bodies can do and whether we are limited by sex. But she demonstrated awareness that sex exists. It must have been a shock I guess to the younger dancers. But how could that be a shock to them? A friends child is a ballet dancer in training. No profession could be more aware of their physical being.

But the problem isn’t young people speaking up. It’s the ones who are saying ‘you can’t say that’ and pulling any levers they can to enforce it.

But the problem isn’t young people speaking up.

Indeed. Rosie is not reporting them to HR for what they said. I don't recall that ever been a thing we believed in in our generation.