Denise Fahmy taking Arts Council England to an Employment Tribunal because she has been harassed for being gender critical.

[ChristinaXYZ]

Denise Fahmy queried why an award to the LGB Alliance was withdrawn and then faced harrassment at work.

From her summary:
" some of my colleagues saw fit to circulate a petition to all staff against me and any other 'gender criticals' working at ACE. The petition was hosted for 26 hours on the ACE staff intranet, gaining the attention of 700 staff and signatures from over 100 of them. People signed it, and made comments, citing gender critical people like me and LGB Alliance as parasites, neo nazis, needing to be stamped out ..."

Denise is gardening in the usual place - see "Fighting bias at the top of the Arts Council"

If you're able to help her out by planting or sharing please do. Thank you.

Thank you Arabella - we all know that gut wrenching experience when you think should I say this or not? Luckily I was brought up by parents from Geordie north east of England and post revolution Egypt - neither really were given to hiding their views! I always think it’s best to offer your viewpoint in good faith (& with a bit of humour if possible) and help the discussion to progress - otherwise really what’s the point of thinking or feeling?! We can take this forward best we can in open respectful debate / thanks all for your very kind comments xxxx

@DizF 💐🍾😊Women like you help so many more by going through all you've gone through. Thank you.

Thanks from me too @DizF - I work freelance in the voluntary sector but have self-excluded from many of the national clients I used to work with because of all this because I wouldn't be able to keep quiet (the local ones still tend to know you can't change sex...) though I spent a lot of time feeling very miserable about it and my income has dropped. It is very brave to speak out, and hopefully because of you and others things will gradually change

Congratulations @DizF and thank you for speaking up and seeing it through. I work in this sector and it means so much to me that artists can express themselves freely and women can work without harassment for their views.
Looking at the Arts Council statement they believe there isn’t a problem cuz the ‘junior staff’ who wrote the ally letter and petition have left the building. Never mind the executives remaining who thought it was absolutely fine!

In before 'But, she didn't really win because, reasons'

Oh, too late 🙄

Why can't they just say "we fucked up and are sorry"

Their whole rebuttal appears to be "we were only found guilty of 2 of things we were accused of and nothing was found for the thing that wasn't even being considered"

Happy to read that this may cost Arts Council thousands in remedies to DF. And that the judge ‘uplifted’ this figure to reflect Arts Council not allowing her initial complaint to be properly followed up.

Although on the flip side the cost to Arts Council is public funds, which absolutely should not be spaffed away due to them being caught harassing a woman in their workforce.

Because they don’t recognise they have and they’re not sorry. Perhaps they’ll be back in court before too long. How can you fix a problem when you don’t even recognise you’ve done something wrong.

They have good counsel who will have advised them clearly as to the effect of this decision, which is that their defence failed. This self-serving “we didn’t really lose” BS is contemptible and inexcusable.
these gobshites get your money, and mine. Time that stopped. There are better uses for taxpayers money than this dross.

Just finished reading the tribunal's decision - some very sloppy typos and punctuation. Some are in quoted emails and so might be in the original documents (although they should have added '[sic]' to flag these up for clarity), but para 53 includes a typo in a quoted extract from Sir Nick Serota's letter that doesn't appear in para 129 where the same sentence is quoted again, so I suspect that it's the tribunal that is responsible.

Still, better to have a timely decision with some minor grammatical mistakes etc. than a ridiculously late one like LGB Alliance are still waiting for in the Mermaids / Charity Commission case.

Was just catching up on a chunk of this thread that I'd missed as was busy at the time. I love this poem @Whatthechicken you're right it is rather apt for the thread.

❤

"It's the alt-text on the Guardian website. I've checked the source code for the page and it says "<img alt="Transgender Action Block protest against the LGB Alliance Anti-transgender conference in Queen Elizabeth II Centre"

I emailed the Guardian's Reader's Editor about this who replied:

Dear mushti

Thank you for letting us know about the caption in the Alt-text field. I have established this was not written by the Guardian but automatically brought into that field from information attached to the photo as supplied.

It has now been amended.

Kind regards

Elisabeth Ribbans

Oh thanks, mushti! I had googled the phrase and saw it on a stock photo site for a similar photo so had assumed the same. It basically gets written by the person submitting it so you can write any old shite.

https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2023/09/arts-council-england-settles-with-gender-critical-feminist-after-harassment-claim/

'Arts Council England (ACE) has reached a settlement with Denise Fahmy, a former employee who says she felt forced to resign from the organisation due to harassment over her gender critical beliefs.
Fahmy had worked at the arts council for more than 15 years and was the relationship manager for visual arts in the North at the time of her resignation in 2022.
In June, Leeds Employment Tribunal found that the arts council had not adequately protected Fahmy from harassment, culminating in a petition on the arts council’s online noticeboard in which her views were compared to racism and likened to a “cancer”.
Fahmy’s successful claim followed the precedent set by the 2021 court victory of tax accountant Maya Forstater, which established that the belief that there are two sexes, and that sex is immutable, important and should not be conflated with gender identity, is protected under the Equality Act 2010.
Fahmy has received an apology and an undisclosed amount in compensation from the arts council.
Fahmy said: “Following my successful claim for harassment in the Leeds Employment Tribunal against Arts Council England we have reached agreement.”'

Great news.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/arts-council-apologises-to-denise-fahmy-over-harassment-for-trans-views-5njftk79c

An FOI would soon reveal what they had to cough up. Well done @DizF and I hope it was a hefty compensation for what you’ve been through.

This is excellent news for the arts and culture sector. So many organisations, artists and employees have been in fear of losing their jobs and funding because of this.

Not so good for the public purse though, as the stupidity of Arts Council has now forced them to pay out. Money from dwindling coffers that should have been spent on far better things.

Worth looking at the so called ‘apology’

A spokesperson for the arts council said: "We respect the findings of the judgment and are sorry that despite the actions we took at the time, a member of our team experienced harassment at work

experienced??

This was the organisation whose senior management openly castigated this staff member’s views in a 400 strong staff meeting and then left the resulting ‘cancer/nazi’ name calling petition up for all to see. That’s a non apology if ever I saw one.

An FOI would soon reveal what they had to cough up.

It will be exempt as relating to an identifiable employee. You can't FOI HR and payroll records, which is what this essentially is.* *

She clearly wasn't allowed to hold her own views !

New thread: Tribunal Tweets are today covering a case brought by a person at ACE claiming discrimination for being disciplined for signing the petition against Denise and gender critical belief.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/5087775-the-arts-are-still-captured-denise-fahmy

The Undoing

The unspoken words
The unwritten prose
Our words were never enough
Yours were too verbose

I don't recognise this poem and can't locate it via Google. Can somebody help me, please?

You won't find ti in Google, I wrote it after being in at the ET - I was bit angry at the time.

I wondered! Many congratulations, it encapsulated it so well that it felt highly targeted yet described such a common phenomenon.

ETA: I regret that I can't send the link to people with an attribution beyond MN poster. Will it be making an appearance in an upcoming volume of FWR poetry?

It is already in V2 of Under the Duvet of Darkness book of poetry. amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CMJZ43VZ