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Denise Fahmy queried why an award to the LGB Alliance was withdrawn and then faced harrassment at work.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

That's it, in a nutshell.

Has he heard of the Public Sector Equality Duty?

Though you wonder where his balance point is given he didn’t see an issue with the petition itself and only pulled it because of the increasingly extreme comments.

Surely DF doesn’t need to be named to be harassed? The survey harassed every employee with GC views. Harassment takes place when ”A engages in unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, and (b)the conduct has the purpose or effect of (ii) creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for B.”

The guy is an HR director, this is fairly basic. It reminds me of the marketing manager at Garden Court Chambers who appeared not to understand the reach of Twitter statements.

It feels like senior management delegate so much work that they're no longer involved in the nitty gritty of the business.
So they don't understand simple things like how Twitter works.

I'm having flashbacks of when Andrew Hochhauser tried to explain Twitter during Allison's tribunal! 😳

The calibre of management which has been exposed by the recent court cases is absolutely woeful.

It does not take the Brain of Britain to work out what this HR Director should have done, as you said it is basic. He is being paid a fair whack of money for his role which comes out of the pockets of tax payers - this is the level of competence they are paying for?

No, and DF's lawyer made that point.

HR Director appears to know they are in the shit. Deeply. Probably going to stick to the letter of policy and try to save their skin. The irony of Dignity at Work and Balance being referenced by HR bod is painfully at odds with what’s really going on.

To summarise, the petition stood for 25 hours, calling for ACE employees with GC views to be eliminated, hammered, calling those staff nazis and a cancer? But HR director thought it would ‘upset’ the LGBT+ staff if they removed it. Wow.

To summarise, the petition stood for 25 hours, calling for ACE employees with GC views to be eliminated, hammered, calling those staff nazis and a cancer? But HR director thought it would ‘upset’ the LGBT+ staff if they removed it. Wow.

Not only that, they thought it enabled a good discussion. He apparently took it down when comments became intolerable even to him. Given the petition itself was considered acceptable, one wonders what those comments were.

I wonder how long the petition would have stayed up, if the groups were reversed. Oh wait, no I don't. Most marginalised and vulnerable

I hope some of the examples are in the bundle.

But I can't be any more shocked than I already am about leaving the fucking up in the first place.

And what's the betting that the poor, marginalised, gentle-as-a-lamb LGBT group are made up solely of the TQ+??

So today we have the Deputy CEO thinking it is ok to make discriminatory statements to staff so long as he calls it his personal opinion. And that it is for the Arts Council to be discriminatory because lots of people in the arts are discriminatory. Just like it is ok for the Met police to treat black people badly as lots of police officers are racist…. 🤔

Here

SM: don't see in chat that DF was attacked left right and centre. They disagreed with her. I don't see language used jn chat as inappropriate. Ppl in AC are used to being robust. It's appropriate for me to express personal views provided I make clear they are personal views.

So the deputy chief exec of Arts Council does not feel multiple accusations against a single staff member in a 400 staffer meeting he hosted, was inappropriate.

The deputy chief exec feels that a culture of staff being ‘robust’ against one person’s protected belief is fine and absolutely business as usual.

The deputy chief exec feels he can join in that ‘robust’ mob of accusations against a single staff members protected belief too. Because it’s his personal view.

Can anyone see how a toxic culture with a very one sided view might develop in an organisation?

Talk about "the tail wagging the dog"!

HR departments seem terrified of a bullying subset of staff so let them get away of what would have been led to disciplinaries back in my day.

At what stage did this sort of thing become acceptable?

Of course he would support the same thing if it was reversed wouldn't he? Like hell he would.

The CEO and HR Director seem typical of a type of well salaried, senior gentleman who have jobs for life supported by the public purse, and who will say and do exactly what they like to keep the status quo. Where on earth is the impartiality? Where’s the leadership to host and hold space for respectful debate and funding a breadth of projects that reflect real lives? I despair of the arts just now.

I despair of the incompetents who are employed and paid for out of the public purse.

ET concluded, judgement reserved. So now we wait.

Thought this was apt given the restrictions felt by some, and indeed the restrictions imposed by others in the arts:

The Undoing

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

The canvass left blank
What would you have us paint?
What rules should we follow?
How should we be restrained?

The clay never moulded
The pattern left uncut
The melody left unsung
The dance shoes that never strut

The film never developed
The stitching left undone
THAT scene never performed
The audience that didn’t come

Creativity left untouched
Sadness fills the space
Speech and expression chained
No freedom, no movement, no grace

Whose permission must we seek
to undo all of the undone?

To say our words, to dance our dance
To sing our song, to express and paint Without rules - just freedom, joy
Our will to create

I'm late catching up with this thread. The full exchange on the morning of day three was hilarious. The bolding is mine and I've tidied up some of the spelling and punctuation:

PM: Paul Holmes [PH] prefers to be called 'they'.
AP: PH isn't here is he?
PM: No.
AP: Are you suggesting I'm being disrespectful?
PM: No, I'm just saying he preferred to [be referred to] as they?
J: Can we refer to him as Paul?
AP: I'll try.
AP: Paul Holmes says he...right...
PM: I'm aware it's difficult.
AP: Paul Holmes clearly referencing DF?
PM: He was asked that and he did say yes.
PM: When Paul was presented with this [they all looking [sic] at bundle pages],
AP: That was in relation to email exchange. I was talking of spreadsheet which went to several 100 members of staff.
PM: Are you talking about his comments on petition now?
[...]
PM: He's saying that of trans and Non binary
(Missed)
PM: I agree which is why he was disciplined.
PM: just found a bit in his meeting. He says. Paul stated comments weren't directed to one person specifically. Paul addresses cancer comment.
AP: It's about as credible as the other denials isn't it?
PM: We have to take at face value and PM received disciplinary action.
AP: When you say face value do you mean you have to believe them?
PM: No...about applying sanction or not. Not like criminal case and have to establish proof. Accounts are sufficient. We don't accuse staff of being liars. He was pressed hard on this. Paul didn't realise full staff email.
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230522134855/pingthread.com/thread/1660564301046792193" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20230522134855/pingthread.com/thread/1660564301046792193

So PM makes a point of saying to the tribunal that Paul Holmes , who isn't present, has a preferred pronoun and then uses "he" and "his" more times than anyone else... What a farce!

Exactly @TheBiologyStupid

This dickhead gets to dictate the language that people use when he isn't even present, for Christ's sake.
And everyone else has to tie themselves in knots to appease him; and mangle basic English grammar to keep him sweet.

Well, fuck that.

My 18 year old niece expects the same nonsense. But I won't play along. She's barking up the wrong tree with me expecting me to play along.
She's a good kid, bless her, but still no.

didlaw.com/denise-fahmy-v-arts-council-england

Posted by Naomi Cunningham on Twitter.

That’s great news for Denise.