Update from Jo Phoenix

[Imnobody4]

Sorry can't find the previous thread. I thought someone might like to attend. 18 witnesses!! Bet that's just a tactic to intimidate.

https://twitter.com/JoPhoenix1/status/1692558010323702045?t=O8s-xIF3iu564FVwyaYEhg&s=19

NEWSFLASH

45 days to go.

I received news this week that the venue for my hearing has changed. It is now at Watford Tribunal Centre, 2nd floor, Radius House, 51 Clarendon Road, Watford. It will be in an open court (i.e. members of the public are allowed to attend). The dates remain the same.

The case starts on 2nd October with reading and preliminary issues. Evidence-giving starts on 3rd October. At present, I still do not know the exact number of witnesses the OU is calling. In the preliminary case hearing, the OU's representative claimed that they would like to call 18. We are scheduled to exchange witness statements at the end of next week (25th August) and it is then that I will know if all of those 18 witnesses are, indeed, being called to give evidence.

You are right @PronounssheRa . We are actually celebrating the re-establishment of normal rights and common-sense... and yet without the courage of people like Jo and Maya and Alison and the funding of 'little' women this could all have been lost.

I've just had this conversation with DH.

I cancelled subscriptions to be able to donate to JP's crowdfunder when she needed another round of money. (Who needs a newspaper or Apple TV.)

I'm pleased we can but I am angry that women have to do this. And even angrier that we are vilified for it.

But, Dworkin.

Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who use to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with any more. It doesn't matter who the individual women are. -- Andrea Dworkin

Fantastic news. The tribunal's comments on some of the OU witnesses are very perceptive indeed. I'm surprised that they were so scathing. Is it normal for a tribunal panel / judge to do this?
Oh to be a fly on the walk in the OUs staffroom/ HR/ legal departments.

The judgement is long but para 600 onwards is where much of the interesting stuff is.

The OU staff come out of this very badly.
On the open letter

'We infer from Dr Downes’ motivations in respect of her contribution and signing of the letter and the content of the
Open Letter, that they were motivated to create a hostile environment for the Claimant. There was certainly no need to publish the document online, it just contributed to the pile on. We therefore consider that publication of the Open Letter was conduct that created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the Claimant'

What a horrible horrible environment they created for Jo.

I wonder if anyone at the OU will have an “are we the bad guys?” moment here

looking forward to the guardian giving it extensive coverage - I mean they’re bound too right? 😆

On the LGBT+ network

' But we accept the Claimant’s
sense that the LGBT+ staff network was hostile to her which she did not
expect, coming from an LGBT+ staff network that she was a member of and
was supposed to support her.'

On Professor Keogh

'He made this clear in his private letter 29 June 2021 that this was his desire. He had a problem with the Claimant because of her gender
critical views. Professor Keogh’s position on Forstater made it clear to us that there were no circumstances in which Professor Keogh would accept the expression of gender critical beliefs at the OU without considering them harmful or unacceptable'

And

'In our judgment, the statement contained in Professor Keogh’s email “The
issue is that the network are actually sharing transphobic views and
materials on their website” was unwanted conduct related to the Claimant’s
gender critical belief as the use of the term transphobic in relation to gender
critical views is being used as a term of insult. We consider that the inherent
ad hominem nature of calling someone transphobic as well as Professor
Keogh’s professed views on gender critical beliefs as harmful meant that
the purpose of the conduct was to violate the Claimant’s dignity'

I wonder if the OU will take any action against all their staff who have been found variously to have engaged is hostility, harassment, violating others dignity.

I hope this does stir a rethink at the OU.
They have not been behaving like the good guys. They should be better than this!

The judgement shows that they were represented in the tribunal by people who felt the need to cover things up.

I wonder if the OU will take any action against all their staff who have been found variously to have engaged is hostility, harassment, violating others dignity.

I (genuinely) wonder if the OU is offering staff (witnesses and the hundreds who signed that wretched Open Letter) a support line. I wonder if those who are contacting it are howling and urging the OU to appeal because the cognitive dissonance and fracturing of their certainty in representing The Right Side of History is too much to bear.

Sonia Sodha:

https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1749487075798245621?t=NamMkYTXL_d48bfzjHU2xw&s=19

the use of the term transphobic in relation to gender
critical views is being used as a term of insult. We consider that the inherent
ad hominem nature of calling someone transphobic as well as Professor
Keogh’s professed views on gender critical beliefs as harmful meant that
the purpose of the conduct was to violate the Claimant’s dignity

Interesting. Particularly considering today's discussion of not accepting someone's stated self definition being 'transphobic' and 'hate' in court. It's not washing, is it?

Dr downes again.

"just a heads up that the@OpenUniversity have just launched their
own transphobic/TERF/GC campaign network.”
Dr Downes and Dr Snarey both tweeted and or retweeted this. We do
consider that these tweets were directed at the Claimant, and we find that
the reference to transphobic and TERF is associating the Claimant directly
with being transphobic. The tweet was in breach of the Respondent’s
bullying & harassment policy and amounted to derogatory name calling.

I am only up to para 374. I am struck by how much went on in the last couple of weeks in June 2021. Poor Jo. The use of "pile on" is huge.
A particularly awful part is at para 248 where the judgement finds the OU didn't take the death threats Jo received as seriously as would be expected. No evidence they were referred to the police!

Many thanks for the extracts from the judgment and I'm so happy for Prof Phoenix. I was able to follow some of this at the time and found it very upsetting - can only imagine what it was like for her.

The theme that runs through all this is that the majority of the witnesses for the "trans ideology" side come over as utter muppets. Barristers in the Allison Bailey case, managers in social work, academics in the OU all telling lies, dissembling and bullying - consistently evidenced in the tribunals.

While there appear to be no consequences for those who bully and lie from their employers the reputations of individuals and organisations like to OU, Garden Court Chambers, Social Work England, Westminster Council and the rest are in tatters.

Quite unbelievable - and scary given how powerful institutions like this can be so easily captured by an incoherent and dangerous ideology.

Meanwhile the terraces are ringing with: 🎼There's only one... Jo Phoenix, there's only one... Jo Phoenix... 🎼

Busy wracking my brains for more football chants that can have Jo Phoenix or Ben Cooper KC written into the lyrics.

We all remember this triumphalist paper about the academics who crowed about bringing down a former PVC of the OU? Whose names are familiar to us from the witness list?

In discussing the events leading up to the resignation of the former Open University Vice Chancellor in April 2018, we focus on the enactment of a form of resistance against proposals for the university through a WhatsApp group, enabling rapid information exchange, discussion of tactics and concrete planning for action. We suggest our group – ‘the Hive’ – was unusual because, first, it countered the politically quiescent trend in academia to comply (at least outwardly) with neoliberalisation, and/or only to write about it, as opposed to mounting challenges. Second, the Hive was virtual, comprising various staff categories, including people based off-campus; it operated almost entirely online and many members had never met face-to-face. This for us evokes notions of the multitude. Third, the group exemplifies alternative forms of solidarity and resistance in other ways, being non-hierarchical, highly pluralist and non-exclusionary. Finally, our Hive provided a supportive, caring space for resisters, which we suggest emerged partly through members’ love for the distinctive social mission of The Open University – although our story also provides hope for harnessing similar emotions within other academic institutions.

Bowes-Catton, H., Brewis, J., Clarke, C., Drake, D. H., Gilmour, A., & Penn, A. (2020). Talkin’’bout a revolution? From quiescence to resistance in the contemporary university. Management Learning, 51(4), 378-397.

Shall we see a companion paper about their initial success in ousting Jo Phoenix followed by this hubris at the hands of an ET? Set to music would be a good touch. Possibly performed in a major building of the OU? That would be grand.

Yep.

I hope this makes a big splash and thereafter a LOT of ripples.

Is it clear enough yet how the direction of travel is going?

And including the women who think that they are men, because they too have suffered under male supremacy in the past, even if they've managed since to create a personal escape plan. If that plan falls through in the future (e.g. they are outed amongst dangerous men) then they will suffer under male supremacy again.

Remember that aristocratic transmen cannot inherit an absolute male primogeniture peerage (some Scots peerages are male-preference primogeniture but they are few compared to the number of English peerages and are still male-first) and some 90 seats in the Lords are still reserved for hereditary peers.

Men only let women usurp male privilege as far as it suits them to. The peerage exemption to the GRA is proof of this.

YEEEEESSSSSSS!!!

I work in a university and I am so pleased to see this judgement. Well done Jo! What an awful experience you went through. I was also pleased to see the references to "Forstater" throughout the judgement - it truly was a landmark case.

Telegraph reporting on this:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/22/open-university-gender-critical-jo-phoenix-tribunal/

You've reminded me of the moment in which West is listening to her husband having an intense political argument with a Yugoslavian.

Just then my eye was caught by two large, loosely formed spheres in neutral colours, one blackish grey, the other brownish black. These were the behinds of two peasant women who were employed by the municipalities to weed the flower-beds at the corners of the square. They were being idiots, private persons in the same sense as the nurse in my London nursing-home, who was unable to imagine why the assassination of King Alexander should perturb anybody but his personal friends. They were paid to pull up weeds, and they wanted the money, so they continued to pull them up, even when the students raised a shout and brought some gendarmes down on them not fifteen yards away. As I looked at those devoted behinds, bobbing up and down over their exemplary task, and the smug face of the automatic rebel, I thanked God for the idiocy of women, which must in many parts of the world have been the sole defender of life against the lunacy of men.

Women everywhere can be grateful to the courage and idiocy of women who defend us all "against the lunacy of men".

Utterly shit statement from the OU

https://ounews.co/uncategorized/statement-on-employment-tribunal-ruling/

We are deeply concerned about the wellbeing of everyone involved in the case and acknowledge the significant impact it has had on Professor Phoenix, the witnesses and many other colleagues.

my bold. Have they not read the judgement?

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻