Wonderful Sonia Sodha article in the observer

[GoodOldEmmaNess]

'Vindictive, cowardly leaders bowed to the gender bullies and failed Jo Phoenix'
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/28/jo-phoenix-open-university-court-victory-gender-sex-based-womens-rights

Excellent article. I heard Phoenix interviewed on Radio 4, and what happened to her was just awful.

I shared this article with my husband. He stopped part way through to come and tell me how good it was.

Thank you for link.

Fabulous article.

I thought this was particularly pertinent:
’Leaders have left a vacuum in organisational culture that gets filled in by a small number of domineering bullies’.

Was it Julie Burchill who made up the term cry bullies? It fits these types perfectly.

Sorry to just post the link, without any useful comment on the situation. It's just this massive sense of relief when sensible, obvious, but often unsayable things are articulated with such clarity - and allowed to be published. Plus an additional wave of relief that we may be reaching a critical mass of such truth-saying, with these recent tribunals and the coverage of them. I wanted to express and share that relief by posting.
Plus I love reading the many very informed posts from legally minded women on here who are more across the details than me.

Great to see this in guardian/ observer as well, the have been dire in this issue at times.

This is a fantastic article - thanks for pointing it out.

and the OU gave a statement without apology, implying that they were still right? Unbelievable.

GrandmaMazur, I don't think that Julie made up 'cry bullies' as it's a term that I've read for a few years now on various bits of the internet. She has used it very astutely in a recent article though. :)

Their second statement once they'd read the whole judgement (and presumably consulted lawyers) was markedly different in tone.

I agree the second statement from the OU was very different. Great article - shame it's only in comments rather than opinion, and no doubt there will plenty of 'cry bully' responses. But it does seem as if the tide is slowly turning.

Fantastic article, along with Janice Turner's in The Times (another thread below)

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4994362-janice-turner-on-jo-phoenix-win

Thanks, DisappearingGirl. Another very good article.

I think Sonia Sodha is now my favourite journalist. That article is just superb.

Response to Sonia Sodha article in the Observer

Stand up to the bulliesThe issues raised in Jo Phoenix’s judgment should ring alarm bells with leaders of political parties, which, like universities, are bound by the Equality Act to treat members and employees fairly (“Vindictive, cowardly leaders bowed to the gender bullies and failed Jo Phoenix”).

The judgment is clear: belief in the material, social and political salience of sex is not bigoted, and organisations that facilitate the denigration and harassment of those who hold such a belief are engaging in unlawful discrimination. Yet in our parties – Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party – gender-critical members continue to face a hostile environment, including smears, abuse, intimidation and administrative attempts to justify or engineer our expulsion.

The Labour party now explicitly supports upholding the single-sex exceptions in the Equality Act, but those who express their support for this policy still face vilification. In a recent act of self-harm, the party suspended its local byelection candidate in Hackney just days before the election, after apparently mistaking her support for women’s rights (Labour policy) with transphobia.

Until party leaders find the courage to stand up to the gender totalitarians, incidents like this – which both damage parties’ credibility and leave them legally vulnerable – are bound to continue.

Lynn Alderson, Labour Women’s Declaration; Zoe Hatch and Emma Bateman, Green Women’s Declaration; Zoe Hollowood, Liberal Voice for Women

After letters about Navy https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2024/feb/04/what-did-the-navy-do-for-me-everything-observer-letters