The chair of SEEN is being sued.

[PriOn1]

We can’t post Crowdfunder links here, but there is now a Crowdfunder entitled “Chair of SEEN sued for saying 'only women menstruate'by Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley”

Text from website:

Who are you?
I'm Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley. I work for an arms-length body to a government department (part of the Civil Service) and love my job. I'm also gender critical, and chair of a governmental department SEEN (Sex Equality and Equity Network). SEEN represents those who are gender critical in our workplace.
What can you tell us?
The way I describe the case is restrained by my situation. I am writing this in a personal capacity, but am still employed and must comply with my employer's code of conduct and the Nolan Principles of Public Life. This places certain restrictions on me.
I’ve given as much information as I can, but I hope that what I set out below is sufficient to understand what’s going on.
So what happened?
I work for an arms-length body to the main government department. The case has been brought by a claimant who is an employee of another arms-length body. The claimant is taking their own employer, the government department and me to court.
Among other matters, the claimant is suing the government department for allowing our departmental SEEN network to exist (on the basis that the existence of the network has the effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and/or offensive environment for the claimant).
What is the SEEN network?
SEEN (the Sex Equality and Equity Network) is an official cross-governmental staff network. We also have networks in three government departments (including the one being taken to court). SEEN is known as the gender critical network and is the only civil service network that clearly treats sex and sexual orientation as concepts defined in the Equality Act, which should never be conflated with or replaced by ‘gender identity’.

There’s an update on the Crowd Justice page.

Time for a little more gardening.

In the diary for next payday.

Bookmarking

Bump.
I planted a carrot seed.

The remedies sound nuts if I have interpreted Elspeth's update correctly - a written apology for saying you can't change sex?
But.
You can't.

Just dug again. Got to stop this nonsense now.

will be digging when i get paid next week.

Pension paid today, so gardened. Isn’t it crackers that old ladies like me, who thought things would get better for women over their lifetimes, are having to do this?

Have planted a few flowers.

Those potential remedies:

"If the Tribunal were to grant these remedies, this would likely result in:

Disciplinary action being brought against me for gender critical statements made at work, such as ‘only women menstruate’.

The disbanding of SEEN in our department, and potentially across the entire government.

Changes in policy designed to effectively silence gender critical views at work.

That I and others be obliged to write an unequivocal letter of apology to the claimant for stating that sex is binary and immutable, for setting up a network championing the importance of sex based protections in the workplace, and for making straightforward gender critical statements such as stating ‘only women menstruate’ during a seminar on Women and Autism.

These remedies would impact me directly, but not only me: they would significantly impact our members across the department, and potentially everyone gender critical within the Civil Service. This would be an end to the SEEN network, and to our ability to organise, meet and provide support to our members to lawfully manifest our protected beliefs in the workplace. It could potentially have a chilling effect on other SEEN organisations."

So they are looking for extra funding to be actively involved (for which permission has been granted) to "to call a witness, to cross examine the claimant's witnesses and to make legal submissions to the Tribunal to resist this attempt to bully and silence us and to disband our network."

Have done some planting - unfortunately getting to be an expensive hobby.

It would also mean that the whole biology curriculum would need to be rewritten in schools. Medical textbooks would also need to be rewritten. The nation would have to be re-educated. Perhaps they could do big screens in public places big-brother style. Or a public announcement on the BBC?

It explains quite a lot about all the things going wrong in the country if the civil service is spending its time forcing apologies from women stating biological fact. Rather than doing their job.

I work for a different ALB to Elspeth (but come under the same umbrella organisation) and I am terrified about what will happen if the claimant wins their case. The self-appointed 'allies' harass people with impunity, and this case has come about because of people like Elspeth who are brave enough to push back against it. Hopefully the claimant will lose and then sanity will be restored.

I will do the necessary again when I get paid.

And it's great if employees will be protected from getting the sack for saying true things but surely we want government policy to also be based on evidence and not ideology?

It's so disturbingly orwellian

Or a public announcement on the BBC?

Don't give them ideas!

Real movie poster. From 1956. Look at the arm band. I know sex has a double meaning but quite apt. Mole just needs to replace the man and women kissing with a SEEN logo and ecstasy with reality.

Parsnip seeds planted (so I can make stout with the proceeds! 😀).

This seems to me a really scary turn of events. It's a good thing there's already plenty of successful tribunal and court cases, I guess that must help.

I'm having an ironic chuckle about DEFRA of all departments,being told that mention of biological sex and all it entails being transphobic. DEFRA whose raison de etre was farming. I can't wait to see all the official edicts being issued dealing with bulls,cows,ewes,tups, artificial insemination ect,without using pesky sex based language.

The apology remedy just smacks of over-reach: “you WILL comply.” It allows no room for freedom of thought or expression and is scientifically illiterate. How is that even reasonable in terms of fundamental human rights legislation? You can’t compel belief. Well, not in a democratic society anyway.

I think the Defra SEEN was the first 'chapter' established after the Civil Service-wide one. They've had nothing but push back and excessive scrutiny, a band of 'allies' monitor every post and every utterance from SEEN to see if they can complain about it. Management are in thrall to the ideology and only tolerate SEEN because they have to. It's horrible what Elspeth and team have been put through.

It's also annoying that the general public has pretty much no idea about all this crap going on in the Civil Service. How a small clique can just take over. It brought to mind those early episodes of the Handmaid's Tale, when they flashback to 'how it all started', and they were still sat in cafes drinking lattes, but there were a few little rules coming in...

The previous Defra Perm Sec has a trans identified child, and worked closely with a:gender.

This is so often the case. See the now sacked senior civil servant at the DfE whp was allowed to fund and enable Stonewall and the other trans extremist groups to wreak havoc in schools.
What is the point of the Nolan Principles of Public Life if civil servants are free to accept rewards from their mates in lobby groups in return for funding and political influence?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life

So much damage being done with zero accountability for actions

I attended a presentation on 'gender euphoria' by a:gender (the Civil Service trans staff network) and the chair said she was born intersex which meant she was neither male nor female.

The presenters were mainly female, identifying as trans or non-binary, and there was one transwoman. The overall impression I was left with was that the 'euphoria' happened when they successfully duped or coerced people into stating they were indeed a different sex to the sex they all very obviously were. It all seemed to be so deceitful. But then I am a middle-aged utter terf (a silent one at work because reasons) so what do I know?