Being defamed on Teams - what do I do

[Anglophobia]

I am being - effectively - trolled by someone on a Teams chat which was the result of a seminar, so has 100+ people on it. I gave the seminar. I am not in the organisation, everyone else is.

Now this is clearly someone having a mental health crisis (and a white middle aged man who couldn't deal with having his entitlement challenged). And so I am not rising to it. But he has doubled down, twice, and the organisation is talking about using 'appropriate discussion' but has not defended me. He's calling me a bigot and an extremist and in his latest missive, this morning - four days after the seminar - has compared me to Hitler.

Specifically he said that I have no qualification in this area: I have tons and that I did not refer to any peer-reviewed research in this area which is not true. I want the organisation to correct this on the chat and then delete him, because 100 people need to know that this is not true.

I want to escalate this with HR (?) or the Chief Executive, but are you going to tell me that I just need to ignore it?

It's also worth noting that this seminar was to cover a massive gap in the organisations knowledge which was completely shocking, in an area to do with equalities and inclusion.

Absolutely escalate to his manager, your manager and HR.

So to clarify
You are an outside expert brought in to speak about a subject to an organisation. This man and everyone else in the group all work for the same company and he is saying things about you that are offensive and/or factually incorrect?
If this is the case then you need to speak to whoever asked for your involvement and if you get no joy there I would consult a solicitor and your professional body if you have one

This is the kind of thing that would happen to me.
Well, similar has happened.

It's a touchy subject so feedback can be more of a venting than anything I can use to improve the training.
It bears no relation to my actual work.
Eg I include resources for when x group disclose y experience. Feedback 'super doesn't care about x experiencing y'.

It's tedious.

Can you opt out of the teams notifications somehow?

If you're not employed by the organisation, I don't think you can go to HR - you'd need to complain to someone in the business, whether the person's manager, procurement/whoever is in charge of your contract, or the Chief Exec. (Or all of them).

If he is "clearly" having a mental health crisis then I would be raising it as that - this person needs help, how are you going to help them.

If not and that's you surmising, then I would focus on (a) the incorrect claims (b) the effect of the bullying and harassment on you and (c) the fact that they are liable as the comments are on the business's servers.

I wouldn't ignore it either way.

I'm not sure you need to be as 'charitable' to describe thuis guy as having a mental breakdown of some sort. Plenty of social media shows many men have no compunctions about using this sort of language when politely asked to consider issues of privilege.

But yes, do raise with the organisation, this sort of thing shouldn't be allowed to stand.

We had an interested discussion in my work Diversity & Inclusion group from a woman who did seminars about the topic and she said there are just some people who just do not want to be brought along with the discussion and they will weed themselves out of an organisation once they realise they are not in tune with its values, so it's not worth wasting too much energy on them. But this sounds worth a complaint.

Wow, that is really bad. It could be discriminatory and hate speech.

Were you doing this on behalf of your organisation or as an individual? If you are employed, speak to your own organisation. If you are not employed, then yes, do a formal complaint to their chief executive. Mention you will deal with it legally if you are not satisfied.

If they dont get a complaint from you, they may not do much and assume you can't see it or that you aren't offended.

Take screenshots. Maybe get legal advice too.

Thank you. You are all very reassuring.

Am just writing email to the person who booked me - I'm a freelancer. Am asking for them to counteract the actual untruths; have said they need to sort it by 5pm or I will escalate.

Will post a choice excerpt or two:

"What your speaker did was exactly the kind of manipulative propaganda that is currently replacing serious academic debate in Russia now. It is not acceptable for [this org] to present this propaganda as fact, and it is not acceptable to try to censor me for pointing the factual inaccuracies and lack of balance in a speaker."

" Ms XXX has no more credentials for her thesis than Hitler had for Mein Kampf, yet [redacted] would not allow him a platform under the umbrella of inclusivity. I find it ironic that you have attempted to silence and censure me for daring actually to discuss the issues, which I was under the impression the sessions were meant to be about. I shall be raising a formal complaint against you and [this org] for failing to screen your speaker for accuracy and honesty, for failing to adhere to [this org's]* code of conduct, and for unnecessarily exposing me to harassment in the workplace."

He has also accused me of lying repeatedly.

• post edited by MNHQ at OP's request

HA! no, I also got pulled up for not being Trans inclusive.

It's actually about inclusivity in general, trying to persuade a mostly science based organisation that thinking about the cultural background to what they do is also important in increasing their reach.

Definitely get their employer on it. It's deeply unprofessional and if they are a civil servant they'll be hauled over the coals.

Usually in the contract between your company and their company there is a clause around duty of care / treatment of contractors - sounds like they are breaching their contract

If this guy is working for any of the big/decent professional services companies complain to whoever contracted you.

Just not on - and do not engage whatever you do.

It sounds as though they may have been trying to deal with it if he's accusing them of censorship?

I've had a reply and they agree with all my points (that he is posting untruths and these need addressing). I will let you know what happens next.

The reason I mentioned mental health crisis is that most of what he is posting is illogical nonsense - I actually found it quite hard to excerpt anything to put on here.

I've been a freelance trainer brought in by an organisation to try to shift attitudes in a department that was resisting in-house efforts. In my case it was in an all-male FE department that was basically sticking two fingers up to attempts to open it up to women and girls. I got loads of abuse and complaints, which I fed back to the FE college as a way of confirming how deep the problem went. I think if you're this bothered by a single complainant you're not cut out for the work, frankly. You need to be a bit more robust.

I'm astonished that you've felt fit to decide that someone who clearly doesn't agree with you has mental health issues, and to cite his sex and colour as part of that. That's not a professional response and it undermines everything else you say.

Give us an idea of what the training was about, would you? I think all responses will be based on that.

If you're training people in, say, a new set of protocols for a medical procedure then clearly he needs to be tackled and flagged. If you're telling him that people can be born in the wrong body and citing rubbish statistics from small unregulated internet surveys which have been promoted as accurate by Stonewall or Mermaids then maybe you need to listen to what he's saying. Because perhaps he's saying what the rest of them were thinking but were too polite to say.

@Useranon1 I think that's because they put something on the chat about appropriate behaviour.

But now they need to defend me.

It might have been simpler had he not bothered to attend the equalities talk in the first place and avoided all this trouble.

Without doubt there is a huge amount of propaganda forced down the throats of employees under the guise of training, who would be better off earning profits for the company these days and the company might find a better thing for the future might be not to put on the training.

The trans issue is similar - workers are utterly incensed and it boils over sometimes, with a lot of the talks to which they are subjected and only allowed to have one right view as the MN feminism.

However anything defamatory should be removed.

We have a guy in my office who didn't like being challenged on his archaic belief system. He would often say - it is not about who the person is just that we get the most experienced person for the job.

Now due to years of systematic racism the 'most experienced person' is the person who has been afforded the better opportunities, education, support etc...so actually it is not a fair judgement of the best person for the job.

But he is still allowed a very public platform to voice his opinion which in my view is damaging.

I'm interested to see how they address this. He's clearly angry at both you and his org.

@Xenia. It was on inclusion, for a group of people who work in inclusion. Anyone else who attended was there voluntarily.

I've been trying to think of a constructive way of dealing with this. How about asking him to detail his objections in writing? He's accused you of lying: ask him to tell you what lies you told. Ask him to produce evidence to counter the evidence you cited and if he can't or won't, ask the organisation to delete his comments.

It'll give you an idea of whether he really does know what he's talking about or not. As an 'expert' it's useful to understand and know about the alternative points of view. You can then develop material to counter those points in future training sessions.

Organisation are on it, agree with everything I put to them (that I am being defamed and they need to defend me) and will get back to me later this afternoon.

@Pluvia - not ignoring you, didn't see the first comment on my phone.

I don't want to give exact details about what I was doing but it was none of those kind of things. I'm not a trainer, it was a seminar, entirely optional - imagine like an author coming to talk about their work which is relevant to the organisation but more about opening up questions and perspectives rather than saying anything didactic at all. In fact I made a point of that at the very start.

Write to the company saying he either retracts or you take legal action.