Said something 'offensive' about sex/gender at work, meeting on Wednesday. Hand hold and advice needed.

[Grubble]

I've NC and I'm going to change some minor details to avoid outing.

I hope this is the right place to post - I'm after help about the work/employment issues I'm facing, rather than anything to do with the sex/gender debate.

Here goes:
I do MMA and am 'senior level'. The gym I train at is mostly men. Men and women don't spar together. There are only two other 'senior' women at my gym that I can spar with. If we find a class that two of us will be at, we'll both agree to definitely get to that class so we get chance to spar.

Last week, I declined an evening event at work because I'd booked a sparring session with one of these women.

A colleague asked me why I wasn't going to the event. I explained. As I was explaining I said "Obviously men and women don't spar with each other so when there's a chance for me to spar with one of the senior women, I take it".

A couple of other colleagues were standing around and heard the conversation. One of them said "Why obviously?" and I answered - men are bigger, men are heavier, men's bodies are shaped/composed differently, there's lots of holding/grabbing, men can't fully throw themselves into sparring with women so its a bit of a waste of time for them, and ultimately its just gym policy anyway.

Today I've received an email from HR asking me to attend a meeting on Wednesday about 'offensive comments' I made last week. I've followed HR up this morning and they've told me that my 'offensive comments' were about my explanation of men/women not sparring with each other.

The lady in HR said its likely to be a informal chat to identify why my comments were offensive and to 'find a way through' (her exact words). She said it didn't look like there'd be any question of formal disciplinary action.

So, basically I've been summoned to a bollocking.

I've worked here 9 years and have an impeccable record. I've never been told off or had any sort of HR intervention before. So I'm not sure what to do or what to expect. I'm not in a union.

I wonder if anyone has any advice on the situation. What should I expect on Wednesday? How should I handle it? I'm completely clueless. Thank you!

TLDR: Been summoned for a bollocking on Wednesday because I told colleagues why men/women don't spar together at my MMA gym. What should I do?

It's a sad world we live in when biology is offensive.

This is ridiculous.

Apart from saying "mind yer own business", how the fuck else would you answer this question?

Ask HR if they would be willing to compete against a man in MMA, Jesus Christ.

@cannaecookrisotto so if you were HR and an employee made a complaint about another employee using offensive language what would you do?

Act as judge and jury without hearing the other side?

What if the complainant was female and a male employee had used offensive language?

So many posters are going nuclear because HR want to here both sides before deciding what is the appropriate response.

Inflaming the situation is not helping the op.

But they told her that they will explain why her comments are offensive or did I read that wrong?

You've been given some excellent advice here. I hope the meeting goes well and HR are suitably embarrassed for allowing it to get as far as this.

If I'd worked somewhere for 9 years, I wouldnt accept a bollocking from HR. And they'd better have strong legal grounds for dragging me in. So if someone has complained about my "offensive" language, I'd expect HR to define what that language was and let me know what company rule it fell foul of that it deserved investigation.

I think the resolution should be the twattish man apologising to you! He's harassed you.

Unfortunately it’s because many people have had bad experiences! I booked childcare in when my baby was born as there is a waiting period, having read the work policy and the example on our intranet for part time working which described someone working Monday Tuesday Thursday and confirming it wiht my team (big 4). A week after I’d started back when baby was 10 months hr called to say they couldn’t approve the flexible working as it was out of policy, part time days had to be connected. When I said it doesn’t say that on the policy they said well it is. When I said the example illustrating flexi working on the intranet is the same as my work pattern they said oh that example is just for internal positions not client facing (this is bollocks and it was not). I had to escalate back to the partners for them to say our policy doesn’t say that and we can’t say the intranet examples don’t actually apply to our client facing staff without having been really clear about it, and oh my god why would anyone say anything so stupid and think it’s ok. That’s just one example but many people have one of those, hr being computer says no with zero active thinking or consideration that you’re a person and you can’t just change your childcare days that you had to book in nearly a year ago. I know lovely hr people but these experiences do colour your impressions.

@Codlingmoths I agree that is unreasonable, if they had an issue they should have said something when initially considering your request.

If they do persist in requiring you to change ( not that I agree with it), consider switching the Monday to Wednesday. So you work Tuesday Wed Thurs. Most BH fall on a Monday, so whilst you get the same leave you get more days/hours at a time that suits you.

Always remember the mantra:

• Those that can do
• Those that can't teach
• Those that are too shit to teach go into HR

That’s a shit mantra.

Teaching and HR, two jobs where there is a high level of women working in them, why wouldn't there be derogatory mantras about them 🙄

@HectorPlasm I once attended a navel gazing workshop and one senior manager blithely said honestly if my directorate wasn’t in for 3 months I don’t think anyone would notice. HR was in that directorate and said I think they will notice when they don’t get paid!

Yep.

HR sounds like an awful job. Absolutely needed, but never appreciated. I don't know why anyone does it.

For the record, my only interview with HR was extremely helpful. She listened carefully and trod a path between my boss's needs and my own that worked out as well as it could for both of us. It followed an incredibly difficult time in my life and I was very grateful to be listened to with sensitivity, and accommodated as far as I expected and understood to be reasonable.

I hope that helps the HR people who are being beleaguered on this thread.

Hope all goes well at your meeting on Wednesday, it’s ridiculous that they are calling you in for this and you certainly haven’t done anything wrong! People clearly have nothing else to do with their life lol x

Yes good luck, stand strong.

Your point is not a belief it's fact.

Standing with you today @Grubble

Good luck for tomorrow op. I'm in your corner too in spirit!
I used to self defence Karate as a little teenage girl and we light sparred against full grown men to "score a point" against the person next to you. It was appropriate because it was non contact. To have to explain why it would be inappropriate for full contact, especially in MMA would be so mind blowing obvious that it would be almost difficult to put into words without going back to basic birds and bees stuff!

I hope all goes well tomorrow, @Grubble.

FWIW, I am very supportive of transpeople living their best lives and I do recognise transwomen as women on a daily basis. I am not GC like you.

However, when it comes to sport, I also recognise that from a safety POV, it may not be possible for transpeople to compete with people who identify with their birth gender and that transpeople may need their own category or two.

I am supportive of equity, which is not always the same thing as equality. In an ideal world, transwomen would get to do all the same things as women who identified with their gender from birth, but this can't be at the expense of keeping everyone physically safe. We're talking MMA - we can't just consider everyone's feelings. We have to do a risk assessment, and the science is not supportive of transwomen being on an even field when it comes to fighting with cis women.

We clearly have very different opinions, but that doesn't mean I don't agree with you that it would likely be unsafe for you to spar with a transwoman who had undergone puberty as a male. I hope that gives you a bit of comfort that people on the other side of the fence can see this is quite mad, and hopefully this is just a pointless box ticking HR exercise where you clarify what was said, and nothing actually happens because you didn't do anything wrong.

I hope HR put “offensive comments “ in quote marks to demonstrate thAts what the guy said rather than not doing so which would infer they believe you made offensive comments.

do you know which of the guys it was?

I wouldn’t engage on a substantive level. You told a colleague about an activity you’re doing outside of work and now you have to answer to HR?

OP just to give another perspective, I was listening to a sport injury expert on a radio talk show this morning. The subject was womens’ sporting injuries and the discussion was around contact sports, which briefly touched on the subject of mixed sex competition - I hasten to point out that this wasn’t from a trans point of view. She pointed out that women were more likely to receive a concussion than men, simply because the female brain is slightly differently wired - and that certain points in the menstrual cycle put women more at risk from concussion than normal. Breast injury was also discussed and the fact that nearly 40% of women surveyed reporting having had breast injury during contact sports, but that only around 10% had sought medical advice as a result. She was advocating for a lot more research to be done into the long term effects. Not sure if any of this is necessarily relevant to your HR appointment but when I heard the interview, it put me in mind of your post.

In my college every dept had to self audit and grade itself on a regular basis. The only dept that got a grade 1 every time was HR. And it was hopeless. They could never give you answers, they lost people's contracts, they gave wrong figures for VR, etc. etc.
It's not derogatory to call a "grade 1" department useless when they actually are.

That sounds pretty much on all fours with most gender critical people.

Happy to be respectful and call people what they want to be called, let them wear what they want to wear etc but not at the expense of safety.