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?

Hope it goes well OP. So much great advice on here.
I wonder if the complainant has got wind of you being GC and is looking for way to trip you up.
I can tell from your responses that you will be careful and not drawn in to any other subject, go nowhere near trans
If it goes the way of nothing offensive , then I'd be asking about how they will report it and ask for copy of anything that will go in your file, and dispute anything you are not happy with
I'd be cautious in case the complainant gets riled and tries something else later. It's shit you have to think that way

I’m a women i dont feel offended. Its crazy how people are so sensitive nowadays. Its the truth. You stating the truth.

All the best for today. Keep to the point, say no more than you need to x

Good luck today xxx

We are all stood beside you 💚🤍💜

Strength to you today @Grubble

Let them do the talking.

Good luck today! It’s madness that you’re having to endure this.

Thinking of you today @Grubble

I just cannot believe this is where we're at on this - women being hauled to disciplinaries because they dare to even remotely refer to biological sex differences. It's truly Orwellian and it makes me angrier than I'm able to articulate.

I'm glad we can discuss these things on mumsnet but I also think they've contributed to this sinister climate with their censorship of certain words and ideas.

I agree with the posters suggesting a counter complaint against the little weasel who's behind this, but I also completely understand why you wouldn't want to. Solidarity.

Thank you so much for this

It does sound like a vexatious complaint to shit stir. But it isn’t a disciplinary at this stage, just a discussion. See how it goes first and then go from there.

Is the person known for making spurious complaints? I wonder if they are more often directed at one group of people in particular? Funny how many people know what a woman in those cases.

This. a million billion trillion times this.

Good luck. Standing with you 💚🤍💜

Clearly i am doing 'Womanning' all wrong, where is this conversations and preening in loos? really? Never seen it. This echoes the frankly perverse comments of some transwomen saying they carry around tampons in case any woman needs one.

You are talking about someone dressing up as a woman, fine, but that does not change biology of that person, nor does it change their strength/performance/characteristics.

I too have no problem with people dressing/living how they want to, but we do need to be clear that this freedom to wear/dress/live as they wish does not change biology.

It does not give them the right to enter a private space for others.

It doesn't give them the right to obliterate all the performance records in female sport, or injure female players. This never happens the other way around because females are not as strong/fast etc as males. We will never be equal in terms of performance or strength. that will never change. It's not a matter of females needing to try harder, train more. It's biology.

@countrypunk its not a disciplinary interview.

HR are not psychic, mind readers, clairvoyant or time travellers. If a complaint is received the bare minimum is to ask the other persons version of events.

@countrypunk why pour accelerant on before you have allowed HR to fairly resolve the complaint?

This immediate rush to inflame the situation is not helping anyone.

Why do we have female spaces? In general it’s for safety. Safety from what? In general it’s from men.

Letting them in for the chitchat is also letting the few who want to hurt us in to hurt us. See the stats above. What about all the females who now cannot use those toilets/ changing rooms due to religion or previous abuse?

What about letting them in the bed next to you in hospital? If you’re bed bound and it takes nurses half an hour to respond to your call because they’re busy. Are you happy with that? Because they want to be a woman? Nothing will happen right? Wrong, see the woman who was sexually assaulted in a hospital bed then gaslit by the hospital for a year because “there were no men on the ward”. That was a transwoman.

What about letting them share your prison cell? When they are in prison for sexual assault, GBH or other physical offences? Or do women in prison deserve that because they committed an offence themselves?

Non contact sports - your daughter spends 20+ hours a week training to be a swimmer. Including getting up at 5am three days a week. They give up a social life, they put everything into their swimming. They are the fastest in the country in their best race. But a transwoman comes along. They are physically male. Males are physically significantly faster than females at swimming when doing the same training, however much natural talent the female has. So the transwoman gets the gold medal. Your daughter gets the silver, still good but how is that fair?

All the above because a man feels like a woman so we have to give up all our spaces for their feelings.

You seem to be thinking about all this, I recently found the sex and gender board and went from thinking about it to learning about it. If you are interested I highly recommend it.

I expect the thread has moved on in the time it’s taken me to type this but please think about what you are happy to give away.

What about letting them in the bed next to you in hospital? If you’re bed bound and it takes nurses half an hour to respond to your call because they’re busy. Are you happy with that? Because they want to be a woman? Nothing will happen right? Wrong, see the woman who was sexually assaulted in a hospital bed then gaslit by the hospital for a year because “there were no men on the ward”. That was a transwoman.

Just to be clear, the attacker was a transwoman not the victim.

Or maybe they were a man who was pretending to be a transwoman to get access to womens spaces? Who knows? Same end result.

Good luck! You’ve said nothing offensive.

Hello everyone - an update. I didn't know whether to start a new thread or not.

I appreciate everyone’s advice so much. Honestly, I told DP on Monday that I’d asked MN for help and he said “Did you get anything useful?”. And I just broke down in tears, wailing “They’re all such lovely women, I love MN. So much help”. THANK YOU ALL! The advice was amazing but just feeling you lovely ladies right there behind me was absolutely strengthening. Thank you.

So, I just had my ‘bollocking’ meeting. It was a whole load of absolutely nothing 😂It was only 15 minutes. I was so stressed on Monday and didn’t sleep at all last night. The HR lady that I spoke to on Monday made it seem as though me being offensive had been decided but that wasn’t the way the meeting went at all. They weren’t even after squeezing an apology out of me really. They wanted my version of things which they said chimed with the person who’d raised the concern – they didn’t actually tell me who it was. I took a witness with me.

Turns out the potentially ‘offensive’ thing was my speaking in a very generalised way about men and women. The concern raised was talking in a very generalised, homogenising way that some people might find offensive. The person who raised the concern wasn’t offended themselves apparently, but felt my comments could be offensive to some people. Who the some people are was never elaborated on <side eye emoji>

I replied that I wasn't sharing my personal perspective but talking about sports policies and regulations which, yes, are grounded in generalisations about male and female biology but other generalisations too about weight, age, skill-level etc. These generalisations are for the purposes of safety, not value judgements, and rooted in extensive and reputable research on male and female differences (I had so much research at hand from so many sources – thank you everyone and especially Emma Hilton!!). I had the gym policy to hand – getting hold of that’s a whole other story!! 😆

I asked what specific policies or aspects of the EA I’d broken. It was confirmed none but HR had to follow-up on concerns in this, and I quote, “very sensitive area”.

Fuck off – a few years ago, a friend of mine was bullied badly while pregnant, because she was pregnant. But HR did fuck all. Maybe not sensitive enough

And that was it. It’s not going any further. The HR lady said “We all need to be careful when talking about things gender-related” but that was it. I didn’t reply. I was very tempted to say “Actually I was talking about sex, not gender” but I didn’t. I was very mindful of your advice that silence is my friend. Anyway, it wasn’t directed at me – like you need to be careful, more of a general comment. Meh.

I made the point at the end of the meeting that the email and the call with the lady on Monday had put me under huge stress unnecessarily because of the tone which made the situation seem a lot bigger than it actually is. Not to mention the original complaint itself. I also said that I was very unhappy that I’d had to have that stress because of a conversation about what I do in my free time and another organisation’s policy on those free-time activities. Thanks @Teapot13 for that, really good point. I'm not going down the grievance route.

I made notes, will type them up at home and email them to myself, the witness and my line manager as a record of what happened today. I need to ask HR that this won’t be on my record, forgot to do that in the meeting.

But there’s a twist in the tail: My colleageue who came in with me as a witness said that the guy who (I assume) made the complaint is having a really lengthy HR battle with another colleague happening ATM. I mean like external mediators are involved and apparently a police report about a hate incident or something. He also reported another colleague for racism for really spurious reasons last year. And another colleague was pulled into HR ‘for a word’ at the request of the complainer. I knew nothing about any of this – I keep out of office gossip as much as I can. I knew he was a keyboard warrior and keen to flaunt his woke credentials whenever possible but I didn’t know he’d done so with HR before. So anyway, I suspect HR probably knows the complainer is a troublemaker. I wonder if he’d asked HR to ‘have a word’ with me? That would explain why they didn’t tell me who raised the concern if the guy wasn’t actually wanting to go further than HR dragging me in ‘for a word’. IDK.

I’m breaking up for a fortnight leave today. Can’t fucking wait. Fuck them all.

But thank you all.

Sorry that was a massive post - just wanted to get all the detail in there.

TLDR: All your advice was amazing, no further action's being taken. I'm counting down to my annual leave

Enjoy it! Glad that’s the outcome (not that it would be anything else) but so angry you’ve been put through stress. Sounds like it’s a box ticking exercise though. Yep. Dealt with that. Box ticked.

That's great OP, and sounds like you handled it brilliantly. Enjoy your leave!

There's a similar man at my work. He reported a security guard recently for completely spurious reasons. It's completely enraging. Everyone tiptoes around him which just emboldens him further.

Fantastic.

I repeat my previous advice which is to make it obvious that you are being careful when he is around- not tiptoeing around him but stating loudly "sorry I can't talk about my sport. Someone reported me last time. Sorry I can't tell you what I'm doing at the weekend. I'd hate someone to get the wrong end of the stick and report me again. I won't ask you where you went on holiday in case we accidentally say something to get ourselves reported again."

Shut down conversation when he is present.

Fantastic news. He sounds an absolute nightmare for HR. Common sense would be that they could tell him there was nothing to complain about and no they can’t have a word with you. It’s a shame common sense has gone.

Thank you so much @Grubble for updating us. Having been through a more serious process for my views on sex and gender, I know what this can take out of you.

I’m glad you made your point about the toll on you - could you take a few days signed off with stress?

that the guy who (I assume) made the complaint is having a really lengthy HR battle with another colleague happening ATM. I mean like external mediators are involved and apparently a police report about a hate incident or something. He also reported another colleague for racism for really spurious reasons last year. And another colleague was pulled into HR ‘for a word’ at the request of the complainer.

He’s a fucking bully. Why aren’t HR doing their job and looking at the whole picture. How much is this costing? In the toll on colleagues and the actual cash costs.

He sounds like he needs mental health support. Such behaviour is not normal.