Two statements competing for most craven newspeak capitulation of the week. First @SEBuitendijk Vice Provost @imperialcollege: "I support academic freedom to debate all ideas on social media. Except this. I will stop engaging with wrongthink in order to promote open discussion"
Then there is @PHMMcr We recognise there are different perspectives. "We encourage debate on all issues. Except this. We will remove expressions of wrongthink from our space in order to invite thought and discussion and be welcoming to all. "
And here is today's #newspeak#cravencapitualtion@andywightman "will engage in respectful dialogue" , apologises for "hurt and distress" caused by attending meeting on wome's sex based rights. "Defends free speech" but woman calling male attacker "he" should be shunned
Also, could women calling out their utter disappointment please fuck off #respectfuldialogue
@andywightman Adding to the thread of apologies . Here the @GreensNSW apologise for publishing an opinion piece by a member stating that women exist as a sex
Adding @TheStage to the #whereisyoubackbone list. There is an issue about which people disagree. So we commissioned two pieces to help people understand both sides .... and for that we apologise.
Here is the perfectly reasonable article by @sarahditum
@sarahditum The article that gave the 'right side of history' view was by @ambermb but she apologised almost as soon as it was published being the wrong kind of person (as a bog standard female) to write an article about whether women's toilets should be made unisex.
@sarahditum@ambermb Apologies and non-apologies..... back in June the @nscpcc appointed Munroe Bergdorf as an ambassador, and then quickly changed their mind when they realised they had not done their due diligence on Bergdorf's suitability bbc.co.uk/news/uk-486434…
This was a failure by @nspcc. It was right they they apologised to Bergdorf for their mishandling, but their first priority must be children, not celebrity hurt feelings, or rainbow branding nspcc.org.uk/what-we-do/new…
Concerns about Bergdorf being linked to the children's charity were serious: inviting children to make contact directly, and promoting sexualisation of children as 'drag kids'.
150 NSPCC staff responded with a letter saying they were "deeply disappointed about the treatment of Munroe by the organisation" - they said the concerns were pressure from “a relatively small group of people” and they condemned the decision theguardian.com/society/2019/j…
Let that sink in. There are 150 staff at NSPCC who see nothing wrong with an adult inviting vulnerable children to contact them by DM, and in saying kids are never to young to engage in sexualised behaviour for adult's entertainment. No problem at all.... dazeddigital.com/life-culture/a…
Another big fan of 'drag kid' Desmond is Amazing is paedophile Tom O’Carroll (of PIE fame)..... it is just not OK for an NSPCC celebrity ambassador to be promoting this.
@PeterWanless issued an apology mainly to Bergdorf (who was badly treated), but burying the bit where NSPCC recognised the failure of their due diligence processes right at the end. nspcc.org.uk/what-we-do/new…
The women of Mumsnet were concerned that NSPCC were brushing its internal due diligence failure under the carpet and taking their eye off the ball of child safeguarding and so they started to investigate.... mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_ri…
What they found out was that the person responsible for booking Bergdorf was an NSCPCC employee with a rubber fetish who posted obscene videos of himself filmed in work toilets and business trips & linking this with his professional Linked-in profile uncommongroundmedia.com/nspcc-employee…
This was the @NSPCC 's initial public response when whistleblowers raised this. They said that supporting staff was their priority & people highlighting their concerns were 'bullying'. They urged people to report them to twitter to shut them up.
Quietly it turns out the NSPCC has come to the conclusion that making homemade porn videos at work was 'inconsistent with the values expected of an employee' of the child safeguarding charity.
Will the @NSPCC and @Independent and @guardian apologise for smearing whistleblowers who raised concerns about whether Munroe Bergdorf and James Makings were suitable for working with the NSPCC as 'bullies' and 'anti-trans trolls'? @PeterWanless ?
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The OfS-Sussex judgement is logically flawed and can't be allowed to stand. @ObhishekSaha with a very good analogy about paths.
Sussex's defence was that it had a high level sign saying "this path will only be closed for very good reasons". Therefore it must have had a very good reason 🙄
In order to keep the footpath functionally open the local authority has to apply some rules to the users of the path. It has a duty to keep the path open for cyclists and pedestrians, but not for motorbikes. This is in the bye-laws
(this is the university's equality act compliant equality policy that is part of its governance)
There are some short parts of the path that are so unavoidably narrow that the local authority puts up signs saying "cyclists dismount here" to keep the whole path safe and open for all users.
That is fine, the path is still open to pedestrians and cyclists.
(that's a proportionate means to a legitimate aim in the Equality Act, its "no noisy protests that disrupt exams")
This is quite the exercise in missing the point by Prof Shreya Atrey in Modern Law Review.
FWS will have a severe impact on "transgender, gender fluid, gender non-conforming, polygender, genderqueer and intersex" it says (without defining any of these terms).
Remember, FWS was just about whether a GRC changes a person's sex for the purpose of the Equality Act.
Atrey says the protected characteristic of sex should be amended to include sex characteristics, gender, gender identity, gender expression and gender performance. 🤨
A curious thing about the draft government guidance: It has no conceptual underpinning at all
“In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in the number of children who are questioning the way they feel about being a boy or a girl, including the physical attributes of their sex and the related ways in which they fit into society. “
Er ok…🤷♀️
It then dives into “where a child or their parent has raised a request relating to social transition”
The phrase appears 29 times in the guidance, but is never explained what it means or what it might involve.
The schools are told they must "consider what is in the best interests of the child and other children, and a decision relating to social transition may not be the same as a child’s wishes. "
The phrase “gender identity” appears 36 times in the judgment
Leonardo’s policy is that any member of staff who is proposing to to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process for the purposes of reassigning their gender can use the toilets intended for the opposite sex.
I am hugely grateful to Naomi Cunningham for the work that she has done as the first chair of Sex Matters, and for her equally important role as a barrister representing claimants using the law to fight for justice.