As the Stonewall empire starts to crumble, and we wait to see if government departments withdraw from the Diversity Scheme as recommended by Liz Truss, Maya Forstater calls for an inquiry into how this whole extraordinary capture of key organisations by the gender lobby happened in the first place, and how policies have been affected as a result.
It is a scandal. We have seen examples of Stonewall coaching the communications teams of government agencies on how to respond to public questions about sex and gender, and on how to respond to FOI requests so as to withhold embarrassing information from the public. The ONS, CPS, EHRC, Care Quality Commission, MoJ and Government Legal Department, to name but a few, have clearly been influenced in their external positions and policies. At the most basic level, if you erase the distinction between males and females in your data collection and Equality Impact Assessments, as Stonewall advises, then you have no mechanism for assessing whether any policy decision in relation to “trans rights” harms women, or any other group. And if you punish anyone who points that out, you are sure never to find out.
We have heard from staff in government departments, major corporations and universities who are frightened of questioning policies, or who have been reported simply for pointing out inconsistencies between policies and the Equality Act. Staff (including gay and lesbian staff) tell us that their organisations’ “LGBTQ+ and Allies” groups act as thought police.
Even more fundamentally, the Stonewall scheme, by design, involves organisations paying out every year to be never-endingly dependent on an outside organisation for a core responsibility, rather than embedding their own in-house expertise. That alone should have rung alarm bells with people responsible for public money. [...]
It is important that the next stage enables people to recognise and articulate within their organisations and professions what they already know (and have known for a long time) about the problem with the gender-identity lobby and assurance schemes, and about the dangers of delegating power to internal “affiliate groups”. Organisations must not shred or bury the evidence, nor assume that just by shedding Stonewall the culture of fear that their former links created will somehow be ended.
Care is also needed to avoid a backlash against the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual people. Too many workplaces are still accepting of casual and explicit homophobic “banter”, harassment and discrimination, alongside sexist and racist banter and discrimination.
So what should the government do? It should tell (or recommend where decision-making is at arm’s length) ministries and government agencies to suspend renewal of their membership of the Stonewall Champions Scheme this year pending review, and not to participate in this year’s Workplace Equality Index, which opens on June 15th.
Instead, they should initiate a process of “truth and reconciliation”, both internally and with the public. This starts with “finding” the missing information from previous years’ submissions to the Stonewall Scheme, and the associated decision-making, and publishing these in full.
They should divert the time and money that would have been used to undertake the Stonewall survey and compliance scheme this year towards investigating it. Instead of initiating the annual Stonewall staff survey, they should carry out an information-gathering process with staff to find out what they really think about the gender-neutral toilets, conflation of sex and gender identity, pronoun announcements, rainbow lanyards and mandatory IDAHOBIT [International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia] appreciation. To make this meaningful, they will first have to convince staff that they can speak the truth without fear of losing their job. [...]
Ultimately, the government should establish a wide-ranging independent inquiry into government bodies’ use of the Stonewall scheme, and their reliance on external lobby groups for training and accreditation around diversity and inclusion in general.
But the first step for Monday morning is transparency and setting a new tone from the top. Let the sunlight in and declare a decisive end to the era of “no debate”.
Forstater's case against her former employer, meanwhile, rumbles on. She originally challenged her non-renewal of contract at the Central London Employment Tribunal, where Judge James Tayler ruled that her 'gender critical' views were "incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others" and that they did "not have the protected characteristic of philosophical belief" under the UK Equality Act 2010. Forstater's appeal against the judgement was heard by the Employment Appeal Tribunal on 27 and 28 April 2021, for which judgement was reserved, and is expected later in the year.
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