Bullying and threats
Stonewall even worse than we already thought surprise surprise.
Stonewall “threatened” to silence a gender-critical barrister they deemed “transphobic” by having her sacked, court documents have revealed.
Allison Bailey, a lesbian criminal barrister who helped to set up the LGB Alliance, is currently suing the embattled charity, claiming it collaborated with her chambers to put her under investigation.
Ms Bailey, who set up a crowdfunder to cover her legal bills, lodged a claim at the Employment Tribunal against Stonewall and Garden Court Chambers last year alleging that she was silenced “because both my chambers and Stonewall treat people such as me, who hold gender critical beliefs, as being bigoted and unworthy of respect”.
The Telegraph has seen damning court documents and emails.
In a hearing in February at the London Central Employment Tribunal, Judge Stout refers to a “threat” from Stonewall to “remove” the barrister from Garden Court Chambers – which is a fee-paying member of the charity’s embattled Diversity Champions Scheme.
Rejecting the charity’s legal bid to strike out the barrister’s claim, Judge Stout said: “[It] plainly seeks to put pressure on Chambers to take action against the Claimant, indeed to the extent of urging Chambers to remove the Claimant from Chambers, and accompanies that with a threat about the ongoing relationship between Chambers and Stonewall itself if Chambers does not take action.”
What a good thing that more and more institutions are waking up to the reality that a relationship with Stonewall is not a relationship they want.
Separately, Ms Bailey released a leaked email from Stonewall’s Head of Trans Inclusion to her Heads of Chambers. The email accuses the barrister of: “targeting a woman who works for us (our trans empowerment manager) and calling her a man”, “calling our work on LGBT equality ‘gender extremism’” and “accusing Stonewall of ‘appalling levels of intimidation, fear and coercion’”.
Stonewall says, trying to ruin the career of a woman who disagrees with them.
The email continues: “These actions and their link to Garden Court Chambers, threatens the positive relationship yourselves have built with the trans community through holding events, round tables and meetings for trans people on trans equality and rights.[…] “
Yourselves have built? So they’re illiterate on top of everything else.
“However, for Garden Court Chambers to continue associating with a barrister who is actively campaigning for a reduction in trans rights and equality, while also specifically targeting members of our staff with transphobic abuse on a public platform, puts us in a difficult position with yourselves: the safety of our staff and community will always be Stonewall’s first priority.”
The email also contained a list of tweets that Ms Bailey had “liked” and “retweeted” questioning whether male-born people identifying as women are the same as biological women.
So they spend their time checking on the likes and retweets of people who disagree with them. Much diversity champions.
I would LOVE it if Stonewall were compelled in court to a) state clearly exactly what “trans rights” Bailey was trying to have removed, and b) give a definition of “transphobia.”
What rights do trans people not already have? I’ve heard “demands” couched as rights, demands that compel compliance with and validation of delusions and lies. I’ve also seen a lot of things branded as “transphobic” that are simple statements of fact, descriptions of reality. Of course it’s a lot easier to try to frighten and intimidate individuals than it is to bend Reality. Try suing the universe. I’ll wait.
I was going to get snarky about holding round tables https://www.mymovingreviews.com/move/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/carrying-table.jpg, but M-W says
so I guess they get a bye on that one.
I wonder if the nominative “yourselves” thing is rooted not just in trying to sound fancy, but also in addled mind due to genderspecial “nounself” pronouns, such as bun/buns/bunself.
The spread of -self pronouns would make for an interesting paper. They’re a lot more common in Irish English, in contexts where most other forms of English wouldn’t use them (e.g., “Himself is going to Dublin;” I think the implication is that the subject is a relatively important (or perhaps self-important) person.)
One odd feature of -self forms in standard English is the use of object pronouns as the base for the first and second person, but possessive pronouns for the third person. Dialects that use the possessive for all forms (so “hisself” and “theirselves”) are more consistent. There are also dialects that have “meself”, but I don’t think any use object forms as a base for first person plural (“usselves”) or second person (youself/youselves).
(Apologies for going off topic.)
It’s really interesting. I love the stuff that smart and educated people in this blog’s comments bring up!
There’s a difference between going off topic and expansion/enrichment.
“The email also contained a list of tweets that Ms Bailey had “liked” and “retweeted” questioning whether male-born people identifying as women are the same as biological women.”
even given their ideology, how can anyone claim this biological reality must be completely ignored. Just look down. Trans Identifying (Wx)men and absolutely not the same as biological women. This is a degree of delusion/outright falsehood that is amazing to me.
One of our state legislators sued God. It was thrown out of court because he couldn’t serve the papers. The legislator claimed since God is everywhere and knows everything, there was no need to serve papers. His argument was not accepted.
It’s interesting that TiMs want to be the same as women, while also needing to be different, therefore special. More woman than women. More special than boring old women.
On an aside, we used to refer to our dog as Himself, sort of jokingly. My husband picked it up on a visit to Dublin. (We don’t call our current dog that; some things are meant to be special to one unique individual.)
Yes, it’s common in Ireland and in some parts of northern England. We (in NE England) also have “youse”, “yuz” and “yez”, all meaning different but confusingly intersected things.