Stonewall is melting, melllltiiiinnnggg…

Liz Truss, the equalities minister, is pushing for all government departments to withdraw from Stonewall’s employment scheme following a row over transgender rights.

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The Times understands that responsibility for co-ordinating participation in the scheme rests with the Cabinet Office. The scheme counts 250 government departments and public bodies among its 850 members, which pay for guidance on issues such as pronouns and gender-neutral spaces.

Why pay for that? There are a million sources on it that don’t charge anything, besides which, it’s all nonsense anyway. Nobody needs “guidance” on pronouns.

Stonewall says the scheme is “the leading employers’ programme for ensuring all LGBT staff are accepted without exception in the workplace”. 

Oh yes? What if a member of staff is incompetent or a bully or a misogynist abuser or all those? Does that member of staff have to be accepted?

That aside, why is Stonewall “the leading programme”? Who says it is? Leading in what sense? Is it any good at what it does? Is the “leading” thing just one of those self-perpetuating monopoly type deals? Those other people have Stonewall so we’d better have them too? Conformity in other words? Name recognition? Not actually anything to do with quality or expertise or skill?

Essex University, another member of the diversity champion scheme, apologised this month for dropping two speakers after they were accused of transphobia. The university published an independent report that concluded that Stonewall had provided officials with misleading and potentially illegal advice. The report expressed concern that Stonewall had misrepresented the provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to suggest that the legislation included “gender identity”. Academics have claimed that the alleged misrepresentation has resulted in speakers being prevented from debating trans rights.

No kidding; we’ve been watching it happen for the past several years.