The Telegraph on the Arts Council’s horrible treatment of one of its officials because she doesn’t believe in magic:

Subhead:

Employment tribunal rules Denise Fahmy faced a hostile environment because of her view that people cannot change sex

Her “view” – it’s a “view” now that people can’t change sex. Is it a “view” that people can’t fly, that people can’t walk up walls and on ceilings, is it a “view” that people can’t live underwater, is it a “view” that lions are not crows and fish are not birds?

Knowing that people can’t change sex isn’t a “view,” it’s just reality. The “view” here is that people can change sex, and it’s looney tunes. The earth is frying and melting and here we are regressing to the middle ages where we can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

Denise Fahmy took Britain’s biggest arts funding quango to an employment tribunal after she resigned as a grants officer having challenged a decision to withdraw funding for LGB Alliance, a group that represent gays and lesbians.

The group had been given £9,000 to make a film for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee to celebrate how the lives of gay men had improved under the monarch’s 70-year reign.

But the funding was withdrawn by ACE in spring 2022 amid “hostile” claims the group was neo-Nazi and transphobic – a claim LGB Alliance denies.

For the very simple reason that it’s not true. See that’s a view – that LGB Alliance is neo-Nazi. It’s a little story the fanatics tell themselves. It’s a view through a very muddy windowpane.

Simon Mellor, the deputy chief executive, held a Teams meeting in April 2022 in which he expressed his “personal view” that LGB Alliance “has a history of anti-trans-exclusionary activity” and so funding them was “not within the spirit of the Jubilee fund”.

His comments prompted Ms Fahmy, 54, to then question why the funding had been removed, what message that sent about “freedom of speech” within the organisation and ask what protection there was at the council for gender-critical beliefs – the conviction that people cannot change their biological sex.

There again: it’s not a conviction. Of course people cannot change their sex. You can test this easily at home. Try to change your sex. Finished? Did it work? This is what I’m saying. It can’t be done. Fahmy isn’t the one with the “belief” and the “conviction”; the bullies who bullied her are the Believers.

Leeds Employment Tribunal has found Ms Fahmy, from Huddersfield, was the victim of harassment after a colleague then circulated an email and petition on the ACE intranet targeting those deemed “anti-trans”. The petition, which contained some extreme comments, remained up for 26 hours. The judges felt it should have been taken down sooner.

One email claimed “gender-critical views were seen as a cancer… [which] needs to be removed from our organisation”.

All because she knows people can’t change sex.

H/t Alan Peakall