Civil servant being sued for saying up is not down.

A lawyer and the government department she works with are being sued after she made gender-critical statements at work, including expressing the belief that only women menstruate.

That’s not a belief though. It’s just a fact, a simple humdrum quotidian fact like a billion other facts. It’s not a clever idea to sue people for stating impersonal facts of the type “only women menstruate.”

Her name is Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley and she is a chairwoman of a civil service network that represents staff with gender-critical views.

She is one of three key signatories of an explosive letter sent in October to the cabinet secretary warning the impartiality of the civil service was under threat because anyone with gender-critical views was “openly and unlawfully bullied and harassed”.

She herself is of course being bullied and harassed.

Duemmer Wrigley will appear at an employment tribunal next week accused of harassment for several comments and posts shared in the workplace. An employee of another body affiliated to Defra is suing the government department for allowing the network to exist and Duemmer Wrigley personally for her views.

These include a statement made during a seminar on female autism that “only women menstruate” and a link to My Body is Me!, a book that encourages young children to understand and accept their bodies. A post in which she celebrates “diversity of belief” and explains that being gender-critical is a protected belief has also been penalised.

In short this is yet another of those situations where people are energetically punished and hassled for refusing to lie about basic impersonal facts.

The Sex Equality and Equity Network (Seen) is an official civil service network with more than 700 members in 50 government departments who support the belief that biological sex is binary and immutable. 

But it’s not a belief. See above. Not belief; just basic fact. It shouldn’t need “support.”