Mai poodle is a transvestite and your breath smells of elderberries
Elizabeth Pitt was employed as a social worker by Cambridgeshire County Council. In January 2023, Pitt, who is a lesbian, attended a meeting of the council’s LGBT employee group. A colleague piped up to say that his dog is ‘genderfluid’.
What would that even mean? Dogs aren’t gendersolid so how can they be genderfluid? Dogs don’t know from gender. Dogs don’t know from ideology; dogs know what they smell.
Pitt decided to call this out as nonsense. This then sparked a heated debate about gender identity more broadly, during which Pitt and another co-worker shared their gender-critical views, criticising things like transwomen being allowed to compete in women’s sports or to enter female bathrooms.
For those of us with an ounce of common sense left, these views will sound perfectly reasonable. But Pitt’s trans-Dachshund-owning co-worker lodged a formal complaint with the council. He described her remarks as ‘offensive’ and ‘nasty opinions’. Another colleague who had been present at the meeting said she had a ‘really aggressive tone’.
Ever been to a workplace meeting? An aggressive tone is not unusual there.
As a result, Pitt was formally disciplined by her employer. Apparently, her opinions were ‘non-inclusive and transphobic’. She was also told that her comments caused ‘significant offence’ and had a ‘detrimental impact on the mental health and wellbeing’ of her colleagues. She was subsequently banned from attending any more events held by the LGBT group and from contacting its members.
In response, Pitt took Cambridgeshire County Council to a tribunal. This week, a judge concluded that her treatment ‘amounted to harassment / direct discrimination’ on the grounds of her gender-critical views – a ‘philosophical belief’ that is protected by the Equality Act 2010. As a result, Cambridgeshire council will not only have to pay out £55,910 in compensation and to cover Pitt’s legal costs, but it will also have to implement staff training on ‘freedom of belief and speech in the workplace’.
Learn the lesson, Cambridgeshire council!
Wow! Even one short year ago I don’t think we would have predicted how much, and how fast, the atmosphere has changed.
“Who’s a good enby? Are you a good enby?”
In most scenarios, the guy who chimed in with this would be seen as someone taking the piss, rather than one of the true believers. Does the dog do a Philip/Pippa Bunce thing, and switch between blue and pink collars from one day to the next? Does this dog of his hump his leg only occasionally rather than all the time? Does said humping happen to coincide with the expected behaviour that might reasonably by deemed appropriate to the collar-colour of the day in question? Otherwise, HOW DOES HE KNOW?
ANOTHER WIN! Yay!
I looked up the tribunal’s decision.
It turns out that ultimately, the employer conceded liability at the hearing. Initially the employer’s defense was that the claimant was disciplined not for the content of her views but because of the way she expressed them (that supposed “aggressiveness”). But apparently the documentary evidence made it clear that the content of the views expressed was at least part of the reason, and the relevant law is that an employer disciplines someone for a mix of allowed and non-allowed reasons, the employee has a valid claim. So realizing that its defense was untenable, the employer eventually conceded the point and the only remaining dispute was over how much compensation should be awarded.
Anyone else get a sense of deja vu at the dog-owner and the employer using language like “nasty” and “aggressive” to describe Pitt? The Trump campaign would be so proud….
In a conversation about dogs, the one called nasty and aggressive (despite not being so) was named “Pitt”.
It’d be too on-the-nose as fiction.