Out

Press Release from Sex Matters:

Equality and Human Rights Commission cuts ties with Stonewall

Now there is a headline.

In a letter to the campaigning group “Sex Matters”, the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Baroness Kishwer Falkner has disclosed that the equalities watchdog has quit the Stonewall Diversity Champions Scheme. 

Yes yes YES.

Falkner was writing in response to an open letter sent by Sex Matters calling on the EHRC to quit the scheme. 

Sex Matters campaigns for clarity about sex in law and policy. It argues that membership of the Stonewall Scheme conflicts with public service independence and in particular with the EHRC’s mandate to protect everybody’s rights.  

Organisations that join the scheme pay Stonewall an annual fee and allow it to vet their internal policies, such as about who can use toilets and changing facilities, and what language to use when talking about men and women. Scheme members are encouraged to promote “gender self – identification”, to train all staff  to be “allies”, and to take steps such as encouraging people to announce their pronouns in meetings, and to wear rainbow lanyards. 

Encourage to promote “gender self-identification” – not just accept it or warn against persecuting it but promote it.

The news of EHRC leaving the Stonewall scheme comes in the same week as Essex University released the “Reindorf Review” investigation into the no-platforming of two feminist academics. 

Barrister Akua Reindorf found the university had adopted policies which reflect “the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is”, and created a “culture of fear”. A spokeswoman from Stonewall defended their policies as being “based on guidance provided by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.”

Well let’s just go around that circle forever, shall we? Stonewall says the EHRC says it’s ok and the EHRC says Stonewall says it’s ok repeat repeat repeat forever. Be sure never to do any actual thinking.

But the EHRC has ditched them and that is the best news.

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