Contentious claims

Naomi Cunningham replying to a comment at Legal Feminist last September:

So it’s ok for the diversity training to emphasise that staff mustn’t harass trans colleagues or discriminate against them. It’s very far from ok for the diversity training to assert, for example, that “trans women are women”: that’s a highly contentious claim that many people reject. Similarly, it’s ok for diversity training to emphasise that staff mustn’t harass Christian colleagues or discriminate against them. It’s not ok for training to assert that Jesus is the Risen Lord.

I will add that if diversity training does emphasize that staff mustn’t harass Christian colleagues, it should also emphasize that Christian staff mustn’t harass atheist or secularist colleagues. It should cut both ways. I have had to work with god-botherers who didn’t keep their mouths shut about it, and it felt very much like an imposition.

You say “being less trans-exclusionary, and more trans inclusive seems a reasonable viewpoint to be presented to employees.” That would be fine if “trans inclusive” just meant not discriminating against trans people. But gender critical people are slurred as “trans exclusionary” not because they want to exclude trans people from work or public life, etc. – which obviously would be terrible – but because they don’t accept that trans-identifying males are included within the definition of the word “woman.” So if HR say “be less trans-exclusionary”, they are making a demand that their staff believe something.

That is a very interesting point. I tend to think of the “exclusionary” bit of TERF as meaning literal, physical exclusion, i.e. from women’s sports, locker rooms, conferences and the like, but of course it is also about the concept, and the definition. It’s about that first, really, since radical feminism is itself conceptual so the point is that terfs think radical feminism isn’t about men.

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