Hiring Practices

are genderist views compatible with a healthy workplace?

For many maddening years, having what has come to be known as ‘gender critical’ beliefs has put you at risk of serious economic, psychological, and social harm. Particularly if you express such beliefs, of course, but significant fear and strain should you be forced to bite your tongue and go along with beliefs that are counter to what you feel - indeed, know - to be true, on pain of losing your employment.

Being a freelancer is a gift in this regard, in some ways. No workplace directives for me, happy days! Not a lot of work either, at least from my Old Life clients, but I digress.

At core, as I set out in Hounded, all it takes to become known as ‘GC’ (or the abusive term ‘TERF’ or ‘transphobe’ - the latter being a total misnomer of course) is believing three things: that ‘women’ are a materially definable category of human being; that we are legislatively and culturally important on that basis (so no monkeying about with the category, please, sirs); and that women should have unfettered right to freedom of speech and assembly to discuss matters that affect us profoundly.

Ie, we believe it is illegitimate to abuse women trying to enter a building to watch a film together - as happened to those trying to attend the screening of ‘Adult Human Female’ at the University of Edinburgh, that formerly illustrious site of academic brilliance. We also view it as illegitimate to punch, or threaten to punch, women who are wanting to hold a meeting about impending disastrous legislative fuck-ups like a government introducing ‘gender self-ID,’ which we believe may be one of the most batshit crazy policy ideas that eejit humans worldwide could ever have come up with.

The punching of feminists examples is yet another case centred around the University of Edinburgh by the way, and there’s been scant improvement in such attitudes there since 2019. Someone should probably check the water supply around Bristo Square and the surrounds; something got in it several years ago and the University keeps doing very mad things at the behest of not very bright but dazzlingly zealous people…

We also think it very bad to impose a new, ideologically-driven, set of policies and practices into every workplace in the land, from the NHS to schools, arts organisations to social services.

Photo by kate.sade on Unsplash

I know, I know, holding meetings, opposing the destruction of the woman category, and discussing legislation and new HR and workplace directives is a really fucking evil thing to do, but we quite like democracy, see, and think it is quite important for things like social cohesion, sanity, and reality itself to discuss things that may threaten all three.

At any rate, holding or expressing these three core beliefs as a freelancer has been somewhat easier for me than it is for your average office worker or teacher or arts administrator. Easy to say, of course, but not easy to survive financially; in my own case there isn’t a single arts or literary organisation in the land that isn’t at the very least a bit queasy about giving work to anyone who says that those who identify as transwomen are not literally female.

Which is mad, to me, but it is where we are. (I will continue calling it mad until it ceases to be this way, for what it is worth, sorrrrryyyyy…)

Which brings me on to today’s musings about hiring practices for employers.

As more and more cases pile up, where those with the three core beliefs - core beliefs shared by the majority of the population, and on which really important things like lesbian, women’s, and gay rights, and general sanity rely upon - are proven, demonstrably, to be neither hateful nor illegal, what should employers do?

Afterall, many have already implemented policies that explicitly discriminate against people with those core beliefs, some of them by taking as gospel the (stupid) advice of people they book to give them staff training, such as Scottish Trans, the Equality Network, or Stonewall. Policies that in turn encourage those who want to call ‘TERFS’ bigots and vermin are absolutely buoyed by.

Every theatre advertising for ‘female-identifying’ cast members and celebrating an interpretation of ‘inclusion’ that in reality is experienced by those with GC beliefs as highly absurd is indirectly discriminating against those with GC beliefs.

I know from hard experience that such women are either put off from ever even applying for opportunities from organisations that spout this ridiculous, ideological language (me) or, as many friends of mine are, fretting and hiding their views so they can maintain ANY work at all in Scotland’s arts industries.

It’s both ridiculous and deeply frightening.

Every museum forcing staff to display pronouns, every civil service department, every arts organisation, every bank, every school, bringing in policies where self-ID of ‘gender’ has become the norm, and a norm that must not be questioned, and where colleagues openly speak abusively about those with gender critical beliefs, is at risk of being at the end of a rather expensive employment tribunal.

How to square that with the HR policies or mandatory staff training schemes brought in stealthily over the last decade in particular, where, due to an epic and relentless focus on ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion,’ holding gender critical views has been (wrongly) asserted to be unlawful and discriminatory?

This post today was inspired by the case of scientist Peter Downs, whose employment tribunal recently found he faced a “clear hostile animus” at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory where he worked. After airing very mild ‘gender critical’ viewpoints, The Times reports that “Wilkins was reported for his “ideology” and labelled by colleagues as transphobic, “sad and pathetic” and “a rubbish employee”.

As a self-obsessed former poet, who continues to have poetic inclinations of both self-pity and an unbridled sense of injustice at times, this of course made me think of my own situation. (Insert winky emoji here to indicate tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation…)

Having noone to sue, and no firm way to get any kind of financial redress for the nonsense and abuse I’ve faced for years now (as I quip in Hounded, you cannae take a cultural atmosphere to an employment tribunal), I’ve tried to make myself a pain in the arse in other ways, pointing out to arts organisations I used to receive frequent work from, how their policies encourage and fuel the hounding of women such as myself, rendering a career in the literary arts in Scotland absolutely impossible for me - or anyone who vocalises my same, sane, entirely ordinary, beliefs - now.

Emboldened by the fact that organisations such as Creative Scotland, the Scottish Book Trust, and Literature Alliance Scotland and others have essentialised gender identity ideology into their Codes of Conduct and the like, cultural venues seem to feel perfectly fine refusing me venue hire, for example. As the literary world grows more and more detached from reality and general public opinion, even an otherwise rational literary programmer would balk at the idea of booking a well-known and extremely talented writer or thinker like Kathleen Stock, never mind muggins here - at least in Scotland. (There seems to be some shifting elsewhere in the UK.)

Obviously, all of this is discriminatory. And it is absolutely nothing to do with whether I am a good writer, or events coordinator, or creative writing tutor, or the myriad other things I used to do for these clients. Venues refusing me hire, for example - to take but one of my ongoing woes - are breaking the law, absolutely, but there’s scant way to prove that their endless excuses for not allowing me to hire them are based on my beliefs, even though I know, and they know, and everyone else knows, that they absolutely are.

It is more than about me though, of course, despite my quip above.

There is nothing inherent to ‘gender critical’ views that leads to discrimination against those who identify as trans, or towards those who hold genderist beliefs even when those views are firmly held or expressed.

Knowing humans are sexed, that this is important in life and in law, and being opposed to illiberal activism does not mean I would ever discriminate against those who believe otherwise. I might never have had to lay out my view that trans women are not literally female had people around me not begun to justify throat-punching lesbians at Pride marches, or turned a blind eye to people quite literally abusing women under the guise of ‘civil rights activism.’

I’ve held my core beliefs even when the first trans-identifying person I met in 2004 used my own cabaret series in Glasgow to assert their decision to live full-time as the female ‘character’ they used to perform in at my slam-poetry events. That I never viewed this person as female, despite their desire to be a woman, doesn’t mean I didn’t have sympathy for what seemed to be a serious difficulty for them. On an individual level, I can see the struggle at times, but as gender identity ideology mainstreamed, I can’t ignore the other reasons for men claiming a trans identity. It is abhorrent to ask me to, as well.

Of course, I know that my empathy in some cases does not mean that my foundational views are not offensive to some. But there’s nothing wrong with causing offence when it is for the aim of clarity, truth, and actual justice.

While I know those who identify as trans can become upset at knowing I don’t think them the sex they wish I saw them as, that really isn’t my problem, to be frank.

I certainly don’t wish the trans poets and playwrights I used to know any ills. Perhaps the occasional non-lethal paper cut for penning and signing Open Letters and the like and actively trying to destroy my life, relentlessly pursuing this even after I left Edinburgh and lost everything.

But to return to the matter at hand, that of whether my evil terfery has evil consequences on those of the opposite views: no. I don’t believe they do at all. They have consequences, sure, and some of them might be emotionally annoying to those who think their particular obsessions should be shared by all, but there’s nothing evil about them whatsoever.

I knew even before all of this fucking madness of the last decade what it is like to find out that people around you don’t care as much as you do about the things that are foundationally important to you. I can imagine that, if your ‘gender identity’ is something that is all-consuming then someone saying ‘well, I don’t even believe in the concept that you spend your entire time thinking about’ must feel a bit terrible.

But them’s the breaks.

I believed fervently that performance poetry was a bloody brilliant artform, dedicated my entire adult life to that belief, and the vast majority of the population think the art-form is a stupid waste of time and would literally prefer to eat their own skulls than listen to it. I had to ‘meh’ that away and just keep going in my Old Life, which was very much a bit of a bubble-life, as I am increasingly coming to terms with.

I am not meaning to be flippant here, with that comparison, but as I don’t care about ‘gender identity’ really, feeling that focusing on such and obsessing over the idea of it to be a similar waste of time to how many felt my pursuit of performance poetry was, I think it holds as a comparison…

But if someone wants to spend their entire time pursuing their ‘gender identity’ of whatever interpretation of ‘gender’ they are using (which I also do not share their views on) then up to a point it has hee-haw to do with me and I don’t care. Fill yer boots.

But it does become my business when faced with the consequences of forcing every single human being on earth to go along with the idea that humans - and particularly the female ones - are not a definable category of human being with rights, and needs, on that very basis. And when believing in it becomes mandatory to even making a sodding living.

Of course it’s my business, then.

But it wasn’t something I particularly thought about when I was programming literary events. I honestly did not care whatsoever - on the basis of my hiring practices for literary events anyway - whether a talented writer had genderist or gender critical beliefs. I largely found poems about gender identity to be quite boring, but where someone had a playful way they were exploring these things - Harry Josephine Giles’s Drone sequence for example, which I still highly rate despite everything - then I championed it.

Up until 2018 or thereabouts, such people weren’t justifying or minimising violence against ‘TERFS.’ Obviously, once that became apparent, I had to take that into consideration, but my career was over before I could discriminate against any of them on the basis that they were doing those things, so hey-ho. I also think ‘discriminating’ against people who justify abuse and harassment of feminists is ok. Because it is abuse. And it is abhorrent.

All of this is plainly clear to my Old Life people; that I never discriminated against anyone whatsoever, quite the opposite, but their gender identity beliefs, unfortunately, appear to be incompatible with accepting that.

I must be made evil, and I must be pursued as such. It’s the only explanation for why Old Life people do things like champion the actions of Alice Tarbuck, the Creative Scotland Literature Officer, whose role involves championing Scottish literature (technically, that includes mine, sorry A), contacting an Edinburgh bookstore and ticking them off for having my book on sale for preorders last year. As far as I am aware, she remains in post, and I have absolutely no idea if she was even disciplined for her actions, or made aware that said actions are abhorrent for anyone whose literal job it is to nourish a healthy literary ecology in Scotland.

I happen to think that gender identity beliefs are absolutely bonkers chat, but I’d never do what Tarbuck did to the multiple authors of the endless screeds about gender identity put out by my Old Life colleagues. There are playful ways to express gender identity beliefs that I’ve enjoyed; not in non-fiction, where such views fall apart on even scant scrutiny, but poetry at its best can do it. Again, fill yer boots with it if it’s something important to you, but I’m over here just asking for the same respect and freedom to express the opposite.

And it is all of this that has frequently led me to pondering how on earth we are going to get through this. How can we forge an atmosphere where it becomes perfectly normal to express ‘gender critical’ views and not get hounded, when gender identity activists just seem to love hounding? Is there any way to get them to stop doing that? To recognise that ‘gender critical’ views do not, in and of themselves, cause any harm to individuals whatsoever? Is there a way to stop houndings entirely??

This is why I have written so much about them, as I think it is only by confronting the disproportionate consequences for expressing feminist or gender critical beliefs that people will even feel motivated to change the situation. It’s the sharp end of the wedge stuff: are you really going to support violence, economic sabotage, psychological torture, gaslighting, social ostracisation? Even if we are wrong, I am at pains to say at all times, nothing we have experienced as ‘GC’ women is justifiable.

So, confronted by trying to justify the unjustifiable, might employers and clients change? I think this argument is making some inroads.

That, and the huge costs to employers of allowing gender identity activists to run amok with their workplace directives and staff intranet chat rooms etcetera… For all my wish for people just to do the right and - to me - sane thing, perhaps hard cash will be the way this particular war is won.

The cases are almost too numerous to list at this point, from the seismic case of Maya Forstater, to the lesser covered cases of social worker Rachael Meade, to the ongoing case of Sandie Peggie at NHS Fife: time and again, genderist ideology and its practical consequences is being proven to cause workplace hostilities due to the denigration of material reality, but more than that, the activism of genderists - whether trans-identifying or not - is always, and demonstrably so the root of the problem.

I do know some who hold mild genderist beliefs who do not support houndings at ALL. In my own life, I’ve largely been able to maintain acquaintances with those who are like this. They usually find my focus on the issue a bit odd, sometimes irritating, or sometimes they just wish I could move on from it, but they also find the headline cases like Isla Bryson/ Adam Graham absurd, so they do get that it is something that is sort of vaguely important, but that they, themselves, would rather just not think about too much.

Much like a belief in the wonders of performance poetry, it does appear that attempts to destroy the English language and women’s rights aren’t as motivating for everyone as they are for all of us Terven. C’est la vie, we shall have to ‘meh’ that and just keep going.

I know some who hold moderate genderist beliefs who don’t support my own hounding but think JK Rowling probably had it coming (though they would still read Harry Potter to their children, they’re not that far gone). I’ve no real time for this position, and I also struggle to maintain even acquaintanceship with those who pally-pally about with my own hounders without even making it known they abhor what they did to me; they know these people have actively attempted to utterly destroy not just my own, but several women’s livelihoods. It’s just a bit of a big ask to just set that aside and break some bread, y’know?

But I know no-one who holds fundamentalist genderist views who oppose the hounding of women. In fact, it almost becomes an identity in and of itself to become chief TERF-hunter, obsessively tweeting or skeeting (the term for posting on Bluesky) about Helen Joyce, or Julie Bindel. As I am always at pains to say, such fundamentalists are not confined to those with a transgender identification; these people call themselves ‘cis’ or ‘allies.’

The mild genderists would probably avoid things like the hounding of a gender critical colleague.

The moderates might go along with someone else doing so, or even post a wee ‘like’ or a signature on an Open Letter.

But it takes a fundamentalist to orchestrate such actions, to call colleagues ‘parasites’ as in the case of Denise Fahmy, formerly of Arts Council England, or to enthusiastically and gleefully try to get people fired.

And employers ignore such behaviour at their peril.

I think we are at the stage where employers must recognise that activist staff who hold fundamentalist genderist beliefs are a huge risk to their workplace, and this has to be a factor - particularly in the arts, where genderist views dominate - in their hiring practices. Hiring absolute zealots, who hate, openly, those with different beliefs is not compatible with either liberal democracy or a sane workplace.

It seems implicit in that set of beliefs, if firmly held with the zealotry of all extremism, that one must demean and abuse colleagues who believe sex to be definable and important.

Which. Is. Unlawful. Behaviour.

I don’t know how many more court cases and employment tribunals it is going to take. But as it pertains to my own field of literature, and my Old Life world of arts venues and books organisations: you have to start taking this seriously. There is nothing either discriminatory nor unlawful about gender critical views nor the consequences of holding such views.

There absolutely ARE illegal and discriminatory consequences that flow from viewing such people who hold those views as akin to vermin or ‘parasites’. To demeaning them, getting them fired, contacting bookstores to encourage them to discriminate against them, to flooding staff email and communication systems with abuse about ‘TERFS.’

While my Old Life world worked strenuously - largely by doing absolutely nothing - (can you do nothing ‘strenuously’?? I’m not sure, but I think it must’ve taken some effort to just ignore it all) to convince themselves that, at most, my own hounding was very much a me, or a me and Magi Gibson problem, it really wasn’t.

If someone with gender critical views works as an administrator for any of the organisations that were responsible for that particularly awful Literature Alliance Scotland document in 2024, for example, a document that urged all bookshops and literary organisations to ban ‘TERFS’ and never promote them, that is a serious concern for said worker, and likely to cause them to feel terrified about losing their job or airing their concerns.

If said worker’s colleagues shared that document - as I saw employees of many literature organisations do at the time - and whose colleagues spend their time on and offline berating me, or TERFS in general - as is also standard anti-feminist behaviour from so many of Scotland’s literary orgs board members and workers - and this activity is known to management, well, then, that person has a strong case to argue workplace discrimination. Watching those who work for book festivals, for example, backing Tarbuck’s actions against me last year was a genuinely jaw-dropping moment.

I’ve got absolutely no chance of recourse, but if any said worker exists they will have my full support in coming forward.

In the meantime, and even in the absence of such, I will, of course, continue the freelancer’s freedom of continuing to poke away at such organisations until they see sense.

And, as the times really are continuing to change, they can find some handy tips on what to do by buying my book from a certain Edinburgh bookshop which, unlike the favoured activist partner of all of these poetry festivals, Lighthouse Books (who, being adjacent to Edinburgh University do seem to share the same water supply issue), exist solely to sell books, including ones that sell quite well written by the perfectly un-evil, absolutely not discriminatory whatsoever, and extremely tired Terven, like myself. xx