Mick Hartley

Simon Fanshawe was one of the original founders of Stonewall UK but has since distanced himself, claiming that they're now pushing a divisive dogma by concentrating on trans issues at the expense of their original mission to support and celebrate the Ls Gs and Bs.  He has a new book, The Power of Difference: Where the Complexities of Diversity and Inclusion Meet Practical Solutions to publicise, and talks to Sarah Ditum in the Sunday Times  – Stonewall founder Simon Fanshawe: shouting ‘bigot’ at each other won’t end the trans rights war:

There’s a problem with diversity in the workplace, says Simon Fanshawe. Since the #MeToo movement erupted in 2017 and the global Black Lives Matter protests of last year, businesses have become ever more eager to embrace all the glorious variety of race, sexuality and gender among their staff — and ever more willing to throw money at achieving that by bringing in pricey “diversity trainers”. The intentions may be good. But are the results?

“The danger is that the definition of inclusion becomes exclusive,” says Fanshawe, 64. “In other words, ‘You have to think like this, and if you don’t, we’ll exclude you.’”…

As he sees it, businesses are often “panic buying” their diversity training rather than thinking about what they want to achieve. It’s understandable that companies are worried, because the costs of getting it wrong can be grave, from costly lawsuits to PR disasters that can tarnish their brand. Yet some of the favoured techniques of diversity trainers are sketchy at best, with little evidence that they make people less biased.

"Panic buying" is about right for the extraordinary way in which companies and government departments have fallen over themselves to have organisations like Stonewall or Global Butterflies come and lecture them. Fanshawe is now in the same business – diversity training – and no doubt his company does a much better job at exploring the issues than those avowedly trans-activist organisations.

But we don't have a situation where two sides are shouting "bigot" at each other. Look at the JK Rowling affair. On the one side we have JK herself, explaining very carefully that she has absolutely no problem with trans people and wishes them well in their lives, but objects to the activists' denial of the reality of biological sex, and the threats that entails for women's safe spaces. On the other side we have the trans activists sending her death threats, calling her a bigot, a transphobe, a terf, etc. etc.. The insults and threats are all one way.

And the "trans rights war" is a misleading appellation: no one wants to deny trans people their rights. The issue is about a set of activists determined to overthrow biology in the name of an ideological fiction.

To be fair, though, I'm taking issue here more with the title of the article – which Ditum and Fanshawe probably had nothing to do with – rather than the substance.