Mick Hartley

Kishwer Falkner, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has dared to dissent from the usual gender nonsense. As such, she's a target for the usual vexatious complaints about transphobia.

Last April she wrote to the government to suggest the legislation should be changed to introduce explicit legal protections for biological women in spaces where that distinction really does matter, such as changing rooms and hospital wards. This entirely sensible move was met with vile abuse on social media. Lady Falkner told this newspaper that she had been branded a Nazi and “transphobic scum”.

She was then accused, ironically (who after all is doing the bullying here?), of bullying staff.

One source described the claims as a “hit job”, saying that senior staff were trying to oust Falkner because they disagreed with her stance on trans rights. “The executive was very hostile to the commissioners taking this decision because they had become used to the board just rubber-stamping whatever the staff at the organisation recommended,” they added.

In other words they couldn't stomach the idea of someone not immediately rubber-stamping every demand of the trans activists – notably, of Stonewall.

Now, the fight-back:

A coalition of gender-critical groups have accused Stonewall of “targeting” the female boss of Britain’s equalities watchdog.

Led by women’s rights organisation Sex Matters, which believes biological sex takes precedence over self-identified gender, the 39 groups said Baroness Kishwer Falkner, chairwoman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, was being attacked for taking action to protect women.

They said Stonewall had subjected her to the same sort of “unreasonable, vexatious complaints” used to harass ordinary women at work.

The groups have signed a letter to the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (Ganhri), which has been persuaded by organisations such as Stonewall to carry out a “special review” into the EHRC, claiming it is anti-trans.

In their letter, the groups accused Stonewall of a “pattern of reprisal, harassment and intimidation” against the Commission.

“Kishwer Falkner has been targeted by the same kind of unreasonable, vexatious complaints used to harass and intimidate so many ordinary women at work,” she said.

“Moreover, this has happened precisely because the EHRC acted, within its mandate, to protect such women from being targeted in this way.”

Last year, Baroness Falkner was placed under investigation after 12 current or former staff members at the Equality and Human Rights Commission made dozens of allegations against her.

Details of the complaints were never made public, but her supporters believe they were sparked by the position her watchdog had taken on trans rights. The investigation ended with her keeping her position.

The letter from Sex Matters was also signed by other groups including the Women’s Rights Network, the LGB Alliance, and Lesbian Labour.

It said: “Stonewall is dissatisfied because the EHRC is doing its job, and is demonstrating independence from Stonewall.

“The EHRC’s job is to protect everyone’s rights, including those with ‘gender critical’ beliefs.

“Ganhri has fallen into the trap of responding to unreasonable complaints about gender-critical speech in the same one-sided fashion that has been found to be harassment and discrimination in these recent cases. We urge you to rectify this injustice.”

It added: “It is in fact entirely reasonable to challenge the idea that any men can become women, and what is more, the Equality Act protects our right to do so, and not to be harassed for it.

“Subsequent legal cases have demonstrated that an organisation or regulator conducting disciplinary procedures against someone for their protected views can itself be harassment.”

Stonewall's malign influence reaches everywhere.