"Trans-Hate Event"
Third Letter to Prof Paul Boyle, VC, Swansea University
Below is the text of the third letter of complaint sent to Prof Paul Boyle, this time cc’ed to the Chair of Council as well. I have also included the texts of the staff emails showing that the 1st July event (which will soon have videos uploaded on various social media fora) was called a ‘trans-hate’ event and an ‘anti-trans event’ - thereby calling myself, Akua Reindorf KC, Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce and Outspoken Women hateful and anti-trans.
Also, despite my invitation, Prof Boyle did not attend the event, nor did he even respond to the invitation.
15th July 2024
Dear Prof Boyle
Re: My Complaint Letter dated 6th June 2024
I note that it is 20 days since I last wrote to you informing you that my original letter was a complaint and that your response avoided any of the substantive issues. I have not received any reply from you. I am sure this is not how Swansea University normally deals with complaints. In order to ensure that my complaint is dealt with, I am printing this letter and sending a written copy to The Pro-Chancellor and Chair of Council, Mr Goi Ashmore.
My complaint is about the way in which a statement placed on the university webpages and drafted by two senior staff was harassing of people on the basis of gender critical beliefs and it was a statement that I experienced as harassment.
I note that you declined my invitation to come to the event on 1st July. There was a small but unruly protest that took place which resulted in a student being arrested. Protestors were blocking the entrance of the Taliesin, were jostling with security staff and at one point were making it exceedingly difficult for two older, disabled women to access the building. One of the protestors eventually assaulted one of the security staff.
This is wholly unacceptable behaviour which was, at least in part, encouraged by the hostile environment created by your senior executives and your failure as Vice Chancellor to understand the law in this area, your responsibilities towards guests on your campus and your responsibilities towards your gender critical staff and students. Had you offered a statement that robustly defended the right of people who hold gender critical beliefs to gather without harassment or discrimination things may have had a different course of action.
I am saddened that you did not take the opportunity to attend the event as you might have learned why that statement signed off by your Registrar and Prof Knight is so problematic. By comparison, my own Vice Chancellor – Robert van de Noort – attends so-called controversial speaking events, encourages respectful dialogue with protestors and speakers and has offered University of Reading (as well as the wider academic community) a role model for how to ensure the wellbeing of staff and students and protect academic freedom. At the very least a position of institutional neutrality that brokers lawful and respectful dialogue seems to be one that ought to be adopted by a VC who claims to take his responsibilities towards academic freedom seriously.
Instead, it appears that you are not dealing with my complaint and failing to engage with the substantive issues at hand.
Let me then spell it out for you in crystalline clarity. Gender critical beliefs are worthy of respect in a democratic society and people who hold these beliefs are protected from harassment and discrimination as per the Equality Act 2010. Gender critical beliefs are, in law, the same as any other protected belief. In your response to me you showed your ignorance. You stated:
“I am sure that you can appreciate our obligation to respond to concerns raised and to set out the support available to staff and students who have communicated to us that they are distressed.”
This is a legal and organisational nonsense. If you substitute gender critical with any other legally protected belief you can see just how offensive your statement actually is. I dare say no such consideration would have been given to your staff and students who said that they would be distressed if a group of Muslim people gathered to talk about the Equality Act, discrimination and Islamic beliefs, or if they were distressed to find out that a group of Jewish people were similarly gathering, or even a group of ethical Vegans. The claim that distress is caused by the gathering of agroup of people united by a belief worthy of respect in a democratic society is nothing short of prejudice and bigotry. As an organisation, I doubt any of the senior executive team would have simply accepted the claim that Jews, Vegans or Muslims gathering is distressing and upsetting. Nor would you permit a statement to be placed on your webpages to the effect that the distress caused by Jews, Vegans, or Muslims gathering will be on-going. Instead, a responsible executive would have tested the claims and perhaps explored ways to deal with belief prejudice in your university. You certainly would not have legitimated the prejudice in an internal statement thereby ensuring that your own Jewish, Vegan, Muslim staff, students and guests felt that the environment they were studying in, working in or visiting was hostile to them gathering.
As the Vice Chancellor of a university, you are not at liberty to pick and choose which protected beliefs you support and which you do not. If you carefully read the judgments you will see that Swansea University has committed the same organisational errors as many of the respondents in the Forstater, Bailey, Phoenix, Meade, Fahmy and Adams employment tribunals. Case after case has shown that there is nothing transphobic about gender critical beliefs. Case after case has shown that accusations of such boil down to little more than irrational fear and blind prejudice. As Akua Reindorf KC said in the Taliesin Centre, this is an extraordinary run of successful claims – pretty much unprecedented in recent history – which shows that judges have fully grasped how organisations and institutions are failing in their duties to protect gender critical people from harassment and hostile and degrading working environments. In contrast, the statement you are standing by: fails to distinguish between distress and offence, fails to acknowledge that gender critical beliefs are protected and that harassment of guests, staff and students on the basis of their gender critical beliefs will be dealt with by Swansea University as any other harassment would be dealt with. Your response to me shows the extent to which you (or your legal advisors) have not understood the case law in this area.
I look forward to your response, outlining how you will be investigating and dealing with my complaint – which to remind you includes the emails in which our event (and by implication us as speakers) were called ‘anti-trans’ and ‘hate’. Both of these terms are highly offensive and harassing in and of themselves. As you have failed to deal with my complaint thus far, I have decided that it is proportional to the problem to publish these emails – anonymised – in order to make sure that the problem is not swept under the carpet.
I hope you will do me the courtesy, this time, of responding to my complaint. I remain saddened and a little shocked that you did not respond to my invitation to attend the event. A polite decline would have sufficed. Instead you did not respond and you did not attend without a word of notice. Such behaviour speaks volumes about your priorities in this matter.
Yours sincerely
Prof Jo Phoenix
University of Reading
Redacted Email Correspondence:
Well done for not letting this drop, Jo. It will be interesting to see if he does you the courtesy of replying! Tim Davies
Is this claim by the Staff LGBT+ Network actionable? ‘Off the back of the previous events, we collated feedback and evidence of the impact of these events and presented to senior leadership with our concerns. This included evidence of the abuse and harassment experienced by staff and students at the hands of organisers and attendees of these events ….’