Stonewall

Are Stonewall and Mermaids charitable?

Iwas once asked by a colleague to sponsor him on an undertaking designed, he said, to raise money for a very good charitable cause. I can’t remember what the cause was – cancer, maybe, or mental kids – but I do remember the nature of the undertaking. He intended to walk a number of miles down the Great Rift Valley in Kenya. Why not, I suggested, just donate the enormous amount of money such a trek would cost direct to the charity? It would easily outweigh the amount raised, not least because miserable bastards like me would probably decide it was not a charitable act at all but first-world grandstanding

After Tavistock, will Mermaids be next?

‘Mermaids must fall next.’ That was the response of Professor Kathleen Stock to the news that last week that the NHS was closing its Tavistock gender identity clinic for children. Stock, who quit Sussex University over what she called a trans rights ‘witch-hunt’, added that it was now time for ‘a no-holds barred journalistic dive’ into Mermaids, the British charity which supports ‘gender variant and transgender youth.’ Their methods of doing this have come under much scrutiny, such as by promoting breast binding at an event last year. Mermaids is also involved in lobbying and has provided training in public sector bodies. In May this year, the TaxPayers’ Alliance revealed that

Why it has to be Kemi

Have you considered a career in whoring? It can be very rewarding, apparently – especially financially. World’s oldest profession and all that, a job which offers the potential for travel but which can also be done without leaving one’s bed. A chap who teaches children about sex, Justin Hancock, thinks the kids should not write off prostitution as a viable career option. Justin’s various modules and Q&As on a whole array of vices and foul perversions, most of which he seems to like, are published under the name ‘Bish’. On whoring, ‘Bish’ advises one young woman who had a, er, negative experience as a prostitute: ‘There are many, many people

Mary Wakefield

Parents must resist Stonewall’s gospel

I think by now it’s becoming horribly apparent to parents of every political persuasion that we can’t sit out the culture wars. You might call yourself progressive, loathe the Tories, but still… the ideological tide is rising, and when it laps at your own child’s feet, everything changes. It becomes impossible to ignore the fact that gender activism these days isn’t about gay rights or even trans rights, it’s not about being inclusive, it’s about presenting utter nonsense as plain fact. A generation of children are being fed a distorted version of reality. In particular they’re told that there’s no such thing as biological sex, that there are no born

Ricky Gervais is an achingly conventional Millennial posing as a naughty maverick

Just how edgy and dangerous is Ricky Gervais? There is no one more edgy and dangerous, we learn from no less an authority than one R. Gervais. He keeps reminding you of this at intervals in his latest stand-up special, for which he was reputedly paid $20 million (to go with the other $20 million Netflix paid him for its predecessor). Every few sketches, he’ll announce to his live audience that this one was so offensive there’s just no way Netflix is going to broadcast it. But Netflix has done just that – and yet, quite incredibly, neither it nor Gervais has been cancelled. Funny that. What this suggests to

Stormont’s Stonewall spend

Stormont, the home of Northern Ireland’s assembly, has never exactly been a place associated with social liberalism. So Steerpike was surprised to find that the Ulster parliament – where the Bible-bashing Ian Paisley held court for so long – has spent thousands of pounds on controversial LGBT+ charity Stonewall.  Freedom of Information requests by Mr S found that the Assembly paid £7,500 to be members of the organisation’s ‘diversity champions programme’ between 2018 and 2021, with the Northern Ireland executive spending a further £1,440 for Stonewall seminars on leadership, allyship and promoting mental health since the beginning of 2020. Other recent diversity courses hosted by the executive include an LGBT workshop in 2018 – back

Truss’s Foreign Office bankrolling Stonewall

Looking back, it wasn’t a great 2021 for LGBT+ group Stonewall. There were the allegations it misrepresented the law in its advice to Essex University, accusations from founder Matthew Parris that it was trying to delegitimise critics and the ongoing exodus of Whitehall departments from its much-criticised diversity scheme. But despite all this controversy, the charity’s latest accounts reveal a still-reliable stream of income from one reliable source: the taxpayer. Stonewall received £1.25 million in taxpayer-funded grants in just 18 months to March 2021, according to documents published this week. This figure is a near-67 per cent increase on the £748,000 they received in their previous accounts, which covered the 12 months up

In praise of Stonewall

This morning saw a profound breakthrough in the trans debate. I say that on the basis of an interview Nancy Kelley, Stonewall’s CEO, did with the BBC’s Emma Barnett on Woman’s Hour.  What’s important is not really anything that Kelley said, though some of that was indeed interesting and I’ll come to it in a second. What matters is that the interview took place at all, since that constitutes a significant shift in the way Stonewall does its work. Stonewall’s instinct has been to largely avoid mainstream media and other political debates about its work on trans issues that is now its primary focus. Kelley has given a handful of interviews

Now even Sir Alan Duncan turns on Stonewall

Covid has meant it’s been a tough old year for the charity sector – but few have had it worse than Stonewall. Accused of misrepresenting the law, pilloried by its co-founder Matthew Parris and facing an exodus of Whitehall departments from its diversity scheme, the LGBT rights organisation has few allies left. Now even Sir Alan Duncan, the second-rate politician turned third-rate diarist, has turned his guns on the charity – despite being heralded on Stonewall’s website as the first openly gay Conservative MP. The ex-Rutland and Melton Tory, whose memoirs fired more shots at his colleagues than a Maxim gun, mounted a rare defence of the government’s decision to withdraw funding

Ofcom is right to leave Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme

Ofcom has joined the exodus from the Stonewall Diversity Champions programme. The explanation came in a carefully worded statement yesterday in which the communications regulator explained that their, ‘commitment to supporting the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ people is as strong as ever.’ So it should be, but we are living in strange times. Sex has been conflated with gender, transsexual with transvestite (we are all transgender now), and support for anything LGBTQWERTY has been conflated with complying with what Stonewall think. Ofcom seem to agree; their statement concludes: ‘We will continue to participate in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, which is widely recognised as a strong benchmarking tool for

Stonewall and the problem with taxpayer funded campaigning

Liz Truss, the minister for women and equalities, is reportedly keen to see government departments withdraw from Stonewall’s ‘Diversity Champions’ programme. The scheme, which around 250 departments and public bodies have signed up to, sees quangos and other public sector bodies pay for guidance on issues such as gender-neutral toilets, pronouns, and transgender inclusion. Debates rage about the efficacy – or even legitimacy – of such programmes. But underpinning that discourse is the fact that huge sums of taxpayers’ money have been handed over to what are undoubtedly controversial campaigns. As well as receiving cash for the Diversity Champions programme, new research by the TaxPayers’ Alliance shows that Stonewall also

NHS agency stonewalls on charity links

It has not been a good year for gay rights charity Stonewall. Last month founding member Matthew Parris accused the organisation of trying to delegitimise anyone who did not agree with its views after a free speech row at Essex University. Stonewall was alleged to have misrepresented the law in its advice to the institution with barrister Akua Reindorf warning of ‘potential illegalities’ and suggesting the university should reconsider its ties to the campaigning group.  Now it is reported that the Ministry of Justice is preparing to leave Stonewall’s diversity scheme as part of an ‘exodus’ of government departments severing ties. The reasons for such a move are said to be concerns about Stonewall’s ‘dubious’ training and approach

Stonewall’s dystopian attacks on gendered language

Today brings yet more proof that Liz Truss is dead right to want to withdraw government departments from Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme. The Telegraph reports that one way institutions and companies can rise up Stonewall’s ‘Workplace Equality Index’ is by ditching words like ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and using more ‘gender-neutral’ terms instead. Apparently, words like ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ are too ‘gendered’ and thus they might offend trans people. So if you want those precious brownie points from Stonewall, and if you want to be beatified as a ‘diversity champion’, you’ll have to stop using these loving, everyday terms that the entire population understands and instead parrot the gobbledegook of woke

What Dawn Butler gets wrong about Stonewall

It’s been a bad night for Stonewall. Yesterday, the Labour MP Dawn Butler created a Twitter Poll. ‘Who do you trust more?’ she asked her 150,000 followers, Stonewall or Liz Truss? It’s not exactly clear what inspired Butler to ask this question online, but this is, of course, the MP who last year told Good Morning Britain that she believed ‘babies are born without a sex.’ Why anyone would need to hand over good money to show they treat their staff with dignity and respect is a mystery to me Butler’s folly gave anyone with a Twitter account the opportunity to have their say. The numbers are not looking good

The EHRC is right to ditch Stonewall

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has unceremoniously dumped Stonewall – and who can blame it? Its excuse for ceasing to pay at least £2,500 a year for the privilege of being part of Stonewall’s ‘diversity champions’ programme was that it did not offer ‘value for money’. For all the anodyne corporate-speak, it seems clear the increasing toxicity of the Stonewall brand played a big part in the decision. There was another factor in play here too. Interestingly enough, while Stonewall’s stock goes ever downwards, the outlook of the EHRC seems to be changing for the better. Getting shot of Stonewall, despite widespread acceptance of this organisation by public bodies up and down the

Stonewall and the silencing of feminist voices at universities

This week a game-changer of a report released by Essex university led to its Vice Chancellor abjectly apologising for the university cancelling two feminist academics for their views on gender identity and sex. Both professors Jo Phoenix and Rosa Freedman have views which accord with our current laws on gender identity, and yet they had a number of talks cancelled by Essex university and Freedman was potentially rejected from a job after they were labelled ‘transphobes’ by a mob of intolerant academics and students. Now Essex has been forced into issuing a humiliating apology and admitted that its treatment of the professors infringed on their freedom of speech. So how