GOSH, it must be depressing to work for a large organisation these days. Government, corporate or charitable; they speak with the same voice. It’s Critical Race Theory in the morning and Queer Theory in the afternoon. If only these two theories would come to blows. If you can change sex at your own say-so, how come race is so sacrosanct? But despite the irreconcilability of their respective ‘logics’, these identity theories are bound by their common enmity to reason, their retreat from the rational pursuit of science, knowledge and truth.
These woke narratives ultimately threaten the rule of law and the underpinnings of democracy itself, as so persuasively argued by James Lindsay. If this is the case – which it certainly seems to be – why don’t our great and good see what their endorsement of this irrationality is doing?
TCW readers will be well aware of the numerous forms this takes. These are but a few recent examples:
· The Governor of the Bank of England lighting up the building in support of Trans Awareness Week.
Is he in favour of rendering young people sterile and without sexual function?
· Employees at the British Library declaring that one-time Poet Laureate Ted Hughes has links to slavery via long-dead ancestors.
· Amnesty UK announcing that we are simply ‘who we say we are’.
· The magazine Psychology Today withdrawing an article on transgenderism three hours after it was deemed worth publishing.
Among the hundreds and thousands of employees toiling away within woke organisations, are any embarrassed? Do any raise eyebrows at each other over the water dispenser? Do they stifle yawns in po-faced HR meetings? Do they explode with frustration and disbelief in the pub after work? I expect there are indeed very many, but that the tyranny of the orthodoxy leaves them too scared to say anything within the workplace and that self-censorship is very effective.
Which invites the question, where are the whistle-blowers? I don’t mean the amateur army of bloggers and tweeters who call this stuff out day and night on social media. This growing force tends to focus on publicly available information. No, I mean the vast number of employees who work in these woke corporations and charities, government departments and quangos; who have to navigate this drumbeat day in and day out and who must witness the internal machinations; who know about the actual conversations, the meetings, the working up of copy, the budgets and the sign-offs.
Who writes, who reviews, this copy?
Who asks for the comparative data to back up this tweet?
Is all this stuff signed off at the highest level, or lower down the line?
A couple of whistleblowers have approached me revealing an example of what is going on behind the scenes. Last year someone leaked me a letter draft, a version of which was apparently sent to Boris Johnson as the Government considered its response to the consultation about gender self-identification, from an organisation that thought it had the right to seek to influence government policy on this sensitive matter. I can’t help but wonder what the women and parents working for the named companies thought about what was being said on their behalf, if they knew of it of course. Would their female employees really want men to be able to self-ID into their loos? Would the parents they employ really want it suggested to their children that gender identity trumps biological sex and is worth sterility and lack of sexual function? Was there any internal consultation process before this letter was eventually pinged off in final form and if so what form did it take?
Citibank, Deloitte’s, Clifford Chance, Budweiser, Freshfields, Siemens – just some of the big names on this list. Do they all proactively invite their employees to ‘self-ID’ at work, as Citibank seems to do? Why? Do their CEOs and management boards really think this is right?
Who do they think benefits from the relentless pushing of this ideology that no one had heard of ten years ago? Where do they think the backing in science is for ‘inner gender identities’? Why do they need to be seen as woke?
What happens when a man at Citibank wants to self-ID into the women’s lavatories?
What if a woman objects to this intranet invitation to self-ID? Would she be fired? And would a judge come down on the side of the wokedefendants?
It is well known that gender ideology has found its way into the heart of many constabularies across the UK. Here, for example, is what one police officer shared with the lobby group WeAreFairCop.
He is right to be concerned about this, but where is the support for him?
Last year someone sent me a small part of the very large questionnaire their company submits in order to remain one of Stonewall’s ‘Diversity Champions’. Extraordinarily, the company pays Stonewall for this privilege.
In the past 18 months, has the organisation profiled visible role models from the following communities? Tick all that apply.
GUIDANCE: Within the profiling opportunity, the person’s identity must be clear. It should not be left up to the reader or viewer to make assumptions.
A. Gay people or lesbians
B. Bi people
C. Binary trans people (e.g. trans men and trans women)
D. Non-binary people (e.g. genderfluid and genderqueer people)
E. Older LGBT people (aged 50 or over)
F. Young LGBT people (aged 25 or under)
G. Disabled LGBT people (excluding disability related to mental health)
H. BAME LGBT people
I. LGBT people of faith
J. LGBT people being open about their mental health (including disability related to mental health) or wellbeing challenges
K. LGBT parents
L. None of the above
The voices are there in social media, in the mainstream press, ‘calling out’ the woke outputs of all our large institutions. Yet nothing budges. The Fortresses of Woke look unassailable. They are tankers which cannot be turned. No one internally daring to tell the Emperor that he has no clothes.
More people making internal processes public would surely help. We desperately need whistleblowers to shine a light on the lunacy. And we need more protection under law for those brave enough to do so.
