September 20, 2023 - 4:10pm
An Arts Council England (ACE) employee who won an employment tribunal over her gender-critical views in June has this week settled her case. Denise Fahmy made the announcement on her CrowdJustice page, which raised a little under £50,000 before the judgement. Saying that “any people working in the arts are deeply affected by the intolerance within the sector,” the feminist expressed “hope” that “my case has helped shine a light on that.” No settlement amounts were specified.
The June tribunal unanimously ruled in Fahmy’s favour, concluding that her claim of “harassment related to the protected characteristic of religion or belief is well-founded and succeeds”. At an internal online meeting in April 2022, colleagues alleged without substantiation that staff at advocacy group LGB Alliance were “openly discriminatory” and “transphobic”. When Fahmy defended the group’s work, she was targeted with similar language, called a “parasite” who, in her words “needed to be stamped out”.
Supporters of the group and the gender-critical movement more broadly were also labelled “neo-Nazis, homophobes and Islamaphobes”. In May of the same year, a petition was circulated among ACE employees on the staff intranet, attacking those who believe that gender is predicated on biological reality. Part of it read, “this cancer needs to be removed from our organisation. Hatred of others for their differences should not be tolerated.” Fahmy claimed that she was held up as a “threat” who needed to be “re-educated” over her views.
She eventually felt compelled to resign before the final employment hearing took place. ACE’s status as a publicly-funded body meant that the defence for the case was paid for by the taxpayer. In 2022, the organisation distributed a little under £900 million in public money.
Fahmy follows in the footsteps of Maya Forstater, who last year won her case against her former employer, the Center for Global Development, after a three-year court fight. Forstater’s gender-critical views were ruled to be a protected belief under the law, and this year she was awarded over £100,000 in compensation for loss of earnings, injured feelings and assorted damages.
In her statement this week, Fahmy claimed that, “thanks to Maya Forstater, people that believe sex is binary and immutable and cannot change should no longer be harassed at work for saying so”. Concluding, she said that “I will continue to fight for freedom of expression in the arts”.
Responding, an Arts Council England spokesperson said:
Speaking to UnHerd this afternoon, Fahmy disclosed that she will now be setting up a new organisation, Freedom in the Arts, alongside the dancer and choreographer Rosie Kay. “We’re looking to stand up for artists who meet with intolerance,” she said, “so that more women in the industry feel comfortable with coming forward.”
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SubscribeAnd the taxpayer coughs up to cover the bigotry of these employees at ACE. How about those who distributed the petition and those who so idiotically accuse with such vile language pay for a change?
Too bloody right.
The trouble with state-subsidised art is that what you get is state-subsidised art.
If the state has to subsidize your “art”, it’s only because no one is willing to buy it voluntarily.
And state-subsidised ideology.
Agree completely. This is effectively state subsidised bigotry and as such, no deterrent.
Senior staff should face financial penalties for using public funds to defend their bigotry. Where were ACE lawyers in supporting shocking and illegal practices?
A financial settlement is of little value if Denise Fahmy doesn’t get her job back and is rendered unemployable in the arts sector. Others will still be afraid to speak out. The bullies are winning. A Conservative government presided over it all, and Labour will make things worse.
I’ve felt for some years now that they really need to change the party name to ‘So-called Conservatives’.
“Hatred of others for their differences should not be tolerated”.
She thinks differently to the Hive Mind. Persecute her! Cast out the unbeliever!
And that’s the strangest thing about Diversity initiatives. You must be assimilated or risk being cast out.
You really don’t understand how DEI works.
Some simple research will help. Maybe avoid GB News and Breitbart for a while too.
Simple research is all anyone can expect from you.
Seems more than enough to correct you lot!
Seems more than enough to correct you, ‘Poo Fash!
Conservative wit and wisdom!
I don’ t quite see your point?
What’s confusing you, sport?
I think we all know how DEI works.
I do.
However, I very much doubt that you have the first clue about how DEI works. You’re not exactly well informed, are you?
I’ve worked with university DEI offices in the past. It didn’t go down well when I once suggested that perhaps we get rid of one of our chief DEI officer position in order to put the six-figure annual salary it would have cost the university toward scholarships for underserved student populations.
I love that you share your fantasies here with the group!
Let us know if any of these things ever actually happen!
You really don’t understand how DEI works.
Some simple research will help. Maybe avoid the Guardian and Novara for a while too.
This guy is regular Oscar Wilde!
Obviously Diversity cannot mean a wide range of opinions from people who hold very different ideas and values; for that would be, preposterously, to pretend that there could be a level playing field between, on the one hand, those in rightful possession of the moral and cultural high ground and, on the other, the morass of wrongthinkers who are only intent on spreading their various mis-, dis- and mal-information as widely as possible.
No, Diversity means that as many different shapes and sizes of people as possible should be singing harmoniously together, and all discordant voices suppressed. I believe that (as so often) the Germans have a word for this, or used to: Gleichschaltung.
I congratulate Denise Fahmy. This is more than just a victory for gender critical feminism. It is a victory for freedom of speech, the keystone of all our freedoms.
Why is Fahmy described as a feminist, rather than a woman?
I wondered the same. And it’s not only feminists, or even only women, who are being hounded by the zealots. Look at what has happened to Graham Linehan.
Great news.
Excellent. This is happening time and time again. Case law building nicely in.favour of women. Indeed, i.would say there’s a nice sideline to be had here given a woke corporations’ preparedness to ignore the law.
Why did the bullies who harassed her remain anonymous in the hearing?
Trans bullying is, as usual, off the charts. Trans are deluded psychopaths. To maintain this delusion, any threat to the delusion must be met with extreme measures.
Those who are “reality-based” need to speak up. Don’t buy into the trannie insanity. Don’t do the pronoun nonsense. Don’t agree that trans are bullied. Do agree that no child is born in the wrong body.
I got thrown out of a woke shop a couple of weeks ago for saying aloud that there are only two genders. I told the creatures to their faces that they were pimping for sadistic paedophilia.
You sound absolutely delightful!
I would really love to see you actually trying this – because of course this a fantasy for the likes of you and your bigoted pals but you’d never have the gumption to actually do it – and how badly it would end for you!
Importantly she won at the ET. That’ll ripple to Employers and good that it does.
She can never be fully compensated. But it does not mean an inexorable slide underway. The push-back at the more outlandish diversity twaddle can be done sensibly and with appropriate balance.
Nonetheless being respectful of colleagues in the workplace, whatever one’s personal views remains a requirement. Focus on the ability of the colleague to do the job well.
The reason the push back against diversity twaddle is failing is that it is done ‘sensibly and with appropriate balance’.
The people responsible for this travesty ought to be sacked and compelled to pay the damages themselves. Instead we punish taxpayers and leave the guilty men an women in place to find even more corrosive ways to conduct what is essentially a form of class war.
We owe the woke scum no respect whatsoever.
Such a charmer!!!
We owe the woke skum no respect whatsoever.
Where did you find three numbskulls to upvote this little bon mot?
Will the newly formed group – “Freedom for the Arts” – also defend those whose views do not conform with their founders on other (non-feminist) issues such as standing against women-only or race-based grants etc.?
Why does the headline refer to feminist? Fahmy’s views are just normal mainstream.
So. Has anybody got any idea how this should be stopped
Increasing awards of damages, leading to bankruptcy of a big university or a charity would be the best way to stop it.
It is justified. Court decisions are the law, since they are precedent.
So if the University of Oxford St. Wendy-Up-The-Spoons vilifies an LGB Alliance supporting staff member, years after the Maya Forstater or Alison Bailey cases, they’ve ignored long established law.
A nice big award of damages in the tens of millions may be justified.
Failing that, you run some kind of a group case for a few volunteers or employees to rack up the amount of damages.
Aim is to kill the university / charity.
Unemployment is the only way to hit the anonymous, squeaky-bottomed Widmerpools who implement this crap. So they’ll never work in the sector again, like the folk they persecuted.
It’s not as if many of these institutions contribute much to world knowledge, or ending suffering.
And they are guiltier than most of spreading gender ideology.
The death of one seems reasonable.
Kudos for the A.Powell reference.
Make the bureaucrats responsible pay the damages themselves. Then sack them.
With bravery, determination and the deliberate causing of offence to the woke skum.
Feminists and trans activists at war. Garcon, popcorn!
Gender critical women have found a new source of income.
On the whole I reckon they would have preferred not to have been hounded out of their careers and forced into doing the heavy lifting of defending the freedom to dissent from fashionable irrationality.
What’s wrong with that?
I think you mean trans bigots have found a new way to s***k taxpayers money up the wall