A former employee reveals how she was silenced
It’s hard
to imagine a more agreeable place to work than a charity bookshop. Staffed by
civic-minded volunteers, the shelves groan with musty old paperbacks, lovingly
donated in the hope they’ll find a new home and also raise money for good
causes.
For Maria,
the chance to work for one of Oxfam’s global outreach programmes, helping to
end violence against women in the workplace, was a dream come true. And for a
few years, it was — right up until the moment a fellow co-worker asked on an
internal messageboard if Oxfam shops should ban the sale of J.K. Rowling’s
books.
Three
years ago, the Harry Potter author found herself accused of transphobia for
having supported women who have “concerns around single-sex spaces”. During a
discussion on Oxfam’s intranet, Maria had come to the defence of Britain’s most
popular living author, asking for evidence of Rowling’s supposed transphobia.
It was a decision that prompted a gruelling internal investigation, one in
which Maria struggled to clear her name, led to her having a nervous breakdown
and leaving both her job and the country.
Oxfam
eventually offered a grovelling apology for the “procedural mistakes” that
caused Maria such upset, but she is still struggling to make sense of it all.
Speaking for the first time about the episode, she reveals: “My life has been
torn apart. It drove me to a breakdown, I lost my confidence and, worst of all,
I began to doubt myself.”
What
Maria endured is part of a wider woke culture in the charitable sector, where
female employees are silenced and treated like bigots for believing that
sex-based rights matter. Certainly, Maria is so convinced that her career
remains in danger — that any woman accused of transphobia will be blacklisted
by much of the charitable sector, even when they have been exonerated — that
she has agreed to speak to UnHerd under a pseudonym. “This
will hang over me for the rest of my life,” she says. For decades, Oxfam —
which was formed in 1942 to send food supplies to starving mothers and children
in Nazi-occupied Greece — was one of the UK’s most respected charities,
providing international aid to end hardship around the globe. But in recent
years, its reputation has been tarnished. In 2018, evidence emerged that senior
staff had paid survivors of the 2010 Haiti earthquake for sex, and that the use
of prostitutes during the relief effort was covered up by the charity,
allegations that Oxfam denies.
It was
Maria’s concern for vulnerable women that first drew her to work for Oxfam: “I
have experienced rape and domestic violence in the past, so I wanted to help
others in the same situation.” Born in Spain, where she had worked as a
pre-school teacher and volunteered at a sexual assault centre, she moved to the
UK in 2017.
“I loved my job,” says Maria, “being able to see how Oxfam’s work improves the lives of other women and children.” Three years after joining the charity, she was promoted to a co-ordinating role within the women’s rights team, whose remit was to ensure that female equality was reflected in Oxfam’s work.
She
realised almost immediately how impossible that aim would be, given the growing
dominance of a pro-trans mindset within Oxfam. Along with many other charities
and institutions, it had capitulated to gender-based ideals, ones that asserts
that “trans women are women” and that the categories of male and female are on
a spectrum, rather than biological realities. On the advice of Stonewall — the
discredited charity whose workplace diversity scheme sought to “recognise and
celebrate the efforts of leading employers to advance LGBT inclusion” — Oxfam
advised its employees to state their pronouns in meetings and on
correspondence. “It was regularly using Stonewall materials to advise staff on
LGBTQ+ inclusion in the workplace, with a heavy emphasis on transgender
ideology above all else.”
Maria
says that she initially toed the party line on the matter, staying silent when
trans issues were discussed. “But then I began to see how women’s rights were
attacked, particularly because it was obvious that single-sex spaces, such as
rape crisis centres, were labelled as ‘anti-trans’.”
Oxfam
staff were invited to join company-wide online groups related to their
interests, and Maria joined the LGBTQ+ group. In September 2020, a charity shop
manager asked the group: “What is your opinion on selling J.K. Rowling books?”
The employee, who is a transwoman, worried that the writer’s latest
thriller, Troubled Blood, written under her pseudonym Robert
Galbraith, might be “highly transphobic”. She wondered whether it might be
covered by Oxfam’s “unsuitable for sale” policy.
Several
staff engaged with the forum thread, widening the debate to include Rowling’s
suitability as an Oxfam-stocked author, and added their concerns about her
supposed transphobia, until Maria asked the question: “Can you explain why she
is transphobic or why the book is transphobic?” When her query went unanswered,
Maria went on to express concerns about banning books by “one of the most
important woman writers in the UK”, before adding: “Actually, we are selling
books from paedophiles and rapists. We are selling religious books. Stopping
selling something we don’t like is called censorship and is the opposite of
freedom of speech.”
The
manager then left the conversation, and Maria thought that was the end of the
matter. “She had said she was uncomfortable with the conversation and did not
want to discuss it any further.” But following the exchange, Maria discovered
she had been labelled in private chats as a transphobic bigot by other members
of the LGBTQ+ group. Another manager sent her private messages, suggesting that
Maria could lose her job after posting her comments. “They felt threatening to
me,” says Maria. “She said my views were ‘incredible’, and that she would be
reporting me. There is absolutely no way I am anti-trans. I am merely
pro-women’s rights.”
In the
next few days, members of the LGBTQ+ group encouraged colleagues to complain
about the discussion, stating that “transphobia is not tolerated here”. “They
did not name me, but it was obvious who they were referring to,” says Maria.
Next, a petition signed by 70 staff members was sent to all staff via the
intranet, calling for Oxfam’s leadership to “take a stand” and “communicate a
zero-tolerance approach to transphobia”.
Senior
management replied to the petition authors, saying: “No one in our organisation
should be subjected to hate speech, discrimination or other forms of harm” and
“It is of great concern that members of the wider LGBTQIA+ community have felt
intimidated by workplace conversations.” Oxfam’s CEO got involved, and gave a
“no-debate” steer, adding: “We value the experience of our trans and non-binary
colleagues, friends and partners and we do not expect their experience to be
debated in our workplace.”
Three
days later, Maria was invited to a meeting with her line manager and a member of
Human Resources and told that she was under investigation because of her
“transphobic comments”. Maria says: “They should have told me what the actual
topic of the meeting was, and I could have brought a union representative with
me. I apologised for upsetting anyone and tried to outline the rationale for my
views and beliefs, but they refused to accept it.” Signed off sick with anxiety
and depression, Maria felt alone and scared of losing her job, particularly in
the middle of a pandemic. “All my family and relatives were in Spain and the
borders were closed.”
Six weeks
later, two days before Christmas, Maria learned that she’d been found guilty of
misconduct and was issued with a final warning. Oxfam told Maria that her
comments online “breached the requirement of the Code of Conduct to treat all
persons with respect and dignity”, and reminded her that “transgender people
are protected from discrimination under the Equality Act 2010”. The letter did
not give a definition of transphobia or say how her posts were transphobic.
Refusing to accept that finding, Maria appealed. “As a woman I have always had
to fight for everything,” she says. “I knew that if they beat me then they were
trampling on all of us.”
Three
months later, Maria was informed she had lost her appeal. The letter informing
her of this decision also offered, for the first time, a definition of
transphobia (not for want of asking): “Oxfam refers to Stonewall definitions to
support our understanding, which states transphobia is the ‘fear or dislike of
someone based on the fact they are trans’.” Feeling she was left with no choice
but to resign, Maria took Oxfam to an employment tribunal. “I became determined
that this should not happen to another woman,” she says.
Maria
claimed constructive dismissal and belief discrimination. In July last year,
during judicial mediation, both parties agreed to settle, with Oxfam issuing a
public apology for its handling of the process. “We believe that each member of
our community has a right to their own religious or philosophical beliefs,
including the belief that ‘sex is immutable’ and ‘sex is important’. We
acknowledge that in dealing with your case and during the disciplinary process
we made mistakes. We acknowledged that it was not appropriate to give you a
final written warning, and we would like to offer our sincere apologies for the
upset that this has caused you.”
Earlier
this year, Oxfam updated its language guide, which is an internal document
advising staff how to speak about its work. The document includes the
instruction that, rather than using the phrases “biological male” and
“biological female”, “AMAB and AFAB” (assigned male/female at birth), should be
used instead; and when talking about “expectant mothers”, use the phrase “people
who become pregnant”.
“I hope
every single woman, especially those stronger and richer than me, fight every
time this happens within the charity sector,” Maria says. “Oxfam is supposed to
be protecting women and girls in the most vulnerable situations all over the
world, and this ideology will ruin it.”
In
response, an Oxfam spokesperson said: “We are sorry for the procedural mistakes
we made in the handling of this case and we have apologised to the individual
concerned. We fully support both an individual’s right to hold religious and
philosophical beliefs and a person’s right to have their identity respected,
regardless of their gender identity and expression, sex, or sexuality. We
believe LGBTQIA+ rights are human rights.”
Now back
in Spain, Maria has just finished an internship at a refugee camp in Greece,
with the aim of a career in humanitarian work. “I lost so many friends,” she
tells me. “I lost my job. My mental health suffered. Enforcing the views of the
trans lobby, at all costs, seems more important to Oxfam than meeting their
actual charitable aims.”
She says
she often thinks of the author who changed the course of her life — and
believes the way Rowling has been vilified for simply supporting and defending
the rights of women who have suffered domestic abuse and rape is proof that
misogyny has no limits. “No matter how much money or power you have achieved,
if you are a woman, you will always be a target,” says Maria. “I fought my case
so that all women know they can fight, and win, against this crazed ideology.”
'I
was hounded out of Oxfam over JK Rowling' - UnHerd
