A “speak out champion” who won’t speak for all
by Sarah Phillimore, The Critic:
On 31 May 2022 the CPS made an exciting announcement: the appointment of a new “Speak Out Champion”. The purported aim was to improve confidence amongst employees at the CPS to speak “openly about their experiences”, to help the CPS uphold its organisational values “to treat everyone with respect”, and — ominously — “as part of the CPS’s continued cultural drive to embed EDI” (Equality Diversity and Inclusion) throughout the workforce. This position is well remunerated with public money: £31,304 for four days work a month.
Few could argue with a drive to promote “respect for all” or pay people a fair wage for helping that drive. But the appointment of Sophie Cook as the “Champion” does not inspire confidence that “all” really means “all” or that this is money well spent.
Ms Cook is a transwoman, active over many years as a “transgender rights campaigner” and even taking a place in the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Programme.
In 2019 Ms Cook organised “pronoun stickers” for children in Brighton and Hove, mindful of the harm that “wrong pronouns” can do. Ms Cook is clearly less delicate around the feelings of women who object to being referred to in dehumanising terms, however. The word “terf” has been accepted in many courts as a derogatory term, but the new “EDI champion” is not shy of deploying it in various tweets:
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
