A lawyer who is chair of a civil service network representing gender-critical employees is being sued by an unnamed claimant for saying that only women have periods.
Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley, a lawyer who works for an arms-length body affiliated with the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), has launched a crowdfunding campaign to defend the employment tribunal claim. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for next week.
Duemmer Wrigley is also chair of the Sex Equality and Equity Network (SEEN), which operates across the civil service, one of the first gender-critical employee networks in any UK organisation.
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SEEN is committed to the protected belief that biological sex is binary and immutable and that it must not be conflated with concepts of gender or gender identity. It has more than 700 members in 50 government departments.
An employee of another arms-length body to Defra is taking their employer, the government department and Duemmer Wrigley to the employment tribunal for allowing the departmental SEEN network to exist on the basis that it is creating “an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive environment” for the claimant.
The employee’s action against Duemmer Wrigley relates to comments she made in the workplace, including a statement she made during a Women and Autism seminar in which she stated that “only women menstruate”, and a post she wrote about the Equality Act highlighting that “gender expression, gender identity and gender” were not protected characteristics.
On her crowdfunding page, Duemmer Wrigley says she is also being taken to the tribunal for a post made in July 2022 on an internal work forum which explained why she was gender critical.
The post read: “Some people believe that we all have a gender (sometimes ‘gender identity’) separate from our biological sex; that sex is a spectrum, and that biological sex is an idea that first emerged with white European colonisation. Such beliefs are protected by law.
“Other people, such as myself, hold that sex is binary (male and female), fundamentally biological and an important category to recognise in language, laws, sport and [the] workplace. These beliefs, sometimes called ‘gender critical’, are also protected by law.”
In a statement, Duemmer Wrigley said: “I do not accept that these or any of the other posts, comments or actions were offensive or discriminatory in relation to gender reassignment, nor that they created an unsafe place of work for employees with that protected characteristic (as the claim indicates). My position is that the SEEN network and all my actions described above are protected as rights to freedom of belief and expression under Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
“In fact, I consider the whole claim to be premised on an assumption that ‘gender-critical’ beliefs are inherently discriminatory, and expression or manifestation of such beliefs may therefore lawfully be suppressed. I consider the claim takes no account of the effect of the judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Forstater v CGD, nor my Article 9 and 10 rights, nor those of other employees.”
Maya Forstater, executive director of Sex Matters, which promotes clarity about sex in law, policy and language, said: “This is a shocking case, which follows revelations by civil servant whistleblowers about a ‘culture of fear’ among gender-critical civil servants across Whitehall. It is not reasonable to view the existence of a network of gender-critical colleagues as ‘harassment’.
“The civil service needs to have a robust culture of integrity, objectivity and accountability, and treat all its employees fairly. Civil servants should not expect to be kept ‘safe’ from encountering ideas or people they don’t agree with.”
A spokesman for the government said it was unable to comment on ongoing legal proceedings.
Since SEEN’s inception in the civil service, other independent gender-critical networks have been launched, including SEEN in the City, Police SEEN UK, and SEEN in HR.
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