Staff at the DWP reportedly objected to the clothes of Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale, a trans woman who co-chairs the LGBT+ Civil Service Network
Ms Tweedale, 58, is said to wear low-cut black corsets, fishnet tights with high heels and a gothic choker with a pentagram when she attends the office
Based
There’s a big problem here: Every kind of clothing is “fetish clothing” to someone.
“Phwoar! Most of the people in this hospital are wearing nurse’s uniforms! Kinky!”
Yeah a nice pair of jeans are absolutely a form of fetish gear and a traditional one no less
And how!
There are people with a raincoat fetish.
“low-cut black corsets, fishnet tights with high heels and a gothic choker with a pentagram”
My friend would like to know where, exactly, this is, so a complaint may be filed.
Surely this goes without saying.
What’s wrong with people nowadays? Standards are just dropping across the board
I feel like before I can form an opinion, I need to see the outfit in question. There is a description, but it’s not very detailed and not exactly from a neutral source. As described though, it sounds like she was dressed like Dr. Frankenfurter, with a choker instead of a pearl necklace. Which… Yea, that’s not a workplace outfit for a civil servant.
But then again, it could be tame as hell. I have no idea. Because despite writing an article about it, apparently a photo is just too much to expect from modern journalism.
There really is no plausible ‘fetish outfit’ that could possibly under any circumstances be appropriate for work at the Civil Service.
It’s probably about lingerie, bandage, butt plugs, etc.
It does make me wonder if they know what fetish gear looks like but going by the photo of the Baroness, I doubt she’d recognised it if it walked up to her in the street and asked for her safe word.
Depending on the dress code, this is, at best, an HR issue but it seems like the Tory press are trying to make it the next front in the culture war. We should take a leaf out of the Democrat’s playbook and refuse to engage them, as this is just weird.
One of my friends in the civil service said they have this kind of internal linkedin/facebook thing that virtually no one uses. However they have some kind of craigslist style functionality and she saw someone trying to sell used sex toys on there.
Is it Yammer because even the IT department refused to use it.
That name rings a bell but would need to double check with my friend. She said it was basically a ghost town with only a few really eccentric posts.
Mr skinner and Mrs krebapple were in the closet making babies and I saw the baby and it looked at me
I don’t have a telegraph account - someone summarise?
Here’s an archive of the page.
Ms Tweedale, 58, is said to wear low-cut black corsets, fishnet tights with high heels and a gothic choker with a pentagram when she attends the office.
She’s trans and her attire led to a minister stating that kind of “fetish gear” cannot be worn at work. Others working with her say it’s highly inappropriate and unprofessional. That’s the gist of it.
She’s trans
Is that relevant?
Apparently, as the Telegraph decided to give this nothingburger of a paragraph its own heading
Ms Tweedale previously prompted controversy in the department after she was singled out by civil servants who accused her of furthering the “chilling effect” of gender ideology.
the Telegraph
I was asking about OP’s comment, not the Telegraph’s article. Of course the Telegraph will include irrelevant detail in order to sensationalise (in their view) the story. Others repeating that irrelevant detail is questionable though.
Well, the article itself dedicates a section to how she’s been targeted for “gender ideology”, which is dog whistle for “trans”. Calling non-cis gender expression a “fetish” is another dog whistle. Those two points in combination make her trans-ness relevant, even if the author isn’t going so far as to explicitly call out that this anti-trans behavior.
Being trans does not give extra dress-code rights, and nor should it. None of the other women are allowed to dress that way, so why should she?
Now, if she wants to challenge the dress code for more esoteric modes to be allowed, that should be taken under consideration by whoever is in charge of that, but in the meantime, she should at least try to conform. Then if the decision was to go against her, she’d have the requisite conforming clothing already.
(Tangentially, there’s an argument that gender non-conforming people might want to define other professional dress codes that don’t strictly fit with male and female norms, but that’s doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here.)
I understand that it’s difficult for trans folk who deal with transphobics everywhere they turn and thus every discrimination could be transphobia, but this one seems pretty easy to test.
And I have to wonder how she’d react if she won the dress code change and other people, cis people, started dressing more like her.
the article
Again, I wasn’t talking about the article.
I’ll go one better. Here is the archive.
I cannot believe this even needed to be clarified in the first place
Paywall
Good luck enforcing this. My regular belt is a hobble belt I bought from a fetish gear maker. I’d be in the office technically able to whip out a leather restraint at a moment’s notice.
I hope people in her office start wearing their own freaky gear in solidarity
On TERF Island, clothing not corresponding to one’s biological sex is legally considered “fetish gear”
Ah, a nice normal American that loves judging other countries without realising what the fuck is going on locally.
People say TERF island as if when you leave Britain everywhere is ok with trans people. Unfortunately, other places tend to be even worse.
It’s a stupid buzzword.
E: ok people. Prove me wrong.
