Stonewall founder Simon Fanshawe: shouting 'bigot' at each other won't end the trans rights war
Anti-bias courses and preferred pronouns pull us apart rather than bring us together, the stand-up comedian, turned activist, turned diversity trainer tells Sarah Ditum
Sarah Ditum
Sunday December 19 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
Stonewall co-founder Simon Fanshawe believes that "sometimes we must agree to disagree"
ANNA MOFFAT
There's a problem with diversity in the workplace, says Simon Fanshawe. Since the #MeToo movement erupted in 2017 and the global Black Lives Matter protests of last year, businesses have become ever more eager to embrace all the glorious variety of race, sexuality and gender among their staff — and ever more willing to throw money at achieving that by bringing in pricey "diversity trainers". The intentions may be good. But are the results?
"The danger is that the definition of inclusion becomes exclusive," says Fanshawe, 64. "In other words, 'You have to think like this, and if you don't, we'll exclude you.'"
This is not the kind of comment you might expect from Fanshawe. For one thing, he's a diversity trainer himself. Through his