TWIBS: Soldier Boy Struggles With Pronouns
A year ago, David Toshack was fired for refusing to be normal and decent. Now, he insists he’s been discriminated against.
by Aly Gibbs
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
My dear friends, this week I bring to you the latest chapter in a book called Fucking Around and Finding Out… UK Edition! Featuring foreword from Sir Stephen John Fry.
Okay, not really. We don’t have the juice to get Stephen Fry. Not yet anyway. Side note: I don’t keep up with celebrities very well, is Stephen Fry still cool? Has he done something terrible and unforgivable recently? Kindly let me know in the comments at full volume. Thank you!
So, here we go: According to the BBC (who, I must preface, suck tremendously), “former trainee prison custody officer” David Toshack “told an employment tribunal security firm GeoAmey terminated his employment in January last year over his gender critical views.” Yeah, I bet he just had some very minor, very understandable, totally defensible views that were critical of gender… and not, say, super transphobic and gross.
51-year-old Toshack claims that his “Christian beliefs” and “understanding of science, biology and reality” prevented him from referring to a female prisoner who is trans using she and her pronouns. It sounds to me like his Christian beliefs and misunderstandings of science, biology and reality have prevented him from gainful employment, but what the heck do I know? I am, according to David’s sincerely held religious beliefs, not real.
Which sounds like a fantastic tax loophole to me!
Toshack was fired over a year ago for his refusal to treat trans prisoners in a fair and equitable way, with this information coming to light now in the course of an employment tribunal intended to appeal his employers’ decision. His training leader and a member of HR met with him to discuss his inexplicably inflexible rule on pronoun usage, informed him that this was unacceptable, and then fired him when he refused to amend his behavior. He claims that he expected to find some compromise during the meeting, such as calling the woman by her chosen name but continuing to misgender her, but for some strange reason he refused to compromise by treating people the way they want to be treated.
He also alluded to using “industrial language and dark humour” on social media, which sounds absolutely skin crawling. Consider similarly Scottish Sandie Peggie, who described her and her husband’s transphobic and racist jokes on social media and in group chats as, simply, “banter.” It sounds so charming when you simply reframe rank bigotry as dark humor, doesn’t it?
Anyway, Toshack is appealing his former employer’s decision via tribunal, but the best part of the appeal is that he’s talking to the wrong people. GeoAmey, the prisoner transport company he used to work for, are simply adhering to the Scottish Prison Service’s rules, which state that verbal communication with trans prisoners must respect their chosen name and stated pronouns. This is government policy he’s disobeying! Of course he was fired!
Let me just say that I hope Toshack’s appeal goes horribly, because good heavens, what an annoying loser. The man is apparently a former combat medic and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is embarrassing to think that a British soldier’s greatest enemy is not gunfire or explosions, but a set of fucking pronouns.
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
