By now you can’t have failed to miss the scandal engulfing Northumbia Police concerning their sexism against male victims of domestic violence. The police force, ultimately headed by radical feminist Police and Crime Commissioner Vera Baird produced a series of sexist and hopelessly outdated posters, all of which pushed the totally debunked narrative of domestic violence comprising of male perpetrators and female victims. To compound matters further, Baird refused to listen to anyone’s concerns and instead blocked all manner of people who highlighted her sexism on Twitter, including male domestic violence victims in her own region who she was supposed to be helping.

HEqual has followed this story from the very start and thanks in part to our work the force was even forced to issue a statement about its sexism and the story appeared in a number of media outlets such as Breitbart, the Independent, Daily Mail and the local press. Many of these articles are factually correct and quite well written, but there’s also a great deal of unreported and hugely significant material we’ve uncovered that’s yet to appear anywhere else.

Baird’s sexist posters prompted numerous complaints and HEqual was prompted to investigate the correct procedure for reporting her sex discrimination. Although it’s possible to complain to the police or the Police Complaints Commission, we noticed that concerns about actual Police and Crime Commissioners and excluded from such procedures. Instead, as quoted on the Northumbria PCC’s website the procedure is as follows:

In accordance with the provisions that are contained in the Elected Local Policing Bodies (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2012, the Police & Crime Panel have determined that any complaints about the Police and Crime Commissioner or the Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner will be dealt with, in the first instance, by the Monitoring Officer, who is the Chief Executive of the Police and Crime Commissioner. If you wish to complain about the PCC please write to Elaine Snaith, Chief Executive using the details found on the ‘Contact Us’ page.”

So the gatekeeper for complaints about Baird and the person running her office is is Elaine Snaith, she’s paid a salary of £75,000 and her full job description is here.

We decided to examine whether she was likely to be a fair minded and neutral individual who’s going to take all the complaints and her job description seriously and actually act in he interests of all the people of Northumbria, male or female. Fortunately she’s on twitter and her bio appears as follows

Before we go any further it’s important to establish a few basic facts. Firstly the outrage concerning the posters shows that most of the public felt they were completely sexist or at least completely unhelpful. A poll by the Newcastle Chronicle initially indicated over 80% of the readers were of this view. Secondly, the police statement about the scandal shows they recognised these concerns. In fact, only six posters in the series ever appeared on the Police Force’s Facebook account, with the “one day to go” poster notable for its absence. Therefore it’s reasonable to assume the criticisms were accepted to such an extent that the police even withdrew the last poster in the series.

Unfortunately, while some in the force clearly appreciate just how sexist and disgraceful it is to whitewash from existence some 40% of domestic violence victims, the message still hasn’t got through at Baird’s office. Whilst Baird kept silent on the matter and blocked male victims of domestic violence who complained, Snaith’s approach was somewhat different and it’s abundantly clear from her Twitter feed that she supports the discrimination against male victims in the posters 100%.

Of particular interest to feminists was the poll in the Newcastle Chronicle showing overwhelmingly that readers were of the opinion that their posters were sexist. Clearly such a fact was hugely embarrassing to not only Baird and the police but to gender feminists as a whole and as a result a Twitter campaign was launched to attempt to influence the poll. While many behind the campaign are some of the most extreme feminists around we’ve uncovered tweets from very prominent UK feminists and even taxpayer funded feminist organisations encouraging or instructing others to vote no in the poll and pretend the blatantly sexist posters weren’t sexist. Figures and organisations involved in or supporting this Twitter campaign include:

One of the most active individuals in this campaign was none other than Snaith herself. Since she joined twitter she averaged less than four tweets per day yet on December 31st alone we counted well over 100 tweets or retweets about the poll and the sexist posters.

In all fairness, a minority of the feminists who’ve tweeted about the poll have done so in a fairly reasonable manner and simply encouraged others to participate, therefore trusting them to make up their own minds about the posters. We’ve even done the same ourselves. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Baird’s office with Snaith tweeting the following:

So not only is the person who handles every single complaint about Baird’s sexism fully supportive of it, she’s also tried to rig a vote about said sexism by telling people how they should vote rather than letting them make up their own minds. Worse still, even the argument she provides in support of the No vote campaign is a blatant lie too.

Sir Michael Scholar of the UK statistics authority has twice dealt with such matters and as a result both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Welsh Government have been officially forced to remove similarly misleading statements from their publications. Thanks to these rulings taxpayer funded bodies in the UK are barred from saying the overwhelming/vast majority of victims of domestic violence are women, and that’s becasue to say such a thing is complete nonsense. The UK Crime Survey consistently demonstrates that 40% of victims are men and so so year after year.

In addition to her lie and countless retweets about the poll campaign , Snaith then sent out a second “vote no” request. Then, as the poll figures start to sway in Baird’s favour, Snaith tweeted a progress update to both Baird’s official PCC Twitter account and even the main police Force Twitter account to instructing them both to “Retweet the hell out of this”:

Finally, once the result is was more secure, Snaith ran off to the local paper sending multiple tweets about the “result” and requesting they write a “more balanced article” to reflect the brigaded poll result.

On Monday, Northumbria Police stepped up this fiasco s step further. In an interview with Chronicle they said: “We are pleased that 60% of those who voted in the Chronicle’s poll agree with us that it appropriately targets women victims and male perpetrators, and is not, in doing so, sexist”. I doubt very much that the poll result ever hit 60% “no” but if it ever did it was for the briefest possible moment and totally and utterly due to feminist brigading. Furthermore, the Baird and thus the Police Force had to be fully aware of what was going on as it was partially organised by her closest colleague in her own office.

Despite the major Twitter campaign by high profile UK feminists (and the police) the result really hasn’t been that impressive. At one point the yes vote went as low as 45%, but it’s already back up to 48% which is hardly a resounding victory though it is a major change from actual public opinion if nothing else.

Ultimately though, having taxpayer funded feminists flood a single poll with votes to change its result in no way changes reality. Any internet threads, newspaper article comments and Facebook discussions about this matter are overwhelmingly against the posters and view them as sexist and dishonest and that’s becasue most people are aware that both men and women can be violent and abusive in relationships.

It’s also important not to lose sight of the real issues here. Those playing around with this poll aren’t simply rigging a result. They’re also openly showing support for sexism against men by the police and they’re opposing the very idea of putting a male identity on any single poster and thus recognising male victims and helping them to come forward. Furthermore, by pretending the poll results are in any way legitimate the police themselves are being completely dishonest with the general public who pay their wages and they’re certianly not an organisation you’d want to place any sort of trust in.

To think we pay Baird and Snaith a combined £160,000 to openly discriminate against men is staggering , given such high salaries it’s little wonder that they’re not keen on having their sexism exposed for all to see. To think that they’d rather block victims of abuse on Twitter and mess around with influencing newspaper polls instead of actually do their jobs and helping and supporting male victims of abuse is utterly shameful.

There’s even more to come on this scandal. We’ll have more exclusive updates in the coming days so either subscribe to our blog or follow us on Twitter. If you like our work then please consider making a small donation – these investigations take a great deal of time to complete and write up and we’ve also played a pivotal role in getting this story off the ground in the first place. Most importantly of all, please be aware that you can still vote in the newspaper poll here – unlike others we’ll let you make up your own minds about whether to click yes or no.