Sara Morrison used to be an inclusion and audience development co-ordinator working full time at Belfast Film Festival. She has an adult, trans-dentifying son. But she is a heretic. Because?
“I just don’t want men in women’s spaces”, she says.
It was expressing this sentiment in a public place (and criticising those who oppose it) which led to Sara being demonised and subject to a workplace investigation, either for having the wrong opinion, or expressing it publicly, depending on who you believe.
On 16 April 2023, Sara joined a Let Women Speak event by what’s known as The Big Fish in Belfast. This Big Fish is a 10m long blue ceramic sculpture by the River Lagan in Belfast Town Centre. Around 200 supporters turned up, though they were outnumbered by a large and noisy group of counter-protestors from state-funded organisations who attempted to drown them out. LWS events are founded and run by Kellie-Jay Keen (@thePosieParker), who has a simple format: give the microphone to women who want to speak and let them speak (within legal limits) about whatever they want. Record what is said and upload it to social media. That’s it.
In this odd patch of the 21st Century, letting women speak about whatever they want appears to be a genuine act of defiance and subversion, especially if those women believe that you can’t change sex. Sara helped re-establish rape crisis services in Northern Ireland after a thirteen year gap, and she takes a dim view of women’s organisations who believe any men should have access to vulnerable women in spaces they are supposed to be and feel safe.
During her four minute speech, Sara “called out” several Belfast groups – the Women’s Resource and Development Agency, Alliance For Choice, Women’s Policy Group Northern Ireland and Rape Crisis Northern Ireland – for (in her view) betraying their founding purpose and trying to shout down the women who were holding out for single sex spaces. Sara accused the groups of organising “a deliberate campaign of bullying and intimidation into silence through harassment, and bullying the very women they should be protecting”. Watch the footage here – Sara starts at 1hr 4mins in.
Referencing a “Songs for Solidarity” concert organised to coincide with the LWS event, Sara said “Do these so-called women’s organisations speak for you? Do these self-styled messiahs represent us? These organisations are paid thousands of pounds through the public purse to sing songs to silence women speaking?”
At the time, Northern Ireland was gearing up for a series of local elections. Sara made her point:
“These organisations do not represent me. Your vote counts on the 18th of May. I see we have some elective representatives up on the bridge [site of one of the counter-protests]. You might want to take note of them and not vote for them. They are here to silence women. Ask your local representative what they are doing to support women. Not through these organisations. Ask them how the women and children of Belfast and across Northern Ireland are safe on the streets and in their homes and how their safety and dignity is being protected. We pay their taxes.”
Sara did not give her name, nor did she say where she worked, but Belfast is a small place. Some of Sara’s friends and at least one freelancer working for the BFF was present at the counter-demo. Sara was clocked.
Within hours of Sara making her speech, a sock account had been set up and Sara found herself in the middle of a twitterstorm. The Belfast Film Festival was tagged. So, eventually, were most of its client organisations and sponsors. A number of LGBT+ individuals and organisations took note. They demanded Sara was sacked. “It floored me”, said Sara. “I was like, “What is going on? I don’t… What is going on here? Why is no one else being named? Why is it vindictively about me?” Over the next few days, the online abuse escalated. Sara was called transphobic, a Nazi, a fascist, and a bigot. Her friends abandoned her. “I began to feel extremely isolated and alone”, she said. “I stopped going out.”
Nothing like this had happened to Sara before. She wasn’t expecting it and said it “felt like proper harassment and intimidation.” The harassment continued for weeks. Sara called in the police, who had to speak to some of the people behind the messages targeting her, including the CEO of a domestic abuse charity.
Sara says she is what’s locally known as “Half-a-Jaffa” – born to a Catholic mother and a “Loyal and Royal” Protestant dad (the “Jaffa” term is a reference to Orangeism and the orange part of a Jaffa cake). Sara grew up in a world where serious violence was a daily risk. She has seen the power of language to inflame or dismiss violence. In a piece written for Genspect in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, Sara wrote:
“Growing up in Belfast, I watched words prepare the ground long before bombs or bullets ever appeared. People weren’t just civilians or policemen or politicians — they were “legitimate targets.” It took me years to understand what those two words actually meant: that once someone was branded that way, their death could be shrugged off as necessary, even righteous. They weren’t individuals anymore with mothers who would cry for them or children who would grow up fatherless. They had been turned into symbols, and symbols don’t bleed… I remember how killings were excused with a shrug, “they brought it on themselves,” people would say, as if the victim had somehow authored their own execution simply by existing in the wrong place, with the wrong name, holding the wrong opinions. That was how language carried people from suspicion to death, one casual conversation at a time.”
Sara decided to approach her boss, Michele Devlin, to tell her what had been going on. At first Michele was fine, even offering to help Sara print off some evidence to give to the police.
In the second half of June, Sara was allegedly called in for a chat by Michele. Sara was if she’d be okay sharing a toilet with a trans person. Sara says she was “taken aback that she would have felt the need to ask me this, because it’s not really any of her business.” Sara was then asked about a local theatre group called Kabosh, who wanted to put on a production about a trans woman. Would Sara like to be involved? Sara indicated she would be delighted. No such production materialised. Was this a test of some sort? Michele told Sara the BFF board had been informed about the harassment of her online and had been given a link to her speech at LWS.
Another Outburst
Things quietened down. At the end of June 2023, Sara helped put on the documentary season of the Belfast Film Festival and was a visible presence throughout. “No one complained about me. No one said they felt unsafe.” Then Michele approached Sara and a colleague with a proposal to use the BFF big screen at Belfast Pride at the end of July. Michele told Sara to send out an email to the LGBT+ groups in the city, asking what films they would like to see screened. Sara didn’t want to. She was scared. These were the groups which had tried to intimidate her. Michele told her it was her job to the send the email. Eventually Michele agreed to send the invitation, and cc’d Sara.
“The first person who replied was Ruth from Outburst Arts which is an LGBT arts organisation I used to share an office with. Ruth replied, but she took my cc out. She replied to all the other organisations saying, Sara’s welcome to her free speech, but basically she’s a transphobic bigot.”
It all kicked off again. Michele and her colleagues were bombarded with emails and soon phone calls with messages suggesting there was a transphobe at the BFF. At the instruction of Michelle, one of Sara’s colleagues contacted the BFF’s external PR company to ask for advice. They came up with the wording for a really bland tweet which Sara thought was good. Michele didn’t like it. Sara began to feel unwell. “I just felt really, really shaky and I was crying quite a lot, and because I’d never had to deal with this sort of level of sort of abuse. For me, it was like… why is everyone listening to it? These people know me. They know I’m not like that.”
Sara went home. At around 7pm that evening, Michele rang Sara who had, by that stage convinced herself she was going to be sacked. In fact, Michele just wanted to see if Sara was okay with the wording to the statement the BFF had decided to send to those approaching tehm publicly and privately. Sara says out of sheer relief, she okayed it, but when she read it the next morning, she was mortified. The BFF statement read:
“We have been made aware of the incident and are investigating. We want to reassure you that Belfast Film Festival passionately supports your values. We will celebrate and defend them.“
Sick Leave
The word “investigating” added more fuel to the online fire. The trans groups smelt blood. The BFF brought in an external HR company to conduct their investigation. It was suggested Sara might like to work from home. What followed was – from Sara’s perspective – a concerted effort to freeze her out of the BFF, which involved stopping access to her emails, shutting her out of the shared drive at work and demanding she return her keys to the BFF office. The BFF, I understand, says there are perfectly innocent and reasonable explanations for this.
The investigation, in Sara’s view, was “biased”. It alleged she had attended an event contrary to her role as an inclusion officer and against the values of the BFF. Sara felt she was being punished for having the wrong opinions. She got a lawyer and started a grievance process, but her health and sense of isolation deteriorated to such an extent she ended up on sick leave, stuck at home, shunned by her “friends”, taking antidepressants and beta blockers.
Whilst Sara was off sick, Michele attended Belfast Pride in a t-shirt with a logo on the front stating “An injury to one is an injury to all” and “Trans Inclusive Feminist” on the back. She sent a tweet containing images of her in the t-shirt before deleting it. In 2022, Michele Devlin appeared in a promotional election video for local Sinn Féin candidate, Deirdre Hargey, with the full permission of the BFF board.
Sara has managed to find some work since resigning from the BFF. She is the Genspect Director for UK and Ireland, where she advocates for women’s rights, safeguarding, and freedom of speech. When I asked Sara why she spoke at LWS given her position at the BFF (and the “values” it espouses) she admits there might have been a bit of “naivety” in her decision. She is also adamant she should have freedom of speech. “You can’t change sex. I think that’s quite a rational thought, but I don’t understand how it has become irrational. And I don’t understand why people like me are being punished for believing in rational thought.”
Sara has a big personality. She laughs a lot, but the last two years have changed her: “I don’t feel like I will be comfortable until this tribunal is over. I don’t really have a social life any more. I don’t go to the places I used to. I rarely even go to the cinema any more. I’m scared in case I see someone there. I will drive out of Belfast to get my groceries and stuff like that. If I see people in shops, they just stare through me. It’s really unnerving. I don’t mean to be so self-pitying, but it’s been an absolute nightmare. For my close friends to cancel me… I’m not really as bothered about people I didn’t really know. But for people to be sort of embarrassed to know me…”
When I asked Sara how the ordeal had affected her 24-year-old, trans-identifying son, she told me the high-profile nature of the legal case had not helped an already fraught situation. He moved to Bristol well before she became a local hate figure. They no longer talk.
Rowling Ball
Sara resigned from the BFF in November 2024 and claimed constructive dismissal. She already had a crowdfunding campaign to raise a claim of discrimination. In June 2024, the journalist Jo Bartosch linked to it on twitter with the words: “This is bitterly ironic. A single mum bravely speaks out, in her own time, about the harassment & bullying tactics of the trans mob. She is then disciplined by her employers who succumb to pressure from the trans mob.”
Have donated. https://t.co/K8nwtO7i4N
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 5, 2024
JK Rowling retweeted Bartosch’s tweet with two words: “Have donated.” Sara is no longer looking for crowdfunding. Her tribunal starts in Belfast next week. The barrister Naomi Cunningham, who represented Sandie Peggie, will be in Sara’s corner.
It’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Due to the Forstater ruling, gender-critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act. However, the Equality Act does not apply in Northern Ireland which has its own patchwork equality legislation. Sara’s lawyer, Simon Chambers, tells me that the relationship between the For Women Scotland Supreme Court ruling (which confirmed Forstater) and Northern Irish legislation is “still evolving”. Morrison v Belfast Film Festival has therefore become something of a test case.
I ask Sara what she wants from it. “I want arts organisations, especially in small cities like Belfast, to take notice that you cannot discriminate against employees. Most of these organisations rely on freelancers and students. These are people that really need the job. They are on contracts for a year. So everything feels very unstable. A lot of people are very needy and very compliant and I think that’s why a lot of people just fall into line. It’s really depressing. I don’t feel like it is going to be that way for ever, but things really do need to change.”
Belfast Film Festival have been approached for comment, several times. I understand the Festival intends to “vigorously” dispute all of Sara’s claims.
Sara’s tribunal starts tomorrow. I have decided, as a bit of a punt, to cover it. If you would like to receive a daily summary of what happened in court via my GenderBlog newsletter, please consider subscribing. It’s a one-off donation, which helps keep a lot of my journalism free at the point of consumption. If you don’t want to subscribe or can’t afford to right now I’ll try (but can’t guarantee) to write a round-up of the first week of the tribunal next week and post it on this website. Thanks!
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