Civil servants who enjoy bondage 'should get same rights at work'

Civil servants who enjoy bondage say they should get the same rights at work as other minority groups – including support networks and training courses

• Sexual fetish enthusiasts within MoJ say they are discriminated against
• They are now calling on their trade union to set up a staff network for BDSM 

Civil servants who enjoy bondage are demanding the same support as other minority groups.

Sexual fetish enthusiasts within the Ministry of Justice – where Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has just been forced out over bullying allegations – say they are discriminated against and need protection.

They are calling on their trade union to set up a staff network for BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism, Masochism), to campaign for their rights and to set up training courses on consent.

Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents almost 200,000 public sector workers, are due to discuss the topic at their annual conference next month.

A motion tabled by the MoJ Associated Offices branch and included in the official conference programme calls on delegates to note ‘that BDSMers need protection in law as many are fired if their employers find out’.

Sexual fetish enthusiasts within the Ministry of Justice are calling on their trade union to set up a staff network for BDSM, to campaign for their rights and to set up training courses on consent (File image)

It goes on to state that ‘as a minority group who are discriminated against they should have a support group in PCS’, that ‘BDSMers should have equal rights and protection as other discriminated against groups have’, and ‘PCS should support and campaign for their rights’.

And it calls on the union’s ruling council ‘to establish a support network for BDSMers’, to ‘campaign for their rights’ and put forward a similar motion to the conference of the TUC, the umbrella organisation for Britain’s trade unions.

The motion also wants the trade union to ‘promote that Mutual Informed Consent should be what is needed before erotic activity is carried out’ and ‘establish training courses for members on consent and negotiation’.

But Caroline Ffiske from Conservatives for Women told the Mail: ‘The idea that we should be able to bring our sexual fetishes to work, indeed have them supported by staff networks, is absurd and infantilising.

‘Keep it to the bedroom between consenting adults. The workplace is for professionalism, truth-seeking, reason.’

Comedy writer Graham Linehan highlighted the document on social media, saying: ‘PCS is a union for civil servants. This is one of their motions to be considered for a vote – that people who like being gagged and spanked are an oppressed minority who need a support group within their union.

‘These people are meant to be running public services.’

The PCS conference in Brighton will also hear several motions on the highly contested topic of trans rights.

The motion also wants the trade union to ‘promote that Mutual Informed Consent should be what is needed before erotic activity is carried out’ (File image)

One, tabled by a Department for Work and Pensions branch in Bradford and an HM Revenue and Customs one in Glasgow, calls on delegates to agree that ‘sex is not binary and to say so excludes people with differences of sexual development amongst others’.

It says that ‘biological reductionism is harmful to all women and forms the basis of many patriarchal notions of biology as destiny’.

And it demands that the union expresses its concerns to the Cabinet Office about a staff network called SEEN for civil servants who believe that people cannot change sex and gender identity should not replace biological sex.

The PCS motion claims: ‘SEEN promotes a regressive ideology which seeks to be exclusionary and is detrimental to the rights of all women.

‘The stated aims of SEEN will promote division and exclusion in the workplace, and could create an unfounded atmosphere of fear towards people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.’

But former Tory councillor Mrs Ffiske said: ‘The so-called regressive ideology supported by SEEN is that sex is real and matters, and that women have a right to free speech and open debate on this subject, including within the civil service, without fear of bullying.

‘This very motion shows just how badly SEEN is needed and requires support from the very top of the civil service and politicians.’

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