This headline appeared on the Times website on May 31st and the allegation is repeated in the Times newspaper of the same date. The story was subsequently picked up by the Telegraph, the Mail Online and various others, both in print and online. The course in question is our bardic course. The problem is, it’s not true. The following timeline sets out what really happened. Having no wish to cause further distress to the person who is the focus of the misleading articles, we will call her C, standing for ‘Complainant.’
March 2020
C pays for and receives the first four booklets of our bardic course.
April 2020
C has her last interaction with the student areas on the BDO website.
5 years pass.
April 23rd 2025
In the wake of a recent Supreme Court ruling in the UK, and Donald Trump’s multiple anti-LGBTQ+ executive orders in the US, the BDO founder posts an article on our website entitled ‘BDO&LGBTQ+PrideAgainstPrejudice.’ Its purpose is to reassure the LGBTQ+ community as a whole, and the trans community in particular in the UK, since they are the most likely to be adversely affected by the court ruling, that they remain, as they always have been, welcome in the BDO.
In response to this article, C posts in the BDO facebook group that, “This is extremely worrying for women, our rights and struggles, who you’ve not mentioned ONCE.” One of our admins responds that “all rights are important to the BDO.”
On Rights and Wrongs
Why should expressing support for the LGBTQ+ community be in any way “worrying for women” and why should women’s rights be mentioned in an article on an unrelated topic?
Many pressure groups and right-wing media outlets in the UK, and in the US, are deliberately and divisively trying to establish a false dichotomy by promoting the idea that extending rights to the trans community somehow adversely impacts the rights of women. We believe that extending rights to minority groups, so long as those groups cause no hurt or harm to others, ultimately benefits us all by producing a fairer, more tolerant society. We also believe that promoting hostility towards a specific section of society based solely on their gender is not a good idea. If we allow blatant hostility towards the trans community to flourish online, in the press and elsewhere, who’s next? Other members of the LGBTQ+ community, as is already happening in the US? Pagans, Witches, Druids? As the Irish philosopher, Edmund Burke, wrote in 1770, “When bad [people] combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
But back to our timeline:
Late April/early May 2025
Some BDO students report difficulty logging onto the student areas of our website. The reason is found to be a lack of server space.
May 11th
To free up server space and restore student access, data is transferred to secure offline storage. This includes account details of all students who have not visited the site for more than 12 months. C had not visited it for more than 5 years. Many students who were unable to log in after the data transfer asked and had their access restored.
May 14th
C sends an email asking to have her access restored. Unfortunately, this was missed at the time and only came to light following our investigation into C’s complaint. The BDO is a not-for-profit run primarily by volunteers and when there is a heavy volume of emails, things do occasionally get missed. The usual action is to contact us again. There are a number of avenues by which this can be done.
May 27th
The BDO receives a 16-page letter of complaint from C. In it, C gives us 21 days in which to respond. Discussions begin in our Circle of Elders and it is decided that we should engage fully in the complaints procedures requested by C, including arranging face-to-face meetings to discuss her grievances.
May 30th
3 days after the complaint was made an email to the BDO from a freelance journalist reveals that she has been sent a copy of the complaint by C and is intending to publish an article about it in the Times. We inform her that our complaints procedure is in motion, assuming that any reputable journalist would then ‘spike’ the story until the procedure is completed and the full facts available.
May 31st
The Times article appears in print and online. It contains statements that are inaccurate and defamatory. Despite which, while the complaints procedure C initiated is ongoing, we feel unable to comment, although, when they ask, we inform the Mail Online that the Times article contains inaccuracies.
May 27th to June 4th
Our complaints procedure establishes that C was not “thrown off” our course at all, let alone as the result of a “trans row.” She lost access to the student areas of our website through a combination of 5 years of inactivity, necessary site maintenance and (as we subsequently discovered) administrative oversight.
We also find that previous comments made by C in the BDO fb group to a post referring to trans issues had resulted in her being banned for breaching group rules and to one of our group admins stepping down because she no longer felt safe carrying out the role. This first ban was later rescinded on the understanding that C would not breach group rules again. The role of our admins is to maintain the group as a safe space for the majority of its members. Both times C was banned, our admins acted in good faith and wholly within their rights in order to do exactly that.
Which brings us to:
“a kind of spiritual witch-hunt”
In the Times article, C accuses the BDO of being party to “a kind of spiritual witch-hunt against those who speak up for rights, safety and dignity of women and girls.” This is not only untrue and defamatory, it is also grossly, deeply offensive, not least to the Order’s many female members.
The BDO has been at the forefront of making modern Druidry welcoming for women. From the Druid revivals of the 18th century right through to the early 1990s, Druidry had a (sometimes deserved) reputation for being patriarchal. Having been brought up by a remarkable, intelligent, campaigning mother, our founder was always deeply uncomfortable with this image of the tradition. Hence, in 1995, he asked another remarkable, intelligent, campaigning woman to become joint chief of the BDO. We believe we were the first Druid Order to welcome a woman into such a prominent role. Due to her, and our, public championing of gender-inclusivity within Druidry, by the end of the 1990s, more women than men were joining the BDO. The gender balance we achieved then has since become the norm, with 56% of members of Druid groups worldwide identifying as women, 39% as men, 5% as other. We are proud of our role in bringing this radical change about.
In the 2000s, a Circle of Elders was formed to guide the BDO. Of its current core members, 62% are women. Of the 7 Elders dealing with C’s complaint, 5 are women. To claim that we are involved in a “witch-hunt” against those who support women’s rights is therefore patently absurd as well as being deeply hurtful and defamatory to us as individuals and as a group.
June 4th
By making defamatory statements about the BDO in the media, C triggered the article in our Constitution which says that any member bringing the Order or Druidry into disrepute may have their membership terminated. C’s membership was duly terminated on June 4th, 2025. In our 46-year history, this is only the second time this has happened. This shows how reluctant we are to take such a step and it is only with the deepest regret that we have done so now. We continue to wish C well.
To recap:
1) No one was “thrown off” our course over a “trans row.”
2) We are now, and have always been, fully supportive of the rights of women, just as we are of the rights of men, all members of the LGBTQ+ community, children, ancestors, domestic and wild animals, birds, trees, rivers and mountains.
We are Druids. It’s what we do.
Blessings to all,
The BDO Circle of Elders
Knoll’s law of media accuracy: “Everything you read in the newspapers is true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.”
1 Comment
Since posting the above, I’ve re-checked the gender balance in the BDO since the late ’90s and in global Druidry now and found that the stats for members are 56% identifying as women, 39% men, 5% other. When I wrote the article, I couldn’t find the stats so worked from memory (possibly a mistake at my age). In doing so, it seems I underestimated the ‘Emma effect!’
Figures for the BDO were first garnered in 1998-9 from our membership on and offline. They were reviewed in 2020 and found to be stable and consistent with the percentages given here.
The global figures are displayed as a pie chart in Larisa A. White’s ‘World Druidry,’ 2021, page 18. The whole book is well worth reading for the overview it offers of the current state of Druidry, illustrated by loads of excerpts from interviews with members of many different Orders in many countries. You can find it here, currently with a 25% Midsummer discount: https://larisa-a-white.com/worlddruidry.html