‘Mainsplainer’ loses bid for payout
A MUSEUM worker who claimed he was subjected to sexist comments by a female colleague has lost a compensation bid.
Jonathan McMurray alleged he suffered sex discrimination after being targeted with an “angry rant on men” by a female colleague while working at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.
He claimed he was subjected to “an abusive rant about gender” during which he was accused of “doing the **** ing bloke thing” in front of visitors at the museum in Cultra, County Down, in 2019.
But he has now lost his tribunal bid for compensation after a judge found that he had irritated his female colleagues with his mansplaining and that the alleged “rant” had not happened as he described.
The former teacher said he had intervened to “help” while his female colleague was talking to visitors, and claimed that she then “launched into a verbal tirade using abusive terms relating to my gender” in front of visitors.
In a witness statement he said: “She persisted for between one to two minutes, delivering invective about men which I was too shocked to absorb properly.”
But the judge found the “rant” had been limited to the female worker muttering: “You are a pain in the a***.” Mr McMurray’s line manager noted that he would speak to female staff as though he was trying to “lecture, inform, advise and educate”, while with men he “asked questions, left space for them to speak and didn’t correct them.”
Employment Judge Noel Kelly, sitting in the Industrial Tribunals of Northern Ireland, dismissed Mr McMurray’s complaint, concluding: “If anyone had difficulties dealing with the opposite gender, it appears to have been the claimant.” He added: “The tribunal unanimously concludes that there had been no gender-based abuse.”