The Times and Harry The Owl

Sadly yes. Hopefully he'll be snapped up by another company looking for his qualities. I know I would if I were in a position to employ him.

To be fair, I'd have thought this would just be a sideline for that author, it wouldn't be his fulltime job! He's likely to be a legal expert himself.

Seeking to warn students - who may be our future lawyers and judges - that this factual information is triggering and not safe to read?

It really is quite extraordinary. What is actually happening in education? What will happen when the students schooled in this manner are able to exert significant power over people when they are established in professional careers?

Didn't Mermaids fairly recently advertise for and recruit an (expensive) in-house lawyer?

Hypothetically, if it were the case that those words belonged to the police, CPS, Whitehall etc., how likely is it that staff would resign in protest or be able to tell their story? Not very, would be my guess.

Good for the Author for not going along with it.

Indeed. He sacrificed his job for his principles.

They obviously thought they'd get away with this so how many other similar incidences have gone under the radar? I'm taking it as another sign that the tide is turning and people are standing up to it. Good for the Author for not going along with it.

Apart from anything else what on earth could be SO triggering about this case. It was about free speech. Not assault, blackmail, torture.

And a company lawyer knows more than a high court judge?

I wonder if it was the judge likening the police action to the gestapo that needed such swift deletion.

Five days earlier, James Benefield, a senior executive at Hodder, had sent Yule the Mermaids review and told him: “Mermaids have requested quite a few changes here. It is important we do follow all of the attached advice — not only is it from a trans-specialist organisation, it is also from the company lawyer who felt they were best placed to review the piece.”

I'm speechless.

SickOfThisVirus thanks for that very clear explanation.

For law to play a meaningful role in society it needs to be accessible. This means that ordinary people (non lawyers) need to be able, easily, to find the law itself and a clear explanation of it.

Hachette seem to have been seeking, with Mermaids, actually to conceal the law: to make it more difficult to find an analysis of the protections offered to free speech in the context of women’s rights. How often are they doing this in legal publications?

Law is nothing if it is hidden from our view. We should all be concerned about this. I really can’t see how Mermaids can be interpreted as anything other than sinister now.

It’s bloody disgraceful. I almost wish I was still teaching Critical Thinking in school. I would so be using this! Though I expect that in today’s climate, I’d get into trouble for it.

There would still be a chain of command that would have agreed the editors could go to Mermaids and then back to the author as part of the editorial process. An author and chair resigning over something like this & the ensuing row would be a big deal internally. It's a very big fuck-up.
Exactly their credibility as a reputable unbiased publisher of text books is shot to pieces.

I think it's worrying that we are having to tread carefully in case we offend someone regarding something they think, but don't take the same steps around things that really happen. Female students will be all too aware of the low conviction rate for rape and sexual assault, without the language softened for their consumption.

It's like "sticks and stones may break your bones... but my opinions about myself are so much more important than mere broken bones."

It may be different with non-fiction but the Hachette imprint I work with/for does not have to be green-lit from above. Editors have full authority, and the last word as to what is published. I suppose in retrospect, post-publications, problems could arise but that would be after the fact, as in this case (I presume).

I would think that those at the top of Hachette would be aware of it now, but yes, all the subsidiary companies - they aren't small, they include Little, Brown, Hodder and others - act pretty much independently. They are complete companies in themselves. Hachette are an absolutely enormous publishing operation and would never get anything done otherwise.

So as you say, they would never normally require a green light from high up in Hachette for editorial matters. BUT I am still surprised this got as far as it did even within the division. There would still be a chain of command that would have agreed the editors could go to Mermaids and then back to the author as part of the editorial process. An author and chair resigning over something like this & the ensuing row would be a big deal internally. It's a very big fuck-up.

I suppose judges, like other people, are susceptible to having their judgements clouded by their views on certain matters.
The judge in the Margaret Duchess of Argyll "headless man" divorce case was thoroughly shocked by her behaviour and not afraid to let her know it.

www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/10/sarahhall

Thanks for the explanation SickOfThisVirus

Crime's not my area of practice @FannyCann so I only have hazy memories from my law course from over a decade ago, but I think the difference between the Brown case and the rough sex murder defence often used against women is that Brown concerned physical assault rather than murder.

To be convicted of most crimes you usually need both a physical and a mental element. So for murder you need to have killed someone and also intended to have at least caused GBH. This is where the rough sex defence is coming in. The accused men are saying they didn't intend to cause the women any serious physical harm and so they don't fulfil the mental element, even if they admit that they did end up killing them.

Brown, on the other hand, only concerned assault. Again you have a mental and physical element. The men in Brown admitted that they had caused the other participants harm and had intended to do so, so they fulfilled the criteria but were trying to rely on their partners' consent as a form of defence. It's subtly different.

Hopefully one of the other lawyers on this thread will correct me if I've got anything wrong. It's never been an area that I wanted to get involved with!

And in the real world, an organisation such as Mermaids (were it being run within its stated remit as a support resource for children) would surely question how the document needed any input from them as it was a factual report of an event that took place. But apparently we’re in the Upside Down.

Some comments are up now.
Let's see how long they last.

What else has been censored by Mermaids? Who else do they give "feedback" to?

The data leak last year revealed emails between The Tavistock and Mermaids checking that patient information leaflets met with approval.

Slight derail but I was interested in this comment from SickOfThisVirus

We also studied R v Brown (concerning gay men involved in S&M and whether they could consent to physical assault) and the teachers didn't censor it - but they did explain that it was possible that the judgment was in part motivated by homophobia as it was inconsistent with other judgments concerning heterosexual couples. But the point is we still learned what the judges said and formed our own conclusions. The censorship that is happening here is really shocking.

I think in some upsetting cases involving heterosexual couples there has been concern (eg from #WeCantConsenttoThis) that heterosexual men aren't held to the same standards because it is women that are being injured and obviously they just love it don't they, those kinky women? In other words that due to misogyny women don't get the same protection that homosexual men get.

I hope that teachers / lecturers make this (the original judgment & the edited version) into an interesting lesson on...

• why it’s important to read source material rather than relying on comment pieces.
• the nature of & limits on ‘free’ speech.

Also, there is a cracking comnent below the Times article on trans and autism. From George someone. Best I've read.

Comments are being heavily moderated. Mine's been in a holding pen for over two hours.