How is it a win to have the fact that men are not women legally classified as a belief?

I know what you mean, I would rather we were arguing that the absence of belief in gender was to be respected, with gender identity as the belief position. The way humanists and atheists have to be respected.

However, I think this is a semantic issue for non legal people (like me) to get their heads round rather than anyone deciding what opinion would be a default.

I see what PP meant about law not being set up to argue that facts are correct. At the same time though it's interesting to say that "It's not that there are no facts - though I think it's perhaps more accurate to say that things are proven to a greater or lesser degree of certainty". I don't there's much more proven than the immutability and binary nature of sex. So the idea that it's a belief, whilst encouraging to have it protected, is also unsettling as it does literally mean that there no facts at all anymore and everything is just a belief which you can make an individual decision about.

It was a pragmatic move by Maya's legal team. There is no provision in discrimination law for protecting people who uphold scientific fact.
That's because up until now, no one would have imagined that a person could be fired for stating things like the sun rises in the east, the earth is not flat, the moon revolves around the earth, there are only two sexes, men cannot be women etc.
I mean that's how batshit crazy this whole timeline is... It's not something anyone would have anticipated when drafting laws.

Maya's team had to work within the equalities framework to prosecute her employer and so they pursued the angle of protected belief. Belief covers philosophical and not just religious ideas. I think veganism was recently also ruled to be a protected belief in another discrimination case.

The angle taken in Maya's case is not just that she believes in the scientific fact that there are only two sexes, but that this fact is important and cannot be ignored because it plays an integral part in women's lives and in protecting women's rights.
That's the core of the 'gender critical philosophical belief'.

The legal challenge isn't about if it's true or not, it's about if you can be fired for believing it.

Say there were a group of people that believe turtles have six legs. They get really angry if anyone challenges this.

A lot of them work for a company where most people believe this. Someone in the company tweets and says 'actually turtles have four legs, not six.'

The six letters get her fired as they think this is hateful.

The employment tribunal finds its not hateful to believe that and that they shouldn't have been fired for it.

Anyone is allowed to believe what they want. And it's not hateful for them to do that.

Believing men are not women ? Not a belief

not sure I can express what I mean any other way

i don’t believe this. I know it

I agree with what you say here, but unfortunately I think our world has been sufficiently captured that you’d be hard pressed to establish that, given that a significant subset of medical professionals might argue that you are wrong.

I suspect you could not have established your fact as being one before the case started, so we are not worse off, as such, though I agree the optics are poor. It’s a shock to realise where we are perhaps, but I’d argue that the law reflects something stupid happening in the world, rather than establishing that this is a belief and not a fact.

Is the protected bit not so much the fact that sex is immutable (after all whatever laws are passed this will always be the case) but the belief that the immutability of sex matters in certain circumstances?

I think that it's about considering where we actually were so a step in the right direction is still perhaps not everybody agreeing with the GC position, but it has really significant implications

It is a huge win for the UK because it sends a clear message to employers to treat it like they would a religion, and managers are generally pretty clear that hassling people for not being your religion is totally unreasonable.

It is also highly significant that it isn't just GC 'beliefs' but an absence of belief in the trans ideology which is protected. As Sex and Sexual Orientation are already protected characteristics this is a hugely helpful step.

But where we were was pretty damn shocking.

It's not that there are no facts - though I think it's perhaps more accurate to say that things are proven to a greater or lesser degree of certainty. It's that there isn't a specific protection, under English law, against discrimination for believing facts. The same principle applied a few years ago when someone won a claim for belief discrimination because he believed in climate change. The scientific community has a very, very high degree of confidence in the reality of climate change, but that wasn't material to the case.

In fact, one of the (many) criticisms made of the original (negative) Forstater decision was that the judge (being a sex-denier) had got caught up in the question of whether or not sex is real/mutable in human beings. His judgement, therefore, wasn't "whether Forstater is allowed to believe this" but "whether Forstater agrees with me".

It’s actually really important that courts don’t declare scientific facts. I know in this case it’s frustrating, but imagine where we’d be if courts could overrule scientists.

The law simply isn't set up to argue that facts are correct.

So when you have someone trying to state in law that what you assume is a fact - 'sex is real and immutable' - it has to be a belief, otherwise you couldn't argue whether it's correct or not in law.

MF was discriminated against for stating a fact. Those doing the discriminating purported not to accept it as fact, so I guess that's where it had to be posed as a belief.

I think back when Katie Alcock was taking GG to court I had similar questions as to why it was a 'belief' - www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3655701-Expelled-from-Girlguiding-for-putting-safeguarding-first

I can't remember if it was Maya, Katie or someone else, but someone did write a brief explanation as to why it was being brought under 'belief'. Maybe FWR regulars will remember?

I have seen countless TRA's on here and other platforms insist that 'sex is a spectrum, not a binary' and usually produce that risible Scientific American blog piece or the existence of variations in sexual development as 'proof' that humans can change sex. It's a bit like arguing with flat earthers - the fact that the earth is not flat is observable but you will still get some people insisting that it's not.

Deluded people have managed to convince themselves that sex is not immutable. It's utterly ridiculous that the fact that sex is immutable has had to be categorised as a belief. Absolutely bizarre. The end result of pandering to people who seem completely unable to exercise independent thought away from mantras.

It is true that if this is a belief, so is everything else, including gravity, magnetism, laws of physics, sorry, beliefs of physics.

It's not about whether it's a fact or not, it's about whether believing it is worthy of respect.

If it were only about facts, no one would shout TRANSWOMEN ARE WOMEN

@Davyjones

Courts reach conclusions about things that happened in an individual case, but they can’t force me to agree with them.

If everything was hard and fast facts then there wouldn't need to be court cases... thats the whole point of them. To examine the shades of grey and the bits that are up for debate to determine a fair judgement based on the information heard in court.

I don't like it. To me it codifies the notion that we might be wrong. That people might actually be able to change sex.

However, I am am practical and this is the means to an end to make sure that there is a way for this to be fought. It's a mass delusion on a huge scale.

There's no protection in law for those who know a particular fact is true. I can only assume because it would be utterly batshit to have to enshrine such a thing in law. But here we are! Now, without such a law, the Protected Characteristic (within the EA 2010) of "religion or belief" is all there is.

@stealtheatingtunnocks

You’re free not to believe in gravity. It’s like that. Trans activists are free not to believe in biological sex, even though most people believe (know) it’s a fact.

Because there are no universally sanctioned ‘facts’. Everyone is free to believe in what people call facts, or not. (MF was demonised for refusing to accept ‘new facts’ - those who oppose her are every bit as insistent on their ‘facts’ as we are.)

It's weird. Facts, truth should be more important than beliefs.

Well if biological sex could be changed, there would be no arguments about what to put on the "who needs smear tests" leaflets, as trans men would all end up with prostates and penises (and no ovaries or cervix or uterus to worry about...).