AIBU to think Maya scored a victory for common sense today?

[DancesWithTortoises]

twitter.com/MForstater/status/1402922169559044096?s=20

news.sky.com/story/maya-forstater-woman-who-lost-job-over-transgender-views-wins-appeal-against-employment-tribunal-12329249

The law just cannot be allowed to tell people what to think.

Hurrah for Maya!

I'm happy about today's ruling, it's a step in the right direction. I'm not brave enough yet to be in the forefront of this battle for women's rights to be respected but I fully support those who are.
On the subject of sanpro; this is our brand, description, for your period needs no matter what stage of life you are at. Use like this.
Keep it simple.

Wow. This thread was something else...

Anyway, hooray for Maya!

Transwomen are NOT women, and it feels like a breath of fresh air to be able to say so without mincing words.

I do not, and will not EVER, believe or state that transwomen are women. They are NOT.

Good luck to all transwomen and transmen on their journeys. They are valid enough as they are.

But your employer has a duty to provide a safe welcoming workplace for others - if you act on or express these beliefs in ways that make others feel unsafe or unwelcome in your workplace, your employer is obliged to act and entitled to take disciplinary action or sack you.*

It's my understanding that the case today concluded that if believing in gender critical views, or disbelieving in gender identity is upsetting or makes someone feel scared, it's too bad. That's the whole point. One is entitled to hold those views.

I will also want to add that there are plenty of transwomen who hold exactly the same views. Loads.

Isn’t it a fact rather than a belief?

@Stopsnowing

Isn’t it a fact rather than a belief?

Yes, but just knowing facts is not a protected characteristic. There's no legal protection from being fired or refused service for knowing facts. There is case law that says a protected belief can be based on strong evidence.

We need to grab legal protection wherever we can because women are being fired, refused service etc. just for trying to stand up for our own rights.

It may seem nonsensical but Maya and her team have played an absolute blinder. Today's judgment changes everything.

However.

Part of Maya's argument that helped qualify it as a belief is that sex is important.

Sex is a protected characteristic though. There should never have been any doubt that sex is important, and today's judgment only protects the belief that sex is important. It doesn't reaffirm that sex is already legally acknowledged as important, being as how it's one of the nine protected characteristics in the EA.

Imagine if you were being discriminated against on the grounds of race or disability (other protected characteristics are available) but instead of being able to rely on the EA to protect you based on those characteristics, you instead had to go to court to prove your belief that race is important, or your belief that disability is important, and furthermore that your belief is worthy of respect in a democratic society.

Imagine if you had to go to appeal because the first judge said your belief - in the importance of your own legally protected characteristics - was not worthy of respect in a democratic society.

That's how bad things have got for women and girls in the UK. We can no longer rely on the pc of sex to protect our rights. We have to use a different pc - religion or belief - instead.

I'm so pleased with today's judgment but I'm also so angry this was necessary.

My hope is that now the courts have decided to protect our belief in the importance of our own protected characteristic, that we will be much more able to campaign for recognition and strengthening of the protected characteristic of sex itself, and the rights that go along with that.

It should never have come to this though. It absolutely stinks.

@LadyFidgetAndHerHandbag

I don't agree with your views but I'm shocked by your medical news. That's awful. I hope you're doing ok.

As Maya herself said, holding this belief in biological facts does not mean she is not going to be polite and respectful to a transwoman she works with.

Just like I don't believe in a religion but am quite capable of respecting another colleague's faith.

There is a converse side to this ruling, although I don't know the full implications.

That the idea of trans is also a belief.

Trans people in the uk have protections in law already but the narrative has been increasingly that being trans has scientific biological actuality from birth / conception (appropriating differences of sexual development).

I am concerned as to what this means in practice.

It is absolutely right that changes had to be made against the ridiculous transgender umbrella and to self ID etc.. There needed to be a huge change

However we still have the original group - the transsexuals - the ones who were hijacked to push this ridiculous trans agenda. The ones who are not intact male bodied and who live and integrate within societal defined female gender roles

The problem with saying "trans women are women" is that it treats trans as a single entity.
Are transvestites woman? Of course not. Is a self ID person a woman? Of course not.
But within that is a post operative transsexual, years on hormones, diagnosed, living and working within female roles? TWAW excludes the whole umbrella and therefore means post op transsexuals are not women - does that mean now a TS should be excluded and treated no differently?

For purposes of being open and honest - yes I am a post op TS with GRC.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

It’s very interesting that someone who professes to be pleased about today’s ruling has come onto the thread and done everything in their power to derail the conversation away from the case being discussed and onto a different track altogether, in a very weird way.

Almost as if this person wasn’t pleased about the ruling at all and is in fact trying very hard to shut down the conversation about it.

Surely no one would be that disingenuous?

Surely no one would be that invested in silencing women on this absolutely historic day, this day that has seen a HUGE victory for women’s rights, this day that is making so many of us feel absolutely fired up with our collective success?

Well, if they did… it wouldn’t work.

Because today we won.

And anyone who isn’t happy about that can go and commiserate with themselves in any way they see fit. But they won’t rain on our parade.

BECAUSE WE WON.

💜🤍💚 💜🤍💚 💜🤍💚 💜🤍💚 💜🤍💚

Absolutely right! i can't stop thinking about it. All that Maya had to go through on a personal level to get to today's court decision.

She could have just backed down quietly (as I am sure many women have) but she took on this fight for every woman.

As others have pointed out this won't get her her job back either and being a recognised name for brining a tribunal against an employer doesn't usually make you very employable. Employers tend to avoid recruiting known litigants, they fudge the recruitment process and give another reason for preferring an alternative candidate.

Maya has been so brave, no amount of odd posts take that away from her.

And if they decide on ‘women and bleeders?

If that is what transmen want tobe calledI couldn't give a stuff. What transmen/women want to be called is up to them not women.

Bluelipstick Debbie Hayton has often made the same point, and yes I see your point that the TRA gender movement has effectively forced this to the point of breaking for all, where when it was a few TS male people in women's spaces it was not ideal for women, women were never consulted, no check on impact was ever done (and the fact that few women openly complained or showed that they were forced out of the space does not mean it didn't happen) but the impact was pretty small.

This has proved beyond all doubt that to allow some male born people to use female people's spaces and facilities and resources means in effect that all male born people can at will. That genie is now right out of the bottle, female people are having to take legal action to get the impact on them recognised and their rights respected and to prevent this very sexist approach that female resources are something male people own and gatekeep regardless of how many females they exclude or cause issues for in the process.

We've had all the discussions, led by activists, that you cannot police a female space on the door - and it's been made clear that a male born person who wants entry will take it regardless of how female people are affected. You cannot police who and who is not sufficiently transitioned, you cannot police who is and is not genuine - the compromise position has been tried, that only genuine male people would claim female spaces. It relied on good will and on equality of care for both sexes. It's been destruction tested.

Third spaces are the only way forward now, the only way to respect both the needs of people who do not feel willing or able to use facilities with people of the same sex AND the needs of people who do not feel willing or able to use facilities with people of the opposite sex. It's appalling that female people have had to resort to law to get their boundaries respected by male people.

Blue, trans is still a protected characteristic.

This was and is entirely about the right for a woman (or man) to be able to openly say that she doesn't believe a person can change sex and not fear loosing a job or being harassed. Simply that opinion. Which has seen women being disadvantaged in their roles and jobs.

I agree that in practise third spaces are a huge need.

And as you've said elsewhere, it's sex reassignment that's protected rather than 'identity.'

*Blue,trans is still a protected characteristic.

This was and is entirely about the right for a woman (or man) to be able to openly say that she doesn't believe a person can change sex and not fear loosing a job or being harassed. Simply that opinion. Which has seen women being disadvantaged in their roles and jobs.*

Absolutely right that this should happen.

However I actually believe that much of this mess was caused by Stonewalls manipulation of the Equality Act rather than what the EA actually said.

As much as I support the ruling I have two things I feel still need resolvng:

• a better definition of Gender Reassignment and its conflation with gender identity
• a removal of trans as an all or nothing umbrella term ie you must support all or none,

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark

It’s very interesting that someone who professes to be pleased about today’s ruling has come onto the thread and done everything in their power to derail the conversation away from the case being discussed and onto a different track altogether, in a very weird way.

Almost as if this person wasn’t pleased about the ruling at all and is in fact trying very hard to shut down the conversation about it.

Surely no one would be that disingenuous?

Surely no one would be that invested in silencing women on this absolutely historic day, this day that has seen a HUGE victory for women’s rights, this day that is making so many of us feel absolutely fired up with our collective success?

Well, if they did… it wouldn’t work.

Because today we won.

And anyone who isn’t happy about that can go and commiserate with themselves in any way they see fit. But they won’t rain on our parade.

BECAUSE WE WON.

💜🤍💚 💜🤍💚 💜🤍💚 💜🤍💚 💜🤍💚

I have discussed it, it’s a great result. It’s absolutely what should have happened, even though Maya shouldn’t have been put in this situation in the first place.

It’s great news, and I’m delighted about it. There are other issues to discuss though.

Yes orgs such as stonewall and mermaids have caused untold damage.

Good interview with a Lawyer of hers on radio 4 right now. Exploring these issues.

They discussed this on the Today programme from about 0835 onwards.

Followed up by girls' education in Africa.

You cannot police who and who is not sufficiently transitioned

Perhaps, perhaps not, but one thing I would like to see is a GRC identity card producable on demand.

Even accepting the argument that men and women are immutably different, so too are men are post op transsexuals.

When toilets are single sex then that means transmen use the ladies. How do you determine a transman from a biological man in a woman's space?

There is no simple solution.

What transmen/women want to be called is up to them not women.

If the basis of this ruling is about immutability of sex than transmen are women.

As much as I support the ruling I have two things I feel still need resolvng:
- a better definition of Gender Reassignment and its conflation with gender identity
- a removal of trans as an all or nothing umbrella term ie you must support all or none

I agree.

I think the general direction of travel was progressive until it got diverted and distorted by this ideology/orthodoxy. I don't want to go back to some dark age where trans identities were a secret shame. I want to move forward, carry on hearing, respecting and acknowledging the multiplicity of gender non-conforming voices and through that reduce gender/sex stereotyping for all of us.

I hope this ruling is the first step in being able to have a proper public respectful conversation and debate about these things.

I personally - and this is very definitely a belief not a proven fact - believe that many trans identities, especially in the young, are a rational reaction to the sexism still running deeply through our society and culture, and if we focussed less on what exterior is supposed to go with what interior and more on demolishing sexist constructs in the first place, many trans identities would evaporate because the need for them has gone.

That does not mean those identities are not real in this culture! It just means that in a different culture they may not be needed.

That may - probably will - still leave a group of people left with a body-focussed (rather than culturally triggered) dysphoria, and we can support those people with something that's appropriate for them, which may indeed be more like "transsexual" transition.

I consider the Trans Orthodoxy/Stonewall approach to be akin to trying to fix a leak by repainting the ceiling instead of repairing the roof.

@BlueLipstickRocks

I am concerned as to what this means in practice.

It is absolutely right that changes had to be made against the ridiculous transgender umbrella and to self ID etc.. There needed to be a huge change

However we still have the original group - the transsexuals - the ones who were hijacked to push this ridiculous trans agenda. The ones who are not intact male bodied and who live and integrate within societal defined female gender roles

The problem with saying "trans women are women" is that it treats trans as a single entity.
Are transvestites woman? Of course not. Is a self ID person a woman? Of course not.
But within that is a post operative transsexual, years on hormones, diagnosed, living and working within female roles? TWAW excludes the whole umbrella and therefore means post op transsexuals are not women - does that mean now a TS should be excluded and treated no differently?

For purposes of being open and honest - yes I am a post op TS with GRC.

Blue as I see it, this ruling sets out that neither: a) people who do not believe in gender NOR b) people who do believe in gender can be discriminated against for their belief (or lack of).

It also said that, under the GRA, sex is not immutable, and that people who have a GRC are to be treated as their chosen sex.

I don't think this ruling should affect your day to day life as a post-op TS. You are protected under the 'gender reassignment' criteria of the Equality Act so will rightly retain the protections you already have.

It was interesting for me that this ruling also specifically mentioned that misgendering could be construed as harrassment if done repeatedly and deliberately. I see this as a valuable step as it sets out for employers a specific situation in which a transperson might experience harrassment.

I appreciate your comments on this board and I hope this ruling doesn't worry you too much. I see it as setting a stage for adult discussions about the needs of all groups concerned.