Court and enforced use of 'preferred' pronouns

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

I am still aghast that Maria McLachlan was repeatedly instructed by a judge to use female pronouns for Tara Wood, who had assualted her at Speakers' Corner.

Tara Wood is scientifically male.

Maria McLachlan was instructed to do this, by a Judge, while under oath to tell the truth, in a Court of Law.

What would have happened if Maria had refused to do it on account of it not being the truth?

Anyone know the legal position on this?

[cromeyellow0]

IIRC the judge did use Maria's "bad grace" as one justification for not awarding compensation to her.

Note also the Trumpian insinuation that there was violence on both sides. In fact one side wanted to exercise their democratic right to meet and discuss proposed legislation (and only assembled at Hyde Park because their meeting venue had to be kept secret), while the other side was intent on fucking up some TERFs.

[SusanBunch]

Sorry, cross-posts there Crome.

I actually think the judge is being quite balanced here. He is certainly not reducing the sentence on account of how Ms Maclachlan gave evidence. He said it was a fairly minor assault and had to be taken in the context of two groups with high tensions running between them.

Maybe from a tactical viewpoint, Ms Maclachlan could have been more cooperative when giving evidence (to make the defendant look worse and appear to discredit the arguments they were raising) but I am not sure whether that would have had an impact on the sentence. The judge rejected claims of self-defence and said this definitely was an assault.

[dinosaursandtea]

How dare any of you! Damn right the court demanded the right use of pronouns. God, this site is vile these days.

[BarrackerBarmer]

I read he denied maria compensation because of the pronoun thing.

Only submissive victims deserve compensation.

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

Not getting into pronouns with you Dino.

This thread is about demanding enforced use of inaccurate language, scientifically, in a courtroom

[SusanBunch]

Note also the Trumpian insinuation that there was violence on both sides

I agree but I think the problem was that she was filming them and wouldn't stop. Had she literally just been a bystander, it might have reflected in a higher sentence. I think if the judge had said that the victim was totally blameless and this was just a random attack that this would have provided material for the defendant to appeal. Judges often try to be as balanced as they can, even if this appears to 'put the blame on both sides' in order to make their judgments appeal-proof.

If you could link to the compensation bit, that would be helpful. I thought the judge was simply passing sentence and that any issues of compensation would be dealt with by the CICC, but I may be wrong on that.

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

I think I read that too Barracker

Compensation for the destruction of the camera

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Can you link to the sentencing issue you refer to?

Apologies. I'm afraid I saw it on twitter. I can't remember from which side. I suspect it was from people interpreting this:

Wolf, who the court heard receives £320 per month job seeker's allowance, was told to pay a £150 fine, £30 victim surcharge and £250 prosecution costs

But in giving his verdict, the Judge also branded Miss MacLachlan ungraceful for failing to refer to Wolf as 'she' during the two-day trial

He said: 'When I asked Miss MacLachlan to refer to the defendant as she, she did so with bad grace

'Having asked her to refer to Miss Wolf as she as a matter of courtesy, she continued to refer to Miss Wolf as he and him.

'The language of the debate is antagonistic and hostile.'

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

Susan
I get what the judge was saying but isn't that a dangerous precedent to set, such that filming someone effectively mitigates the seriousness of the filmed person assualting the filmer?

Wouldn't that have implications for everyone, given that everyone and their granny has phone/vid on their phones now?

[SusanBunch]

OK, I have found it now. No, it was not due to her refusing to use the pronouns, it was the circumstances of the assault and her conduct on Twitter afterwards. He said it was 'notable' that she did not use the preferred pronouns, but this was not the reason for denying compensation.

"Compensation would not be appropriate, particularly due to the unhelpful way in which the victim was present [at the protest] and the way she was filming.

"She was asked at different stages not to film but continued to do so.

"Another factor I have to take in to account is the Twitter post that has been submitted that was posted after the case had been brought to the attention of the police and there were criminal proceedings pending.

"It was foolish of her to post that tweet in the way that she did.

"It was notable that when I asked Ms Maclachlan to refer to Ms Wolf as 'she', she did so with bad grace - having asked her to do so she continued to refer to Ms Wolf as 'he' and 'him'".

[cromeyellow0]

Yes @BarrackerBarmer that was certainly a reason given for denying compensation.

BTW I could understand insisting that a transwoman with a female birth certificate (via GRC) should be addressed as 'she'--that seems a defensible interpretation of the law. But not any bloke who calls himself she.

There are absurd implications of the rule, e.g. a man attacks someone, then on the morning of his court appearance he decides to become a woman, forcing everyone to recall the attack as being carried out by a woman.

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

Does Tara Wood have a GRC?

[BarrackerBarmer]

A victim does not owe her male attacker a courtesy, least of all one which goes against her beliefs and the truth.

Of course a victim has the right to be 'hostile' to the man who battered her.
And to truthfully represent his sex.

This judge was biased in my opinion.

[ErrolTheDragon]

Is it required by courts that a victim must be 'courteous' to their assailant?

[SusanBunch]

I get what the judge was saying but isn't that a dangerous precedent to set, such that filming someone effectively mitigates the seriousness of the filmed person assualting the filmer?

I don't think you would want that as a blanket rule. In some circumstances (e.g. if a creepy guy is filming you and you knock the camera out of his hand), filming can be very antagonistic and there is definitely a suggestion/risk that the footage will be used for things other than private viewing. If they say here that filming is totally non-provocative, then what if men filming women start complaining that they were also being non-provocative.

I think at the end of the day, it was the right result. Tara Wolf was clearly guilty of assault and there was no excuse for it. It was not self-defence. However, I do see a difference between this and between someone who was out for a walk that day, just happened to be passing and got punched. I think the judge saw that too. I think Dr Julia Long shouting in the court didn't help either as the judge probably saw that as further evidence of antagonism.

[SusanBunch]

Does Tara Wood have a GRC?

No, I believe not.

[OvaHere]

I don't believe so Assigned

Jaycee has written some good posts in the past breaking down the figures and basically the number of individuals with dysphoria going through the full process of SRS/hormones and GRC hasn't really changed from the the tiny number of people it always was.

It's the new Stonewall umbrella that is causing most of the issue.

[cromeyellow0]

Thanks for the extensive sentencing quote @SusanBunch (Mon 16-Apr-18 17:51:25).

As I read it, Maria's ungraciousness was one factor (out of four) in his decision not to grant compensation.

BTW, I've never heard of law that prohibits filming people in a public place. It's also odd to say that trying to film someone who just tried to smash your camera is "unhelpful".

[SusanBunch]

This judge was biased in my opinion.

Surely if he was biased, he would not have found Tara Wolf guilty and would have accepted that it was self-defence? As I mentioned upthread, judges have to be very careful. Defendants will grab onto any possibility of appeal or suggestion of bias (in the opposite direction). I believe the judge was covering his arse while still reaching the correct verdict.

[LangCleg]

I think it is one thing to require court officers to observe preferred pronouns - for witnesses, for defendants, etc. And I expect that's the spirit of the guidance being quoted.

However, the crux of this case was that the victim (Maria) characterised the assault on her (by Flik Wood) as male pattern abusive behaviour. And she was asked to give evidence outlining what happened and her view of it.

It's the same argument we're having on the other thread about using the word "male" - how can Maria accurately communicate her point of view if she's told to lie about her perception of her assailant? It's a nonsense.

It doesn't matter what we think about it, what Flik Wood thinks about it, what the judge thinks about it. It doesn't matter what position you take on self-ID. Maria's evidence should be an accurate reflection of what Maria thinks about it.

Plus, the logical extension of this is that in other cases a traumatised victim of sexual offences might be retraumatised by being forced to use the preferred pronouns of her attacker. This cannot be right.

[SusanBunch]

BTW, I've never heard of law that prohibits filming people in a public place. It's also odd to say that trying to film someone who just tried to smash your camera is "unhelpful"

It's not, but I would personally feel extremely uncomfortable being filmed against my will. Surely she was also filming before the camera was knocked out of her hand?
If judges said it's perfectly fine to film someone even if they don't want you to, then how would they deal with cases where a woman is being filmed by a man and she has enough and knocks the camera forcefully out of his hand and is prosecuted for criminal damage or assault? Filming can be very intimidating (not saying it was here, but I don't think we can say that it's always fine).

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

Ok, but again Susan, how can a female victim be compelled to address her 'male' attacker as 'she' in a courtroom? And be censured for failing to do so?

This seems absurd. And obscene.

What did Julia Long do btw?

[BrashCandicoot]

Does Tara Wood have a GRC? If TW does, we wouldn't be allowed to say so by law, under the EA(2010) www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/advice/practice-notes/working-with-transgender-employees/

[cromeyellow0]

The prosecution was far less aggressive than the defence. And so one could charitably say that the judge was not given a clear view of all the facts of the case. The line continually pushed by the defence was that Tanis lived in desperate fear of being "outed" by evil TERFs, despite the fact that he was crowdfunding his facial feminization surgery (the prosecution didn't mention that inconvenient fact).

It was also incredible that Wolf's intimidation of yet another woman while he was on bail wasn't raised in the sentencing phase. All we heard was that he was of good character.

[cromeyellow0]

On the filming issue, there was no evidence that Maria was told to stop filming before Tanis tried to smash her camera.

This is an interesting sidelight on photography--it's quite legal to take a photo up a woman's skirt:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/09/woman-fights-upskirting-sexual-offense-told-men-put-camera-skirt/