My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Supreme Court reported for T***phobia

71 replies

gardenbird48 · 17/11/2020 12:29

twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1328633118434209792

the awe-inspiring Sarah has reported the Supreme Court for transphobia in relation to the transman applying to be named as father on the baby's birth certificate as a third party bystander.

The judgement in the court case satisfied the conditions for defining it a Hate Incident so Sarah has reported it as such and will be waiting for the response.

If she is criticised for wasting police time then she will be asking why all the malicious and frivolous reports being made against her are not also deemed to be a waste of police time, and after repeated requests, these records held against her and previously without her knowledge are not being deleted.

If not and the complaint is upheld, that will be an interesting test of the Hate Crime/Incident reporting. Will it mean that any judgement made in court that 'particular groups' don't like/deem offensive is automatically a Hate Crime/Incident??

Law will eat itself.

OP posts:
Report
VulvaPerson · 19/11/2020 11:50

@FannyCann

Good question in the comments: 'if someone misgenders me by calling me "cis" (suggesting that my "gender identity" is the same as my sex) I can use this to report them?'.

I certainly consider it hateful to call me cis.
And how dare anyone make that assumption about my gender.

Not only is it assumed, its often argued about also, with them telling you you definitely are cis and shut up bigot. Even though apparently telling someone their gender identity is something other than what THEY think it is, is on par with murder these days. But oddly, its fine to tell women what their identity is Hmm
Report
nauticant · 19/11/2020 11:56

The only bar I'm aware of is that the "hate" needs to relate to one of or more protected characteristics*.

It's about whether the complainer feels offended by anything that anyone has said/done. They are referred to as "non-crime hate incidents". They mean that the Police is in many cases being asked to act on behalf of someone's hurt feelings.

  • These are not the Equality Act Protected Characteristics but are the Hate Crime Protected Characteristics:

    "a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender"

    Guess which protected characteristic is missing.
Report
DeaconBoo · 19/11/2020 12:20

So the "hate" needs to relate to a PC, but does the incident? I mean if I called a gay person "fatso", would that be a hate incident because they are gay, even though there is nothing at all related to their sexual orientation in the "incident"? But it doesn't specify particular sexual orientations either in the PCs, so calling a straight person fat would be the same?

Report
BlueCatRedCat · 19/11/2020 12:37

@DeaconBoo

So the "hate" needs to relate to a PC, but does the incident? I mean if I called a gay person "fatso", would that be a hate incident because they are gay, even though there is nothing at all related to their sexual orientation in the "incident"? But it doesn't specify particular sexual orientations either in the PCs, so calling a straight person fat would be the same?

Isn't this what critical race theory espouses? That no matter what the motives of the alleged abuser are, if they are white, they are deemed to be using their racial privilege as a weapon (even if they don't have any racist intent). Therefore, if a white person calls a black person 'fatso", it is essentially an act of racism.

The same analogy using "cis" privilege instead of white, and gay instead of black, would result in a hate crime, irrespective of the fact that the person saying fatso has no homophobic intent. I think that's the way Stonewall et al are pushing things.
Report
Spero · 19/11/2020 12:40

[quote DeaconBoo]Thanks Sarah.
I fundamentally don't understand what the bar is for something being a hate incident - I had a thread here musing about whether you could report your neighbour's planning application for an extension as a hate incident because you perceived it as such, or the name of the 'Wimpy' restaurant etc - everyone has a protected characteristic of one kind or another, so surely anything could be (claimed to be) perceived as being hatred on that basis, however spurious?:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4011623-Using-hate-incidents-for-unintended-purposes?[/quote]
As I understand it, hate crimes and incidents relate to five 'monitored strands' one of which (transgender identity) is not reflected in the 9 protected characteristics of the Equality Act.

the 'monitored strands' are race, religion, disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity.

An obvious lacuna is 'sex' (police admit they would be immediately overwhelmed if they had to deal with reports about misogyny). The Law Commission have suggested including it but as 'sex and gender' which is worse than useless as 'gender' is not defined and appears to be self proclaimed.

The police MAY NOT question the rationality or motivations of the Reporting Person. They MUST record. There is some consideration of 'malice' in the guidance but I was told by Wiltshire I had to provide 'categorical evidence' of malice, so its an absurdly high standard of proof.

They were never going to tell me. I was given no opportunity to defend myself. They will keep my data for 6 years and will not tell me who gets to see it.

The whole system is offensive, dangerous nonsense.

It's also worth noticing that 'transgender identity' was snuck into LASPO 2012, an Act which caused enormous fuss because it removed legal aid from a variety of civil cases, including ones about parents arguing about children.

This was a perfect example of 'stealth legislation' as recommended in the Denton's report about Top Tips for trans activists. I had no idea this had been done until a criminal defence lawyer emailed me last week to point it out.

Report
nauticant · 19/11/2020 12:51

DeaconBoo if you say or do anything, that is literally anything, that a person with one of the Hate Crime Protected Characteristics finds offensive then they can report you to the Police as having committed a non-crime hate incident and it will be logged as such.

That's it. It is completely open-ended.

It's been known about for years but anyone raising concerns about this has tended to be dismissed a crank or worse. What's changed is that the impacts of these powers have been supercharged by the proliferation of social media combined with people spotting how reporting can be used as a weapon and the Police going along with the system being abused in such a way because it suits them for various reasons.

Report
nauticant · 19/11/2020 12:53

To clarify "finds offensive" should be "says that they find offensive".

Report
JamieLeeCurtains · 19/11/2020 13:05

@nauticant

The only bar I'm aware of is that the "hate" needs to relate to one of or more protected characteristics*.

It's about whether the complainer feels offended by anything that anyone has said/done. They are referred to as "non-crime hate incidents". They mean that the Police is in many cases being asked to act on behalf of someone's hurt feelings.

* These are not the Equality Act Protected Characteristics but are the Hate Crime Protected Characteristics:

"a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender"

Guess which protected characteristic is missing.

That's good for tiught. There's there's plenty of stuff online about women like me accusing us of being crazy, white, straight/heteronormative murdering bitches in league with US Christians and how we all deserve to be raped and murdered.

So while the protected characteristic of sex is missing from the Hate Crime Protected Characteristics, other ones are being targeted by the TRAs/MRAs' behaviour and threats.

I could feel it's hateful to call me crazy when I have had mental health struggles, for example, and I could feel it's hateful to assume-in-order-to-insult my perceived race, religion and sexuality, and I could feel it's hateful to assume-in-order-to-threaten me over the same things.

I hope that makes sense.
Report
JamieLeeCurtains · 19/11/2020 13:05

Food for thought, ffs.

Report
DeaconBoo · 19/11/2020 13:48

Therefore, if a white person calls a black person 'fatso", it is essentially an act of racism.

I am 99% sure this was the basis for an episode of South Park approx 20 years ago, btw.

The police MAY NOT question the rationality or motivations of the Reporting Person. They MUST record. There is some consideration of 'malice' in the guidance but I was told by Wiltshire I had to provide 'categorical evidence' of malice, so its an absurdly high standard of proof.

Thanks again spero. I think this is what I wanted certainty on!

This whole thing is something I have been questioning in various places for quite a while but have not had a satisfactory reply. In fact I raised something as a hypothetical question to a person involved in this area, which several months later essentially happened almost as I'd described. (Keeping it broad in case they read here).

Thing is, I can see what they're trying to get at. But I can't see how anyone thought any of this is how you get at it.

Report
Spero · 20/11/2020 09:01

Update on my case if of interest.

Supreme Court reported for T***phobia
Supreme Court reported for T***phobia
Report
gardenbird48 · 20/11/2020 11:18

thank you for the update Spero - and thank you for doing such excellent work - their comment 'complicated matter' would make me laugh if I wasn't so cross at their stupidity and lack of forethought.

OP posts:
Report
Spero · 20/11/2020 18:10

Apparently they did exactly the same to Harry. They aren't going to back down.

Good.

Report
JamieLeeCurtains · 21/11/2020 23:42

@Spero that's really good work 👍

Report
JamieLeeCurtains · 21/11/2020 23:43

And thank you

Report
ArabellaScott · 22/11/2020 22:10

Complicated matters, oh aye. Well done and thanks for the update.

Report
youkiddingme · 23/11/2020 17:37

Rooting for you spero

Report
Spero · 23/11/2020 22:29

Unsurprising update. But what's with the crime reference number? Is this now recorded as a hate incident? I will email and find out!

Supreme Court reported for T***phobia
Report
CatsCantCatchCriminals2 · 24/11/2020 08:42

Thank you for doing this, Spero.

Report
Winesalot · 24/11/2020 08:44

Flowers Spero

Report
PurpleHoodie · 24/11/2020 08:56
Flowers
Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.