Fair Cop Court of Appeal 8-10 March

[Spero]

Please save the date! This is such an important hearing for freedom of speech, particularly around the issues of sex and gender.

The hearing will be for 1 1/2 days some time between 8-10 March, we don't have an exact listing yet.

Hopefully there will be some live tweeting.

Do support if you can.

twitter.com/WeAreFairCop/status/1361820204649639951?s=20

This lunchtime I shall mostly be singing

.. but it was just cat-egor-isation, running away with me...

I have watched a bit. It is reassuring to feel that whatever the decision is, the judges are really getting to the heart of the matter.

whatever the decision is

This is the point, this is not a case of playing the game in the courts until a case is lost and then we have to shut up.

Yesterday the trans activists were all over twitter sneering at the FPFW victory and saying "but you've only changed a word or two". They were missing the point, what happened yesterday is that a High Court judge effectively decided "sometimes it's all about sex, and for those cases then decision-making applies to sex, and not to gender identity". As more cases get to the courts, even if some are lost, judges will become focused on the fact that material reality is important and this gender identity stuff can be harmful.

do you agree with 'but free speech' being a justification for wading into a sensitive situation about which they knew absolutely fuck all, and putting an already very vulnerable child in further danger? is it free speech to shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre?

@outedbyfaircop

I remember this, it was shocking I'm so sorry you and your family had to go through it. Placing a vulnerable child at risk of harm to score political points was truly one of the lowest points of this debate and that people still support Harry and Fair Cop after that really reveals something very wrong within some gender critical circles. It chills me where this might one day lead, especially now Harry is whipping up outrage from Tommy Robinson supporters and conspiracy theorists.

It is pertinent to this thread, which is about Fair Cop and the potential limits to free speech - this is an organisation which has shown they couldn't care less about the safety of a trans child or the feelings of their family at what must have been one of the most difficult times of their lives attacking policies brought in following the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and which was founded by an abusive man with growing links to the far right. That he receives any support on the feminist part of a parenting website is truly shocking, not least because he is intending to destroy policies such as monitoring misogynist hate incidents which was hugely popular with women when it was trialled.

Yesterday the trans activists were all over twitter sneering at the FPFW victory and saying "but you've only changed a word or two". They were missing the point, what happened yesterday is that a High Court judge effectively decided "sometimes it's all about sex, and for those cases then decision-making applies to sex, and not to gender identity". As more cases get to the courts, even if some are lost, judges will become focused on the fact that material reality is important and this gender identity stuff can be harmful.

Yes, exactly.

Anyone else slightly appreciating the lunch break - It's been a tricky one to try and follow the ins and outs of. Great job by the live tweeter.

Thans for the scolding jj1968

What about today's case in the Court of Appeal?

Why are you again conflating / confusing the right to free speech with the "safety" of a trans child, jj?
Every post of yours on any thread I've seen is an attempt to derail.

Don't get bogged down in categorisation arguments greyhound!

The close scrutiny of this specific piece of guidance is really interesting. The judge is identifying the relevant issues, I feel?

I wonder if we can score a hat-trick of shining sunlight this week?

FPFW, check
Glinner and Helen, check
Faircop..... (crosses fingers)

I wonder if we can also look forward to accusations that this is all the doing of 4Chan? That seems to be a favourite guilt-by-(fictional)-association claim at the moment.

It reminds me of the Lord questioning Graham Linehan yesterday, who wanted to make something of the fact that Graham had been banned from four platforms, as if that of itself meant he was more likely to be guilty of hate, rather than looking at the evidence of hate itself.

It's exactly this.

That a person who has been persecuted will be, whilst giving testimony to the House of Commons, thought of as suspicious.

jj

You have managed to miss the point yet again. I don’t care if Harry is a good or bad person. I care if the CoP guidelines are breaching all our human rights.

For example, I agreed with the abolition of IPP not because the people sentenced were good people but because an indeterminate sentence (not to be confused with a whole life term) is unacceptable no matter how unpleasant the person.

Cases like this are about wider rights in society not just an individual.

nauticant and ereshkigalangcleg that's exactly it. There was an awful lot of 'they went to court to get them to take out two words lmao' but it doesn't matter because it's one step. It's actually quite difficult to describe sometimes, but a judge agreed that sometimes male has to mean male, and in some contexts the fact a person is male is more important than how they perceive themself. Well the judge agreed the interim change to the guidence and granted the full hearing at least.

This being recognised in court bit by bit will be how the whole thing is picked apart. Not in the pages of academic journals, not on twitter, but in court. It's ridiculous it got that far and will cost so much money and time but so be it.

The whole point about having the record is to alert you to the possibility that there is potentially a greater risk of crime being committed in the future

May I suggest that this is viewed against the bigger backdrop of the Home Offices refusal to destroy fingerprints and DNA evidence from people who are never charged on the basis that we are all potential "future offenders".

Judge - if we know records are being kept about what we are saying about things this wouldn't cause us to moderate what we are saying?

Hell yeah.

If two words aren't important why did people in Scotland throw such epic tantrums about Johann Lamont's amendment to change "gender" to "sex" being agreed?

It's the difference between someone just pissing around in court for lols and strategic litigation.

Having followed the live tweeting, it's really going better today isn't it. It looks like (but it's tricky to get through the tweeting so could be wrong) that neither legal team did that great, but the judge is doing a really good job of challenging the defence, and seems to instinctively see the significance.

One of the points made by one of the judges (Ingrid Simler, on the right as we face them), was 'how likely is it [ I think, that it is necessary to record as a hate incident] that this is necessary for two people online who will never know each other, vs recording incidents between two people that do know each other [the implication that that may be more likely to escalate I suppose into violence].

I found that quite interesting. Because some harrasment is conducted online by people who don't know each other. And so both the original comment and also the reporting to the police could be 'true hate' as opposed to 'non hate'.

Did anyone catch that?

If words aren’t important why did it take multiple parliamentary debates to use “mother” in a maternity law.

@nauticant

Thans for the scolding jj1968

What about today's case in the Court of Appeal?

I think the QC is really missing a trick in not pointing out how all kinds of non-crime information can be recorded about people and potentially revealed in a DBS check. Some political activists have files inches thick and have never been convicted of anything. I think there's strong grounds for looking at how and why police retain information across the board, but this isn't where I would start.

I suspect Manderleyagain that that's in the nature of an appeal court. The punch-up happened in the lower tier court, and now the appeal court judges' job is to dig deep into what was decided and whether it can be upheld.

Some political activists have files inches thick and have never been convicted of anything.

And she's trying to ascertain whether saying transwomen are not women, would result in such a file.