Maya Forstater's appeal skeleton

[Mollyollydolly]

Saw this on twitter and thought it deserved a thread to itself.

As Jason Braler (employment lawyer) says on twitter "It's more a thesis than a traditional skeleton, but it certainly drives home the points from every conceivable angle.
It may also be the only ever EAT skeleton to have 4 references to Orwell"

hiyamaya.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/forstater-eat-claimant-skeleton-argument-plus-low-res-pages-1-50.pdf

Love this from Jane Clare Jones, in response to the assertion that the GRA change the definition of sex, and we should all just move on and get over it

NOTE: When people claim that the GRA has no effect on women's rights and we are all being evil harpies getting our knickers in a twist, and ALSO claim that the GRA REDEFINES SEX IN LAW AS GENDER IDENTITY and that therefore female people no longer exist as a legal class.

It causes me enormous pain to pretend males are women but that is ignored

Exactly. What about the women who are forced to call their attackers and rapists ''she''? Why do their feelings count less?

Thus, no doubt, deliberately addressing a colleague with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment using pronouns that do not correspond to their reassigned gender

The sharp reader will note there that one cannot address a person with a third-person pronoun.

@McPancreas

I'm finding it fascinating to see the legal equivalent of reciting the TWAW mantra over and over again in todays case live feed.

All they do is attack the player, Maya rather than the ball, why the lack of belief in GI theology is so beyond the pale that it is a thought crime for which people should be discriminated against.

Indeed. Unsafe at work, literal violence, fearing abuse and harassment, purely for people believing in the reality of binary sex and that, occasionally, you can say so.

And in the same breath, Maya also gets vilified for using words like 'delusion'.

"A delusion is a belief that is clearly false and that indicates an abnormality in the affected person's content of thought."

And now the final push!

Wouldn’t deliberate misgendering be the same as calling someone fat. It may be factual/biological but it’s rude and unnecessary in most situations, safeguarding and health reasons are exceptions. Both would come under bullying policy and rightly so.

Accidentally misgendering needs to be addressed differently. It can be very difficult, particularly as we get older (in my experience) and for those with additional needs.

To continue your analogy, surely misgendering is akin to assuming someone is pregnant rather than fat, and asking when the baby is due. Mortifying for those involved but surely not something that should be legislated against.

Wouldn’t deliberate misgendering be the same as calling someone fat. It may be factual/biological but it’s rude and unnecessary in most situations, safeguarding and health reasons are exceptions. Both would come under bullying policy and rightly so.

This is wrongly considered anyway. ‘Fat’ holds a value judgement. ‘Male’ doesn’t.

Shakespeare was right with this quote:

What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive sums up this debacle with the whole GRA, GRC and EqA.

Thanks again for the helpful updates. I'm at work so can't follow the case properly. I really hope Maya can win this case because it would make those of us who work in schools much more confident in our ability to insist on proper safeguarding. It hasn't come up where I work and I hope I would be brave enough to speak to my bosses if necessary. But I'd like to know that I wouldn't lose my job for raising concerns when appropriate and necessary.

As an aside, I started reading 1984 last night for the first time. Probably a bad idea because all I can see are the parallels, particularly with regard to re-issuing birth certificates, secrecy over GRCs and the implications of the "legal fiction" created by the GRA. It is startlingly similar to the Ministry of Truth re-writing history.

Jeez, I've been taking a break from GC social media stuff for a couple of days and I managed to miss this!

@MForstater - best of luck, I hope you win your appeal, for your own but also for all women's and girls' sakes going forwards.

It would be nice if sanity would prevail for once!

There is a lot of talk about misgendering, when that really isn't the core of this case.

Yes Maya accidentally misgendered Gregor Murray once on twitter, someone who she doesn't and has never worked with.

The case is about whether women can talk about sex based rights and the impact of self ID on those rights and whether the beliefs that underpin that - the belief that there are two sexes, that human beings cannot change sex, and that sex is important, is protected as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010.

Sex Matters
@SexMattersOrg

JR said T's reasoning just means C couldn't harass people at work. But it goes much wider. The T expressly says C should not express her beliefs when participating in the public debate on sex and gender.

It's very much in issue in this case whether C was sacked because of things she said in the workplace, or directed towards anyone in this workplace; and particularly whether she harassed anyone, anywhere. T has made no findings on any of that.

They've decided her beliefs don't merit protection at all.

@nauticant

It's not often one sees this claim made so openly - that a man literally becomes a women when they say they are.

I think the argument presented there is solely based on the GRA while studiously ignoring sex existing in any other context. One of those literally true but factually false statements.

This reminds me of Luke Easley HR Director at Maya's employers on the stand at the first hearing. When shown a picture of Rachel Dolezal he said 'she appears to be white' but if she chose to record herself as black 'in reality she's black'.

Do HR bods live in some kind of Alice in Wonderland type place?

Yes, I was thinking about Rachel Dolezal - from today's live tweets it sounded as if the defence barrister was condemning Maya for raising the question of whether there was a parallel to be drawn, but I remember that moment in the tribunal hearing. What was the gist of her argument? (Sorry, had to go out and lost the Twitter thread.)

@Fieldoftheclothofgold

Wouldn’t deliberate misgendering be the same as calling someone fat. It may be factual/biological but it’s rude and unnecessary in most situations, safeguarding and health reasons are exceptions. Both would come under bullying policy and rightly so.

This is wrongly considered anyway. ‘Fat’ holds a value judgement. ‘Male’ doesn’t.

Quite.

@PronounssheRa

There is a lot of talk about misgendering, when that really isn't the core of this case.

Yes Maya accidentally misgendered Gregor Murray once on twitter, someone who she doesn't and has never worked with.

The case is about whether women can talk about sex based rights and the impact of self ID on those rights and whether the beliefs that underpin that - the belief that there are two sexes, that human beings cannot change sex, and that sex is important, is protected as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010.

Yes exactly.

Linked to that is safeguarding. For example, someone must be permitted to point out that the sex of a teacher might be relevant on a residential trip.

This reminds me of Luke Easley HR Director at Maya's employers on the stand at the first hearing. When shown a picture of Rachel Dolezal he said 'she appears to be white' but if she chose to record herself as black 'in reality she's black'.

One of the problems with this sort of assertion is that you think you're missing something. Some philosophical, or logical premise that would connect A to B, if only you could see it, or were apprised of the requisite concept.

But no.

@SelfPortraitWithEels

Yes, I was thinking about Rachel Dolezal - from today's live tweets it sounded as if the defence barrister was condemning Maya for raising the question of whether there was a parallel to be drawn, but I remember that moment in the tribunal hearing. What was the gist of her argument? (Sorry, had to go out and lost the Twitter thread.)

It's unclear from the tweets - i was wondering the same. JR: " MF's views originate in slander."

"Because she thinks trans people are deluded."

"MF tweeted comparing trans people to Rachel Dolezal, saying "I don't see the difference...neither has a basis in reality.""

"Dolezal was NACCP president, white but pretended to be black.
MF said someone trans "is passing in their new Identity."

Kind of looks like JR is saying Dolezal isn't black and it's rude to suggest that trans ppl are deluded in the same way? But I'm not sure.

Moving on to the tweet on p.105. I'm not sure if this tweet was put to C. If it's relied on by R to justify their actions, JR will be able to put it to C in the resumed hearing and we can test the context.

Is this implying by the use of resumed hearing that should this Appeal be found in favour of Maya the hearing regarding her dismissal is re-done? Sorry, am a little confused.

reddogs It reads that way to me, but IANAL...

Yes, that's what it looked like to me - but then what happens about the HR chap who said she was black?! Weird.

Definitely an under-quoted moment in the original tribunal, I thought.

Oops BC is tripping up over GM's self non binary identity and they pronoun!

... if a doctor notes that I am fat and therefore at higher risk of certain illnesses, this might be upsetting. But also accurate. If a clothes seller notes that I need a larger size, or a horse trainer notes I can't go on the smaller pony, or whatever reason - I can't just identify myself onto a smaller pony, without potentially hurting the poor wee thing, or squeeze into a size 10 without bursting the buttons. There are hurt feelings, there are our deeply held wishes (I'll never be a size 10) and there is reality.

To prioritise my right to think of myself as a lissome skelf over a pony's right not to carry someone too big and heavy for its spine is not right in any way, it doesn't help me or the pony, in the long run.

To say that anyone trying to step in to protect the pony is not allowed to mention my weight but somehow needs to pretend that although I am a size 10 I will yet not be able to go on this pony is unworkable. To criminalise the person trying to protect the pony is absolutely beyond reason.

I think I have maybe had enough of the pony metaphor, now - can someone help me down, please?

The main hearing hasn't happened yet. This, and the earlier hearing that this appeals, is a preliminary issue. This means it was small in terms of time to discuss, discrete, and critical. When Maya lost, she couldn’t take the other bit any further because she needed to win this to get to that.

If she wins this round, as long as the other side do not appeal, the main issue will then get to be heard (unless of course they settle or one side pulls out).

C's explanation as to her use of the male pronoun was that she had forgotten that Mist... that Gregor Murray identified as non-binary.

Oops.

It's not a flippant point to note that GM appeared or at any rate might reasonably appear to people who look at his, who look at their profile, to be a man with a beard.

Quite.