Maya Forstater is entitled to her views, but anti-transgender beliefs don’t belong in the workplace

[Trixie78]

I don't even know where to start with the inaccuracies in this article. It's making my blood boil.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/maya-forstater-rowling-trans-b1838137.html

But for trans ideology that’s not enough - it’s offensive and unbearable to have to work with someone who doesn’t agree with you, even if they behave respectfully. It’s bizarre.

It goes even further than that they want to forbid anyone so much as thinking differently to their doctrine, it's truly Orwellian.

Isn't one of the points that Maya held her GC views private in the workplace - it was her Twitter account that got reported to her employer?
And that this has been conflated to suggest she harassed trans people in her workplace?

I've been trying to think of a comparable situation using a protected characteristic but am struggling.

Shouldn't this stuff be sub judice?

@DisgustedofManchester

One of the concerns in the evidence MF's QC gave was that some religions believed that biological sex was immutable also to support her rights. The same religions believe the same about homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, abortion, women's rights, birth control.

It is a lot of what ifs but lets try one on for size. A woman has an abortion ( the woman's right to choose is immutable in my book ) but it bbecomes known at work by a collegue who is pro life. This person has only to stay the right side of harassment now in the workplace.

For the small number of trans women in the workplace who will encounter the even smaller number of gender critical women, there is a larger number of pro lifers , backed by Heritage Foundation money and AFD deper pockets now who will quote the precedent if MF wins. Enjoy what will be a shallow victory though I actually still hope it gets thrown aout as what it is, a request by a person to be nasty to others.

This is the law currently and this is how it works already. If I am against abortion I am entitled to hold that belief and discuss it with others. I am not entitled to harass women who have had an abortion nor ram my views down the throats of those who don’t share them, nor demand that others share my views.

This is exactly what TRAs are attempting to do - the only allowable view is TWAW and anyone not sharing that view can be hounded out of their job, harassed and silenced. They’re the new Puritans. In a free society the law can require that we treat each other with respect. It cannot cannot compel belief, it’s the lifeblood of a free democratic society.

I've been trying to think of a comparable situation using a protected characteristic but am struggling.

The analogy was provided by Maya's QC: that someone's religious beliefs informed their rejection of same sex marriage.

2013 "Archbishop of Canterbury: gay marriage bill will undermine family life
Speaking in House of Lords debate, Justin Welby says law will undermine marriage as basis for rearing children"
www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/03/archbishop-canterbury-gay-marriage-bill

@Abhannmor

Shouldn't this stuff be sub judice?

Given it's being discussed everywhere, including on other threads here, presumably not.

I've been trying to think of a comparable situation using a protected characteristic but am struggling.

There was a recent case of an actress sacked from the cast of The Colour Purple because she posted homophobic content on Facebook. It's a rather odd case, though, and not really like Maya's.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55885720

This assumption, as exemplified by disgusted upthread is just so revealing: that gender critical women are somehow uniquely needful of extra constraint, over and above any other person holding any other set of views.

Here’s what’s happening: It’s not the views. It’s that it is women holding them. There’s an undercurrent of mistrust, that without the steadying hand of a man’s permission, we’re poised to unleash malice. It’s not about rights and freedoms, it must be personal antipathy.

Balls.

This assumption, as exemplified by disgusted upthread is just so revealing: that gender critical women are somehow uniquely needful of extra constraint, over and above any other person holding any other set of views.

The strategies to attempt to leverage women's silence are revealing also whether with regards women's right to abortion or as in the White and Mulready opinion piece in OP,

It would also, which perhaps may even concern Forstater, apply not only to beliefs that harm transgender people, but to any controversial belief a person may hold – including, for example, a belief that women are intellectually inferior to men. If Ms Forstater succeeds before the court, a man at work will have the protection of the law to make those statements at work whenever he likes, causing whatever damage he likes to the women he works with.

Which might be characterised as "Look what you'll make him do"

The Independent is a disgraceful rag pretending to be news. And thats hardly surprising considering who owns it:

Russian oligarch and former KGB Officer Alexander Lebedev bought the paper in 2010.[7] In 2017, a Saudi Arabian investor bought a 30% stake in it.

Reals bastions of women's rights there HAHAHAHA.

Sophoclesthefox

To demonstrate your point. mobile.twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1387678255419899904

A male trans ally, in a tweet castigating maya for accidentally misgendering GM, the male ally also calls GM 'he'.

Trans ally forgives himself because his misgendering was a genuine accident🤯

So man is forgiven for doing the exact same thing maya did. This whole thing is a way for men to exert control over women.

I can see a need to pin down what is meant by harassment. Someone saying something you don't like or agree with is not harassment. As a lesbian I've had people at work say that they feel homosexuality is a sin, shouldn't be allowed to adopt, yada yada. I thought they were unpleasant twits, but being an unpleasant twit isn't illegal. If they'd refused to work with me on the grounds of my being gay, or felt it necessary to follow me around reminding me I was living in sin, then it would have become a job for a manager to deal with. The very end of that line is harassment/bullying if it can't be dealt with in any other way. Those systems are the last resort of a process that include some work skills around emotional resilience and managing difficult people, not the first step of it.

Joshua Rosenberg's article in the Critic (R0wantrees shared it yesterday on one of the threads) nails the issue here. Moving the line back to 'you can have your beliefs but expressing them or manifesting them is harassment' still means requiring the other person to behave and speak at all times as if they held your belief. It isn't mutual respect. Imagine flipping that around and saying someone could have identity based views but not express or manifest them? Would that be acceptable?

The point here is that there is a right not to have to enact or speak a belief that is not held, and a right to have those different beliefs tolerated. Expressing that belief is not the same as harassment, and to believe that it is continues the whole problem of framing sex based beliefs as morally wrong. They're not. They're just different. And this is what has to be dealt with by the judge. When someone believes that reality is sex is immutable, and so they cannot share a single sex space with someone they believe and perceive as the opposite sex, their belief is no less important and worthy of respect as someone who believes that sex is what a person chooses and expresses themselves to be.

Those two positions are incompatible as many faith based positions are incompatible. The answer is mutual tolerance and solutions that meet all needs. Which in this case would be providing third spaces.

Further to that I think the only purpose of this 'paper' is to pervert and disrupt UK politics. Public should get wise to it and refuse to give it any clicks etc.

Enjoy what will be a shallow victory though I actually still hope it gets thrown aout as what it is, a request by a person to be nasty to others.

It won't be a shallow victory, not for women. The days of maliciously targeting and reporting women to their employers for respectfully engaging in a public debate will be over. We will get a little bit of power back, we get our voices back. I think it'll be an amazing victory.

Anyone who read the documents and followed the case can see that it's not about permission to bully or harass others at work at all.

Joshua Rosenberg's article in the Critic (R0wantrees shared it yesterday on one of the threads) nails the issue here.

thecritic.co.uk/what-is-the-case-against-maya-forstater/

@PronounssheRa

Sophoclesthefox

To demonstrate your point. mobile.twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1387678255419899904

A male trans ally, in a tweet castigating maya for accidentally misgendering GM, the male ally also calls GM 'he'.

Trans ally forgives himself because his misgendering was a genuine accident🤯

So man is forgiven for doing the exact same thing maya did. This whole thing is a way for men to exert control over women.

They don't even try to make sense 😖

When someone believes that reality is sex is immutable, and so they cannot share a single sex space with someone they believe and perceive as the opposite sex, their belief is no less important and worthy of respect as someone who believes that sex is what a person chooses and expresses themselves to be.

UK law also recognises that women and girls have the right to single sex spaces for dignity, privacy and safety. Women and girls have not consented to being in intimate spaces or situations with the opposite sex. Denying their right to refuse consent (and therefore the nature of consent) undermines Safeguarding, Child Protection frameworks and sexual offences principles.

The more it's laid out in words of words of one syllable, the clearer the utter outrage arguing against it actually is.

For the small number of trans women in the workplace who will encounter the even smaller number of gender critical women

Oh my!!! I just had to laugh at this gem.

I think that readers of this thread will probably agree that this comment diminishes your credibility hugely.

Nah..... I think you will find the majority of people could carry that 'GC' label you are keen to attach to people. I invite you to look at some of the AIBU threads that have run over the past months. They don't post here, but thousands of MNer voted and it was consistently 96-98% every time that agreed with things like definition of women and other issues.

@DisgustedofManchester

One of the concerns in the evidence MF's QC gave was that some religions believed that biological sex was immutable also to support her rights. The same religions believe the same about homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, abortion, women's rights, birth control.

It is a lot of what ifs but lets try one on for size. A woman has an abortion ( the woman's right to choose is immutable in my book ) but it bbecomes known at work by a collegue who is pro life. This person has only to stay the right side of harassment now in the workplace.

For the small number of trans women in the workplace who will encounter the even smaller number of gender critical women, there is a larger number of pro lifers , backed by Heritage Foundation money and AFD deper pockets now who will quote the precedent if MF wins. Enjoy what will be a shallow victory though I actually still hope it gets thrown aout as what it is, a request by a person to be nasty to others.

Spectacular misreading of the case. All you have proved here is that you have poor reading comprehension and a desire to deliberately misinterpret. Traits that you so surprisingly share with all the other non-GC posters.

Oh my!!! I just had to laugh at this gem.

It was very amusing.

For the small number of trans women in the workplace who will encounter the even smaller number of gender critical women, there is a larger number of pro lifers , backed by Heritage Foundation money and AFD deper pockets now who will quote the precedent if MF wins.

NatCen 2017 (Fifty years after abortions became legally available, under certain circumstances in Britain)

"Data from the latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey reveals widespread support for allowing abortions in a number of different circumstances. There is near unanimous support (93%) for abortions when the woman’s health is endangered, while clear majorities support it if the woman does not want the child (70%) or if the couple cannot afford any more children (65%).

Public acceptance of abortions has grown over the past decade. Since 2005 support for allowing an abortion if the woman does not wish to have the child has increased from 60% to 70%. Over the same time period support for allowing an abortion if the couple can’t afford more children increased from 51% to 65%. Looking longer term there have been further increases since the early 1980s, when only a minority supported abortions if the woman did not wish to have the child (37%).
www.natcen.ac.uk/blog/british-attitudes-to-abortion

Women are not routinely abused in the workplace for their views on abortion

One of the concerns in the evidence MF's QC gave was that some religions believed that biological sex was immutable also to support her rights

Concerns? 🤔

Let's rewind, as I could see this 'ah ha! all GC people are religious right' stuff coming down the track as soon as it was said...

Karon Monaghan QC, representing the EHRC, (the official body charged with interpreting the Equality Act 2010 and who have not been doing a good enough job, hence Ann Sinnott's case) was using the evidence of the wording of the very Equality Act itself to say that belief in the 'immutability of sex' is already a protected belief in its own words. It's in the 2010 Act.

From the EHRC submission:
"Further, the EA 2010 itself
recognises that a religious belief that sex is immutable is a protected belief.
Thus, Sch 3, para 24 provides that it is not unlawful gender reassignment
discrimination for a person approving or solemnising a marriage under
religious rites to refuse to do so if they believe that a person’s gender has been
acquired under a Gender Recognition Certificate (corresponding provision is
made in s.5B of the Marriage Act 1949); that is, because they hold a religious
belief that sex is immutable. There can be no justifiable basis in law for
distinguishing between religious or philosophical beliefs..."

The reason that 'religions' hold the belief that our Sex is immutable is because it is immutable. Settled science. Pretty much most of the world believes it too. The sky is blue, grass is green, so I agree with Trump on one thing etc.

The reason that it is included in the Equality Act is not because surprise, only some oddball religious people think sex is immutable. No. It is because of the prohibition in various religions to religious marriage of same-sex couples.

A male person and a male person who identifies as a woman approach a Catholic priest to get married in church. UK law says even if the transwoman has a GRC so is legally female, the priest is not forced to approve or solemnise the marriage against the priest's conscience or their beliefs. If the priest refuses, this is not discrimination against the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

Yes, it would be an incredibly uncomfortable conversation. Yes, feelings might be very hurt. Yes, you personally might believe that it is offensive to prevent people marrying in a religious ceremony based on their same sex orientation. The religious belief that same-sex religious marriage should be prohibited is still protected.

The Equality Act in this section shows us

1. that Sex is immutable (this, even according to the Act, is still two males marrying no matter the alterations to body, dress or legal status hence religious objection is legitimate and not discrimination)
2. that the word Sex as used in the Act is about biological sex and not the social role of women and girls as the original article authors, neither of whom have a GRC, might like to believe and 3) Sex takes primacy over Gender reassignment (even though a male may have a GRC that says they are 'female', they can still be treated as the male they are in certain limited circumstances) hence the exceptions in the Equality Act - and in the GRA - for single sex spaces etc

I think it is a superb point by Karon Monaghan...

The reason that 'religions' hold the belief that our Sex is immutable is because it is immutable. Settled science. Pretty much most of the world believes it too. The sky is blue, grass is green, so I agree with Trump on one thing etc.

Project Nettie: scientists supporting biological sex
Sexual reproduction, the generation of offspring by fusion of genetic material from two different individuals, evolved over 1 billion years ago. It is the reproductive strategy of all higher animals and plants, including the mammalian class to which humans belong. Humans can be differentiated into two categories by their reproductive roles. Females make eggs and gestate live young. Males generate sperm to fertilise the female egg. In accordance with their respective roles, females and males have different reproductive anatomies (“biological sex”). No other reproductive mechanism exists in humans.

What is Project Nettie? Project Nettie is an online and regularly updated record of scientists, medics and those in related disciplines who, by signing their support for the Project Nettie statement (below), assert the material reality of biological sex and reject attempts to reframe it as a malleable social construct.

What is the aim of Project Nettie? The aim is to simply reassert the definition of biological sex. We do not extend our claims regarding biological sex beyond the scientific fact of biological sex. We do not feed into any political ideology.

Why ‘Project Nettie’? Sex chromosomes were, in 1905, discovered by a female geneticist called Nettie Stevens. We hope, in some small way, to honour her achievements. (continues)
projectnettie.wordpress.com/