Maya Forstater hearing starts Monday

[MForstater]

Hi all,

Thank you so much for all your support: emotional, intellectual, financial, spiritual(!) reading the Mumsnet feminism board is where this all started for me!

The case starts tomorrow.

It is all online. If you want to watch you need to email the tribunal for a log in to [email protected]

It kicks off at 10am - the first bit will be "admin" between the judges and the lawyers working out the timings, issues and any reporting restrictions .

Once that is all sorted the judge and the panel will go away to read (probably for the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday)

I will most likely give evidence Wednesday and Thursday.

@tribunaltweets will be tweeting the whole thing (assuming they get permission from the judge)

Links to papers will go up throughout the case at www.hiyamaya.net.

Any other questions I am happy to answer them (apart from the ones where I have to say "that is for the tribunal to hear"...)

I have made a spectators guide with FAQs etc here

Lots of love

Maya

BC: Does CGD have a position that sex and gender identity are the same thing?

LE: Internally yes. I can't speak about externally.

How is this not massively transphobic? People cannot have a gender identity that's different from their sex? Their sex is their gender?
Gobsmacked here that they would say this!

Additionally, they could get by (squeakily) by arguing LE finds her belief offensive but they didn't act on that feeling; they acted, instead, solely because of her expression. But really, since he doesn't seem to have understood her beliefs at the time, I can't see how they would get away with that.

It's perfectly "consistent" if you view gender identity as fixed and sex as mutable.

So many people -men- ‘offended’ by material reality and objectivity. It’s just exposes them as being deeply controlling and domineering.

LE: I think "a man's internal feelings have no basis in material reality" is offensive.

I still can't get over this!

Good Luck Maya!! xx

Well, I got "There's nothing in this but it's a trick to rattle a witness to soften up for the next round of examination" wrong. But I'm yet to see where this is going beyond signalling to the panel that CGD's evidence isn't wholly reliable because they didn't check what they stated to be true.

Ahh, it appears more to be that CGD were changing what they did and what they said based upon how to position themselves to best deal with a coming legal challenge.

I think this is relevant to victimisation.

In other words, CGD in some circumstances prioritised their position for the court case over strictly adhering to being truthful.

This looks like what happens when you hire people who don't really understand what you're asking them to do.

Well, also that they specifically changed their policy in order to victimise MF by removing her former association with them from their site, then they lied about it.

LE doesn't seem to understand very much according to his evidence so far and made a fair few assumptions (without checking aforementioned assumptions)

I'll be very interested to hear what his superiors have to say in response to the same questions.

He's VP of Operations, not just HR. Interesting.

Yes, I was wondering who the other witnesses are going to be.

I think Masood Ahmed and Amanda Glassman are on the list.

And Mark Plant

Thanks. Should be some more very interesting viewing coming up.

@tabbycatstripy

Well, also that they specifically changed their policy in order to victimise MF by removing her former association with them from their site, then they lied about it.

That’s my understanding.

Normal practice when a fellow left was to update their “fellow” page to an “alumni” page.

Rather than doing that, they just deleted Maya’s profile following a Sunday Times piece about the case. They then changed the policy, removed all the alumna profiles, and said that that had been the policy all along, Maya or no Maya. Unfortunately, the timeline suggests that was a lie, not a “misunderstanding”.

A drawn out section about corporate structures and the ways in which management, finances, and decision making takes place.

'Unfortunately, the timeline suggests that was a lie, not a “misunderstanding”.'

Yes, it looks like one. But his point that they did this to manage reputational risk going forward isn't a bad one.

But his point that they did this to manage reputational risk going forward isn't a bad one

I guess so. Certainly they were as keen as can be to distance themselves. But that notwithstanding, again we’re back to - why is Maya so especially dangerous that she merited this special treatment?

Just finished reading Maya's statement. Seeing it all presented there in black and white is really shocking. Maya, I'm so sorry that happened to you.

One thing that stood out to me was the gradual shift in CGD's institutional stance. At the beginning of Maya's employment, it is clear that CGD fellows and employees are not expected to agree with CGD on everything - and that there are many areas where CGD does not take a formal policy position.

By the time they are deciding whether to renew her fellowship for a third time Maya is being asked to recognise that her views don't align with the CGD position. Somewhere in the middle, Maya's boss even comments on the discrepancy between how Maya's views about gender identity are treated and the response to other senior employees debating manels.

I'll be really interested to see Masood Ahmed's evidence. He seems to be the person who ended up taking (or at least taking responsibility for) the decisions to not continue with her contract. And to have been involved in email threads with other senior colleagues about the reasoning behind that.

Yes. Because they rejected her beliefs as being comparable with racial extermination without understanding them or considering their legality. And this is because they are fundamentalist in their own institutional belief.

IaNAL but I find it odd how much about the views being discussed LE "didn't understand". I'm sure many people would be out of a job if they admitted they didn't understand what was going on (but made policy decisions on it anyway)?