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

@tabbycatstripy

'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.

Can you claim reputational damage over a perfectly legally accepted, and protected, belief? Especially held by a person you employ, where you have made it quite clear that you disagree with them?

Reading through Maya's submission makes it clear that many of them - especially in the US office - simply didn't understand (or didn't want to understand) the nuances of the whole thing.

Well, Luke Easley today has been adding weight to that part of MF's case.

Mark Plant will also be interesting - he's the one who told Maya (more than once) that she was no longer being considered for employment "because of your tweets".

Is there any way that he or other witnesses can argue that he didn't say this or that he misunderstood decisions made by more senior employees?

IANAL but given that

• Maya's beliefs have been established as protected,
• there are emails stating that she did not breach any of CGDs internal policies about harassment (right up until the point she no longer worked for them),
• she was told that she was not being considered for employment because of her tweets,

I don't think this looks good for CGD. It is plausible they could make the argument that her views were so controversial and inflammatory that they needed to distance themselves from her to avoid reputational damage that could impact future funding - but I don't really see that argument being made at the time ...

'Can you claim reputational damage over a perfectly legally accepted, and protected, belief? Especially held by a person you employ, where you have made it quite clear that you disagree with them?'

I'm not sure. It might depend on what you do, i.e. whether it would make your core business too difficult to pursue? So let's say the organisation was a trans charity. Would they be within their rights to say they couldn't carry on with core business activities with someone who expressed a disbelief in the existence of 'trans people'?

They might. I just don't know. And I think they will try to argue (CGD) that their fundraising would have been significantly impacted by keeping MF on.

Is this long section for BC to substantiate MF's position as an employee of CGD, particularly CDG Europe, a limited company located in London?

Yes, I think so.

Someone needs to take LE aside after this and give him a big mug of hot chocolate. He doesn't know anything.

There's an awful lot of questions in relation to employment status that LE doesn't know. I wonder if this will go in Maya's favour?

It is plausible they could make the argument that her views were so controversial and inflammatory that they needed to distance themselves from her to avoid reputational damage that could impact future funding - but I don't really see that argument being made at the time ...

I think that this part of the 'claimants opening bundle' refers to this..

Third, and more generally, where concerns or complaints by third parties (be they employees, customers, or others) are themselves discriminatory, an employer cannot escape liability by asserting that it was the fact of those concerns / complains and not the protected characteristic itself which was the reason for the treatment in question. In those circumstances, reliance on such concerns / complaints is indissociable from the reasons for those concerns / complaints themselves, in the well-established sense that the proscribed ground is inherent in the ostensible criterion and the fact that the employer’s motive may be to please or pacify his customers or staff is irrelevant (see paragraph 90.3 above). Thus, an employer who panders to his customers’ or employees’ prejudices by not employing, say, black people or gay people cannot escape liability by saying that he was only seeking to keep his customers or staff happy. (refers to relevant cases)

The onus is on BC to show that she was employed, I think.

Good luck! We are all behind you. Thank you for what you are doing for women and your bravery.

@tabbycatstripy

'Can you claim reputational damage over a perfectly legally accepted, and protected, belief? Especially held by a person you employ, where you have made it quite clear that you disagree with them?'

I'm not sure. It might depend on what you do, i.e. whether it would make your core business too difficult to pursue? So let's say the organisation was a trans charity. Would they be within their rights to say they couldn't carry on with core business activities with someone who expressed a disbelief in the existence of 'trans people'?

They might. I just don't know. And I think they will try to argue (CGD) that their fundraising would have been significantly impacted by keeping MF on.

Got it. Thank you, that makes sense.

And yes, I can see that if it was a company devoted to the issue.

But Isn't CGD a think tank about international tax implications?

I guess I'm trying to get my head around the fact that if a company has nothing to do with the issue, but simply wants to adhere to a certain belief system, would they have legal standing for employing on that basis? That just sounds discriminatory to me.

Do we all now have to declare our belief in all sorts of philosophical issues in order to see whether or not we are aligned with our company.

Surely that's compelled belief.

Just thinking aloud here.

And EJ Glennie as well. He needs a big pizza and a bottomless glass of coke. He has to listen to LE saying 'I don't know' 18,000 times.

'I guess I'm trying to get my head around the fact that if a company has nothing to do with the issue, but simply wants to adhere to a certain belief system, would they have legal standing for employing on that basis? That just sounds discriminatory to me.'

I agree. I think their argument is poor. It's as you say, if their argument was that most of their funding comes from the Islamic community and therefore it's fine to make their female employees wear hijab, they wouldn't win.

Thank you tabbycatstripy. There are so many rabbit holes to negotiate to try to get one's head around the law in this respect.

On the other hand, I can't fucking believe that in 2022, we are sitting here trying to defend a woman for saying that sex matters as men and women are different.

It's literally insane. And a massive, debilitating attack on women and their rights to equality.

Thanks yourhairiswinterfire - that would indeed seem to be relevant

'It's literally insane. And a massive, debilitating attack on women and their rights to equality.'

Couldn't agree more. To have to defend it as if the opposing argument has any merit is ludicrous.

Watch your tone being directed at women in 2022 fucking infuriates me.

Fuck OFF.

(I realise that is not a very helpful contribution to the thread, apologies but I wanted to get it off my chest. Tone, FFS. It's not bad enough that our language is policed and censored in a sinister Newspeak style, we have to be nice when we are allowed to speak. Or the old favourite be kind....)

I'm also interested in the double standards around different protected characteristics.

It was apparently fine for someone in the London office to argue that male infant circumcision, including for religious reasons, should be considered a form of child abuse. I should think that would be pretty offensive to some Muslim and Jewish employees. But presumably they were expected to take part in a robust discussion about this and defend their viewpoint, rather than to silence the opposing view. However, when it comes to discussing gender identity, it seems that Maya was expected to silence herself in case she offended someone.

I think it's definitely worth considering differences in American and European office culture here. I worked briefly in the American office of a big US company and there was definitely a much stronger expectation that you did not discuss sensitive issues - particularly politics and religion - at work. In some UK work contexts, "agree to disagree" often involves discussion of the issue in question without damaging the working relationship. But in (some) US contexts it means "we don't discuss this issue because we will disagree." I get the impression senior CGD staff applied US workplace norms to a UK context - and then demanded Maya's termination without even being aware of differences in employment law.

It will be really frustrating if this all comes down to a technicality about whether Maya was employed by CGD or not!

Well, it's nothing to do with tone really, is it? Very clear from today's evidence that the position of sex = gender is CGD's position and that at least one senior person who contributed to this decision-making process believes a clear and neutral statement to the contrary is offensive.

Tone is an interesting one. I'm sure many men do not have the smallest clue that they are just the latest in a loong and predictable line of other men who like to police women's tone.

They can't find fault with the wording, so they go for the way it is said. Not polite enough, not compliant enough, not deferential enough.

Some men just have a visceral reaction to women being even mildly assertive.

And the most telling part is the use of the word tone makes it immediately obvious.

I imagine Luke will be having a very stiff drink right now

Think about what sex = gender identity means. It means that if a male person develops a "female gender identity" then this means that their sex changes to female, with nothing to do with medical procedures and nothing to do with any kind of gender recognition act. It means that if someone "really" has a "fluid gender identity" then over the course of time their actual sex can wander about following where their "gender identity" goes.

I've used quotation marks for "gender identity" because no one really seems to know what it's supposed to mean. My go at a definition would be the degree to which someone's personality has (it is claimed) feminine and/or masculine characteristics. With that being an absolute determinant of their sex.

'It was apparently fine for someone in the London office to argue that male infant circumcision, including for religious reasons, should be considered a form of child abuse. I should think that would be pretty offensive to some Muslim and Jewish employees.'

I just don't understand how you can debate policy without the risk of offence. Some people do think circumcision is CA. If you don't let them say it, you're saying the rights and wrongs of altering a child's genitals (whether rightly or wrongly) soon after birth can never be debated because someone might get offended. That can't be right.