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

Pluvia I think the Gates grant is important because Maya did a lot of work on the grant proposal, which was intended to fund her continued work at CGD. Her expectation was that if their grant application was successful (it was), she would be employed directly by CGD.

By your side here Maya!

Well, BC says 'Gates' as much as he can. I think we all know why.

With regards to the question of employment, there are obviously issues about her status as employee or consultant (as BC puts it), but UK law also protects on the basis of future employment or hiring processes. AG is trying to suggest the work was very much 'on spec', i.e. the funding had not been secured so there was no consideration of MF's future employment status during the course of this process. It seems weak to me, since there is direct discussion in the evidence of whether or not to bring her on, as far as I understand it.

So basically, they applied for a grant in order for Maya to become an employee at CGD - she's named as CGD personnel not a consultant in the application.

However, when the grant came through, she was not made an employee and was initially offered to stay another year as a visiting fellow. (Another person who worked in the same area was made an employee.) ?Mark Plant, her boss in London, said this was because of her tweets. Then, they (not 100% sure who made the decision - possibly Masood Ahmed) refused to even put her name forward to renew her visiting fellowship because the Washington office was expected to kick up a fuss, so she was asked to consider staying on as a consultant but no longer affiliated to CGD (no email etc).

@WallaceinAnderland

Are we still able to access this online. I got a reply to say Blocked Recipient address rejected: Access denied.

Anyone else?

I got chucked out a few minutes ago but have logged back in now. I expect it's to do with the exceptional demand.

Thanks for the updates

Fascinating

@Waitwhat23

I keep interrupting my husband who's working in the next room to say 'you won't believe this!'.

Haha me too!

From the Witness Statement and Argument files posted by Maya I took it that one of the criteria for the funding from the Gates Foundation was that Maya would be included in the project for which the funding was given?

I've not worded that very well.

Is the judge the same one from this UK/US case? Andrew Glennie?

www.theguardian.com/law/2021/feb/17/sfo-unfairly-sacked-prosecutor-after-doj-sabotage-tribunal-finds

Yes, I think he is.

@tabbycatstripy

Yes, I think he is.

Thanks. I guess he has expertise in transatlantic cases then.

@tabbycatstripy

'although she doesn't really believe some men are women, no one does. but she's disgusted by a person who won't pretend.'

I don't know. I think she has genuinely shifted her understanding of the term 'woman' to 'person who thinks they're a woman'. This must have taken decades.

It’s doublethink, innit?

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Orwell nailed this one. Believers know it’s not true, while simultaneously utterly believing it.

'Orwell nailed this one. Believers know it’s not true, while simultaneously utterly believing it.'

Yes. I don't how people manage this. It causes me huge cognitive distress to tell lies. I worry that I can't actually 'do' pronouns if asked because I would find it genuinely hard to do it without upset.

I wonder who took on the work on the project that Maya was supposed to do? If the work went ahead, with someone else, would that have any bearing on her claim of being denied future work?

@Datun

Was there an alternative for CDG not to have gone to a tribunal at all? Having their dirty linen aired in public like this looks bad.

Could they have settled out of court, or whatever they call it for this kind of dispute? Or is that not an option?

They're just making themselves look dodgy.

They could offer, but couldn't force Maya to accept.

BC: Striking that so many of the senior people who are giving evidence now have done some sort of the review of the tweets, but have initially missed all of the tweets that were transphobic, inappropriate and bigoted. That's your view as well, is it?

:)

AG has been holding up well but she's faltering over BC's question of why at one point MF's tweets were not a problem and then later on they did become a massive problem.

🤣🤣 cracker that one

Why are they mentioning Gates so much?

BC: You didn't think she was misgendering, as Mr Easley puts it?

AG: Not in the top tweet in that thread, no.

BC: ANy others you remember seeing?

AG: I saw the exchange with Alice Evans and some others about what is a woman... those kinds of things. It seems to me that those things are inappropriate, but okay, people do that.

BC: You think the graphs were particularly problematic?

AG: Yes.

BC: Mr Ahmed liked one of those didn't he?

AG: That was an accident.

BC: We know that Mr Ahmed looked at that, didn't we? But he says at p.993 that he didn't do a focused enough review to take a view on what the debate was about?

AG: Yes.

BC: Am I right in understanding that the graphs bit is obviously problematic?

AG: It was not at that time but later it did seem problematic.

BC: Why the graph?

AG: First that it starts with dismissive... To believe that transwomen are biologically born men. Do you have the tweet?

BC: p.936

AG: For me the big picture is that I'm thinking she's a tax expert, I see lots about what is a woman etc. (fine) and then, in the tweet - which is that - it's the 20 Sept 2018, 'human beings, as with other primates...' It's mocking ha ha. No biological... I just think it's mocking. And it's a graph.

@Scorchedterf

Why are they mentioning Gates so much?

Major funder. Funder of the project that MF was due to work on.

BC: There is nothing from any funder complaining?
AG: no
BC: Nobody said they'd review funding
AG: no
BC: Nobody did review / remove funding
AG: not that I know of
BC: that is weaselly. NObody did, did they
AG: Well there have been funding changes

Weaselly! Arf.

But all of this “funders won’t fund us if we keep her” is clearly confected nonsense.

Just catching up with this. Wow.

Thanks Maya for putting yourself through this. What madness.

BC objecting to the interruption from OD. She was quoting some words. She doesn't need help.

AG: Please repeat the question.

BC: The context is that someone called Josh Dean participates, citing something called ScienceVet as supporting the view that sex is a spectrum that coincides with GI. So first, the context is that there is a debate going on about whether sex is biological and different from GI, or as this argues, GI is also biological and coincides with sex. Yes?

AG: Yes.

BC: You understand that that's the issue?

AG: Yes.