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

'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.

Transubstantiation. For centuries Catholics have recited the words and claimed the belief. Very few of them actually believe something changes physical substance magically in the hands of the priest, or that they are literally cannibalising Christ.

This is old, old, old stuff, the witch burning and heresy is bloody ancient. Less progressive, more Tudor with less syphilis. Bloody Mary and Elizabeth 1st at this point would be able to explain that enforced belief doesn't work and eventually the only way forwards is mutual tolerance.

I feel that the gender identity- sex relationship isn't being expressed quite clearly as it needs to be. As I understand the CGD brand of trans activist, it's not merely that they correspond, but that they believe that one's sex is determined according to one's gender identity, and that if one had a fluid gender identity then one's sex would wander around following wherever the gender identity goes.

BC: At 937 we see, part of the SV thread which introduces the a graph with a blue side and pink side and bimodal distribution that we see, then... So, first point is that yet again, the bit you are objecting to is the claimant responding to points in this debate.

AG: She's interacting on Twitter with people discussing the biological traits of the sexes.

BC: She says, no really, this is nonsense on stilts. Twitter is pretty direct during debates. That's the nature of debate on Twitter.

AG: Not universlaly.

BC: There is nothing remotely out of character for mainstream normal use of Twitter.

AG: Perhaps, but it's ridiculing the opposite view.

BC: ANd rightly so, because MF says, what are these axes supposed to represent, in relation to a pink and blue camel humped graph.

AG: I see that is the next tweet.

BC: You understand bimodal distribution means it's just a graph of a distribution of characteristics which may overlap even where you have two distinct categories yes?

AG: I don't know, but this tweet is a joke.

BC: The point is being made to MF, here is a graph that shows sex is a spectrum because there is some overlap.

AG: Yes.

BC: If you have a group of animals comprising cats and rabbits, and you measure their length and plot them on a graph, and you measure their length, you will get a bimodal distribution.

AG: I'm not sure. The point is that when someone is working on tax and you see a bimodal distribution of genitals, you're surprised.

BC: Do you understand the point is right? If you had a group of animals and plot their lengths, you will get a bimodal distribution, and the peaks will be rabbits are smaller.

AG: Perhaps.

BC: If you are a statistician, you ask am I looking at two populations here?

AG Yes.

BC: So the claimant is quite ridiculing bad science. Might be other reasons to explore these issues, but that is a bad argument.

AG: She argues that.

BC: And she's right, isn't she?

AG: I am not very deep into these discussions. I cannot judge. Let's stop there.

BCL She then makes a further point, saying here's a characteristic where, if you plot it, it's not an impartial distribution, it's massively bimodal. (think this means sex?) - All perfectly proper debate on Twitter.

AG: It is a debate on Twitter.

BC: CGD does not say you must confine your Twitter comments to international development and must not engage in humorous interaction on any other subjects.

AG: No, but there is a quantity that suggests it is not an occasional joke. It's a big part of the activities that are being done. It's a sign of that.

BC: People have interests outside CGD. It was common practice for people to use the same Twitter handle?

AG: Some did, yes.

BC: There was no way the claimant could have thought CGD would censor what she could say on Twitter.

AG: Correct and we did not intend on doing so.

Adjourned!

Adjourned till tomorrow.

Fascinating. What she was saying was transphobic and offensive but Amanda Glassman did not understand it. She thought serious discussion of statistics - because it talked about genitals and bodies - was mockery.

Is this the US?

If anyone is wondering about the relevance of the lengths of cats and rabbits:
twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1478366851730227204?t=-9OWE2mB_CuTWrWV-r5fBA&s=19

How do we think this has gone so far? Are we being biased in thinking that they look like a shit show?

The doggit

They are definitely a shit show. The questions for me are 1) Was she employed or did she have a reasonable anticipation of being employed? 2) Did they have a right to balance the feelings of team members against her protected beliefs? 3) Did any of her communications actually break the norms of the office, in any objectively reasonable way (compared to how other topics were dealt with)?

It's because the worst result for CGD would be them being perceived by their activist staff as having tolerated transphobia. They view this shitshow of the court cases as less important than signalling their virtue. This is where DE&I indoctrination takes a captured organisation.

omg - AG actually appears to work with data too CGDlink

so she should have understood

The bimodality discussion was interesting. They've adjourned after AG admitted that CGD did not ask staff to censor what they said on social media and, I think I heard 'wouldn't do so'.

The doggit

I laughed out loud at seeing Ben Cooper QC bring in the doggit into this case! littlbrowndog But it is very apt as a comparator. I am sure FondofBeetles will be well chuffed.

Cats and rabbits and weasels, oh my!

We’re going to need a new thread soon.

Should it have the word Weasley in the title?

@drwitch

omg - AG actually appears to work with data too CGDlink

so she should have understood

From that link, did AG really edit/ co-author the following: The Health of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (World Bank 2001).

• or was it in fact The Health of Women and Men in Latin America and the Caribbean (World Bank 2001)? - given that clearly she does not believe in the concept of women as a distinct category that men cannot identify into.

I took a call in the middle of things this afternoon from an American acquaintance of mine and explained why I haven't got any work done today. She's lived here for 35 years, married to a Brit. She just said 'Oh, this is going to be the end of America if they can't get a grip.'

This has been absolutely astonishing today. Upthread, someone said the worst result would be MF losing the case, and I agree that would be absolutely gutting, but even then, we'd still have the transcripts of evidence which lay bare the reality-denying nature of GI, and evidence of the lengths to which GI advocates will go (e.g. creating a deliberately vague report because they are scared of debate) to defend it.

I am in awe of Maya's bravery and resilience, as well as BC's skill.

I think we're starting to see the psychology of it. AG seems to think, even if MF is right, it's still transphobia. She doesn't want to 'get into' the nature of sex, since talking about biological bodies of trans people = transphobia.

So sex must be subordinated to gender in all circumstances. Apparently.

Let's stop there

is that her very own Jackie Weaver moment?

Sorry sweetie, but you aren't in charge here 😊

She actually said that. It was like listening to someone from the 1950s. There was a visceral distaste for the body somewhere in there. Are they Puritans in disguise?

They seem to recoil away from even thinking about what the other side might think, almost in the way that someone will have a contamination phobia. A narrow set of unchallengeable beliefs and ignorance of all else is the route to virtue.

@tabbycatstripy

I think we're starting to see the psychology of it. AG seems to think, even if MF is right, it's still transphobia. She doesn't want to 'get into' the nature of sex, since talking about biological bodies of trans people = transphobia.

So sex must be subordinated to gender in all circumstances. Apparently.

All of it laid bare just speaks to how much of a new religiosity it all is.

But it also interacts with the 'old' religion in quite fascinating ways. Disgust for the human body is old. The desire for transcendence over the body is old. A prurience about talking about genitals is old. These are all Christian concepts bleeding through.