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

I can't read Twitter - has anything happened today?

They've made a reporting order on names and emails of certain individuals. That took all day to decide.

*restricted reporting order

Cripes. Thanks, Signal.

IMPORTANT UPDATE

The first day of the tribunal was taken up by a late application by CGD for a Restricted Reporting Order.

The order that was granted by the Tribunal was that the names (and email addresses) of the four individuals who made complaints about me internally should not be published during the course of the hearing, and up to the time when the judgment is handed down (the Tribunal may then decide to continue or change the Order).

The reason given for this is that it undermines their reasonable expectation of privacy at the time that they made these complaints internally. (There was some mention of mean comments on Mumsnet by the respondents).

Their names and email addresses will be redacted from all public versions of the bundle, witness statements and evidence that are made available during the hearing.

However their job titles and roles will not be redacted, and may be reported, as they are relevant to the narrative.

Their names may be used by the witnesses in giving live evidence and the lawyers in cross examination, but where this happens these should not be reported in live tweets etc.

Therefore if you obtain a log-in and watch the tribunal you will be informed by the Clerk to the Tribunal which names you must not publish or report.

If from following the evidence and/or live tweets etc you work out the names of any of the four people covered by the Reporting Restrictions you must not publish this information.

IT IS A SUMMARY CRIMINAL OFFENCE TO PUBLISH THIS INFORMATION - PUNISHABLE BY A FINE OF UP TO £5,000

Thank you, Maya, for this clear explanation. I wish you all the very best for today.

All the very best!

Thanks, Maya. All the best for today.

Good luck, Maya. Whatever happens in this tribunal, when history writes the book on the gender shit show, your brave pursuit of your employment rights, and the right to talk about your beliefs and have them respected, will be the moment that turned the tide.

Good luck Maya, and thank you for all you're doing for us.

You were great on Woman's Hour!

Maya is doing brilliantly. She must be exhausted!

Questioning is extremely hostile this afternoon - they've accused Maya of not answering questions when she's been clarifying her stance.
Also of saying men are a risk to children when she is talking about safeguarding.

Thank you Maya.

Just been reading through the tweets, I'm really hoping that the counsel for Maya's former employers has been unfortunately paraphrased or misquoted:

MF: I said I don't have a gender identity and we had a discussion in the women's group because being a woman getting pregnant, menopause, vulnerable to rape are not an identities they're material reality of women's lives

OD: in a workplace setting there's no risk of rape or sexual harassment you're being asked to respect differences to birth gender

My goodness, that's going to come as a big surprise to many employees who have indeed experienced those very things at work.

So confusing, birth gender cannot exist as gender is fluid. No one can know what gender someone is until they have the word described to them as gender is selected by an individual.

OMG so there's no risk of rape or sexual harassment at work !
I'm sure that will come as a great surprise to many women, myself included

@dolorsit

Just been reading through the tweets, I'm really hoping that the counsel for Maya's former employers has been unfortunately paraphrased or misquoted:

MF: I said I don't have a gender identity and we had a discussion in the women's group because being a woman getting pregnant, menopause, vulnerable to rape are not an identities they're material reality of women's lives

OD: in a workplace setting there's no risk of rape or sexual harassment you're being asked to respect differences to birth gender

That's pretty much what was said.

If sex work is work, trafficked women experience rape in the workplace?

in a workplace setting there's no risk of rape or sexual harassment you're being asked to respect differences to birth gender

I must have imagined all those times I was sexually harassed in the workplace, including the time when I was in my early 20s and my assistant manager caught a man on the security camera fingering himself just before he was about to hand me coins from his pocket. He swept in and told me to go and make a cup of tea, which I was annoyed about until he told me why.

Counsel for the respondent was came across as condescending (I don't know if this is just part of the theatre or if that's just her manner) especially when they got onto sex v gender. She was trying to make out that Maya's beliefs were awful but Maya stayed super calm and came across very measured and reasonable. Maya was clearly annoying the barrister with her answers at which point she was accused of not answering the question. It was a bit like the Woman's hour interview where Maya refused to talk in terms of gender identity. I think the thing is when you discuss sex v gender with someone who believes in gender identity the answers that you give will never satisfy.

Or the time when I went under the table at a dinner to get my purse and the director, my line manager, sniggered "while you're down there".

I think the thing is when you discuss sex v gender with someone who believes in gender identity the answers that you give will never satisfy.

That's it, isn't it. They know you don't believe it.

This barrister must surely know that during this interminable process for Maya it has been decreed that nobody has to believe in gender ideology. The belief that nobody can change sex is now explicitly protected in law, thanks to Maya.

After it's been established that she has a right to not believe in gender identity, it doesn't seem like a good approach for her former employer to complain about her not believing in gender identity.

Do they remember they're supposed to be demonstrating she wasn't fired for not believing in gender identity?