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

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?

Yes. Yes they are. It's always reminded me of Puritanism, sex is a dirty word.

@tabbycatstripy

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.

Yes I agree. 'New' should probably be in inverted commas.

I have cheekily made a new thread here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4505825-Maya-Forstater-Tribunal-March-2022-Thread-2

Hope that link’s ok.

I've got R.E.M as an earworm now!

Thanks @Sophoclesthefox

AG is Meryl out of The Truman Show, isn't she?

@tabbycatstripy

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.

Yes - there's that obsession with "genital inspections" that's repeatedly thrown at women by men wanting access to women's spaces - much transference there I always think.

And thank you to everyone commenting on this thread - it's been fascinating (in an awful way).

Unless these people have been coached to respond in these equivocal ways, I'm beginning to wonder about the leadership and governance of an organisation that attracts major funding.

@MrsOvertonsWindow

And thank you to everyone commenting on this thread - it's been fascinating (in an awful way).

Yes. Thank you especially to @tabbycatstripy for the transcribing.

"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."

A particularly 'puritan', neo Calvinist view of the body, to be precise. It's the 'body needs to be purified to purify the soul' outlook (ooh, look, we're back to souls again!). It is not the 'I will praise you because I have been fearfully and wonderfully made,' line of Christian thought.

We're potentially looking at a 'perfect storm' here - because we may be in a situation where a Christian line of thought that can easily go toxic (hatred of a 'sinful' body) has been taken out of its Christian context. So there's none of the 'feedback' normally available to stop the purity cycle.

One of the things that I've noticed about the activist movement is that they seem to have completely junked any idea of forgiveness, or that people might all be sinful in some way. They seem to be in a post-Calvinist version of the 'Elect' (who are 'saved') and the Not Elect (for whom Hell awaits) - and there's no way, as in really bad Calvinism, to move from one group to the other, except by the discovery that you're not really 'Elect' at all.

When that happens things can get very bad, very quickly.

Good luck Maya!

One of the things that I've noticed about the activist movement is that they seem to have completely junked any idea of forgiveness, or that people might all be sinful in some way. They seem to be in a post-Calvinist version of the 'Elect' (who are 'saved') and the Not Elect (for whom Hell awaits) - and there's no way, as in really bad Calvinism, to move from one group to the other, except by the discovery that you're not really 'Elect' at all.

It really is shunning for modern times by those who believe themselves to have the inside track on knowledge and morality.

Good luck Maya. You're amazing facing this head on xx

Following this has been fascinating and horrifying.

Unless these people have been coached to respond in these equivocal ways, I'm beginning to wonder about the leadership and governance of an organisation that attracts major funding.

This has been puzzling me too. For most of the twentieth century the dollar was king, from cigarette companies to oil extractors. Ideology was for lovers; "you don't like my principles? Here I have other ones" kind of thing.

So for CDG to risk losing contracts and funding, not to mention messing up their reputation, at the hands of the inflexible gender ideologues is quite remarkable

Losers. Not Lovers. Bloody autocarrot

Someone mentioned a transcript... Where can that be found?

Here’s the unrolled thread from @tribunaltweets

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1503730643653611525.html

And here’s the link to the new thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4505825-Maya-Forstater-Tribunal-March-2022-Thread-2

It doesn't exist, unless someone's done a bootleg version which would be a bad idea since that would require a spectator to have recorded the proceedings which is not permitted. It might be that once the proceedings have finished, a party to the proceedings could request that a transcript be created, assuming the proceedings have been recorded, and to pay for this to be done. Not cheap but inexpensive when compared to how much running the case will have cost.

This is my understanding, I might be wrong.

Just catching up - surely whether or not Maya was an employee is irrelevant. It seems that she was told she would not be given another contract because of her tweets (forthcoming on the stand I think). So she has been discriminated against for her protected belief.

Been following with all day. Thanks everyone for the coverage. Maya you have gone through so much, this is all shocking, unbelievable stuff. You can do it. Keep 'er lit!

Oops, posted in error, this is the start of todays tweets (I hope!)

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1503669176946286592.html

The last 20 pages have been a hell of a ride.

Thanks to tabby for transcribing and all the extremely clever women adding relevant and funny titbits

See you on the next thread.