Maya Forstater Tribunal March 2022- Thread 2

[Sophoclesthefox]

Forgive the presumption, @Mforstater, but you’re probably busy in the pub right now, or passing on all of the fan mail to you legal team so I’ve made a new thread to carry on the fascinating discussion.

Round up your cats, rabbits and weasels, and let’s go!

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From thread one, here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4498167-Maya-Forstater-hearing-starts-Monday

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 hmm.

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

How many more days of witness evidence are there? I have held out so far but now I want to watch some!

@tabbycatstripy

AG says she was sharing something she had seen that was relevant, for discussion. But not with the intent to 'educate' MF out of her beliefs.

Yet didn't Easily Misled say yesterday that anything MF sent was trying to educate him, was proselitysing?

AG: Huang referred to as a DC Representative.

This is a good response to undermine the argument that Huang appointed to be neutral.

BC reiterates that AG didn't chip in to stop people who had been organising opposition to MF being part of the process against her, and AG says no, she didn't (and laughs) because she was trying to stay out of the whole thing.

But why shouldn't the image be an aggressive one? It's about protection against something being snatched away by an oppressor.

Or is it because, as women, we're suppose to #bekind?

Yes, Samphire. When you're horribly biased that's what happens! Your side is 'educating' and the other side is 'proselytising'. You are 'inclusive' of everyone by ostracising someone at work...

Is miss Mckenzie from quantum?

www.cgdev.org/staff/ellen-mackenzie

Now talking about funding. BC says the arguments about fundraising are a retrospective reconstruction by AG. BC says that, although AG made no records of her thoughts at the time, and didn't voice them, when she came to write her statement 3 years later, she was able to recall with specificity, what she was thinking. Not credible. AG disagrees and says it's reality. (Material reality?)

The campaign leaflet could have used a "STOP" kind of hand graphic, with the fingers held upright instead of reaching, but the point is lots of campaigns aready use that imagery and this was new and meant to stand out and be eye-catching.

It's because of the slightly pointy fingernails that I personally see it as yes a bit sinister but more in a sneaky, witchy kind of way - it's not so much that TW are the ones who will take away our rights but that women's rights are a precarious matter, far from universally established and unshakeable, and if you take your eye off them for a second they'll be picked at and scavenged.

Ben’s playing a blinder, isn’t he?
AC is coming across as disingenuous and wilfully obtuse.

Yes, the FPFW leaflet is clearly suggesting there is danger to women from having their rights removed.

The imagery says to me pinching something whilst the owner isn't paying attention.

@bishophaha

God I wish I was watching this. I assumed the FPFW leaflet was a homage to Saul Bass movie titles. Maybe green, white, violet would've been good colours, I dunno.

yes well the GDC stated last week that a video Maya tweeted was hateful and discriminatory because it uses the colours red and black which are of course the Nazi colours.

They think colours are transphic & nazi dog whistles.

Well on the other side there's a lot that could be said about the choice of baby blue and baby pink as representation. If we're going to go down the road of colour analysis.

I think BC is wrong here about single sex spaces. The idea as I see it is you have a culture in which people shouldn't use the wrong spaces meaning that if someone does, people feel that they are entitled to challenge. As a result those wanting to use the wrong spaces realise they have to police themselves. It's about empowering and instilling responsibility to behave.

Discussing MF's views on manels and single sex spaces. BC says at some point, if you're going to have single sex spaces, you do have to ask about sex. AG admits this. BC points out AG knew there was a law in the UK that did allow single sex spaces. AG did.

BC asks why AG says it's totally unaccpetable and violating of a person's bodily integrity, in any circumstances, to ask if they are biologically male or female.

AG says she interprets it as relating to panels (not toilets), and she was thinking about what she would do as an employer.

BC is suggesting AG is absolutist.

AG says she recognises single sex spaces are the law in the UK.

BC asks how MF therefore crossed the line.

AG doesn't think we can check people's self-identified sex or gender. She again brings this back to CGD's policies.

AG is worried someone is going to say the word penis again...

yes well the GDC stated last week that a video Maya tweeted was hateful and discriminatory because it uses the colours red and black which are of course the Nazi colours.

They'd hate it where I live, the place is full of ladybirds at the moment. So much black and red.

@SpiderVersed

Ben’s playing a blinder, isn’t he? AC is coming across as disingenuous and wilfully obtuse.

To some audiences, AG will be coming across very well as her answers to a question are sometimes literally, "Maybe. Yes. No" so she hasn't tied herself to anything.

AG is smart. She will have been coached on how to present herself. A lot of people will see her as admirably equivocal and not accepting any of BC's points.

Lunch.

Nauticant - that's true, but with regards to manels, there might at some point need to be a challenge, where someone says, 'Hold on, that person is male.' That to AG is completely unacceptable.

The hand the the FPFW leaflet would be much more offensive to those with AG's sensibilities if it was a big, obviously masculine hand. As it is it's a cartoonish representation. Not a visual symbol of any particular group.

AG seems to be saying it's fine to have single sex spaces but not fine to ask anyone to disclose their sex.

@bishophaha

Not only that zeugma but they deliberately and explicitly discouraged getting into discussion with Maya about it because she knows the subject area too well!

Which suggests that CGD are chock-full of bigots, some at very senior levels. Using the 'traditional definition of 'bigot';

a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.

MF's group being GC women or women who believe women are of the female sex.

Rather than the 'modern' definition of 'bigot' which is something like;
An individual who holds a different opinion to me and has apparently researched the subject-in-question at depth

I don't know if CGD are employing some kind of indemnity insurance for this case, but surely the firm providing it have reason to dismiss their claim on the grounds that they were trading in Clownworld, rather than in our universe?