Forstater judgment tomorrow

[achillestoes]

In case we hadn’t had enough drama.

Good luck, Maya.

I don't think it's a given that orgs are wising up to Stonewall et al & will be sceptical about advice given to them by ED&I orgs with the same agendas. It will take the collective efforts of women to watch their own employers policies to pick up on where their rights are being stamped on etc.

I think this whole 'battle' is going to continue indefinitely with women needing to be continually vigilant. Because this won't stop.

Agreed. Constant vigilance and organisation into women's groups—actual single sex groups in workplaces, organisations etc. that must be consulted.

Ditto: I'd like to see disability advisory groups that can comment on needs and intersecting rights.

Ditto: cultural competence groups that can be consulted and comment on whether people object to an organisation decorating for Christmas/Diwali or such.

It's sounds very like we're being boring and advocating for parity of esteem rather than the creation of sacred castes.

Absolutely, Embarrassing - well said.

Please can anyone tell me when the Allison Bailey judgement is going to be? thanks

It happened already. She won. Scroll back a few pages for the detail.

Sorry I misread this question... Ignore me!

It’s going to be several months. There is a huge amount of evidence and it will take time to assess it all.

The most recent Maya Forstater decision was written up in today's The Times:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/forstater-discrimination-ruling-will-have-profound-effect-p983kfflx (You can find an archived version if you do a bit of searching.)

It was generally reasonable until the very strange final paragraph:

Over time, with further scientific developments and a significant shift in public opinion, the ruling could be overturned by a higher court or parliamentary legislation. But in the meantime this case is of significant legal importance, particularly for employers and service providers who need to consider carefully where they put parameters around public debate and protected speech.

It's almost like this experienced Employment Law solicitor is expressing regret that gender critical views are supported in our society but is expecting "science" to come along and render them un-WORIADS again. Most odd.

I've just heard someone on Evan Davis's Bottom Line programme this evening talking about how, to young liberal, university educated people working in London at the BBC, of course it makes sense to say that transwomen are women and to open everything up to transgender people, But what they didn't take into account is that their enlightened, 21st century views aren't held by everyone and that (sadly) there are a lot of people around (old, uneducated, not at all progressive) who have complained and managed to slow down progress. Apparently you have to judge your audience more carefully and wait for your time to come.

There are a lot of people who are still demonstrating that they don't get it.

I can't wait to see what these further scientific developments will be. Does he foresee a future in which people don't know which of their parents is their mother, or horny straight men don't know whom to objectify?

So not agreeing with TRAs means one is "old, uneducated, not at all progressive" 🤬

Fuck that shit, how utterly insulting, ageist, classist, other terms I can't be bothered to expend energy on.

How DARE those woke little shits say this about a whole swathe of people about whom they know diddly squat about their backgrounds, education, circumstances?

How fucking patronising
🔥😡🤬

(65 year old woman, three honours degrees (B. Eng, B A, B Sc.) an M Sc, a Ph D, a D Phil. Very progressive views)

Oh, forgot to add, come from a very working class background, had to leave school at 16 due to Father's sexual, emotional and physical abuse, particularly as my Mother was dead by then.

And, I know I'm not unusual. There are SO MANY Women like me out there

So, TRAs, you were saying?

But what they didn't take into account is that their enlightened, 21st century views aren't held by everyone

Or indeed that they will get older and (one hopes) wiser and change their own views. I look back on the twerp I was in my teens and twenties and cringe.

36 year old, liberal, university educated person here.

It's so fucking patronising and insulting.

Of all the things that annoy me the most about gender ideology, the claims that it is "progressive" are right up there.

No, it does not "make sense" to say that trans women are women if you have spent more than two minutes thinking about what a woman actually is. If you remove biological sex from the equation, all you've got left is stereotypes.

Gender is nothing more than the regressive, sexist cultural baggage that generations of humans have chosen to attach to being male or female. Take having a female reproductive system out of the equation and what you've got left is basically: be kind; become a nurse, not a doctor; be ladylike; don't ask for a pay rise; get married before you're "on the shelf"; take your husband's surname; have babies; be a stay at home mum; don't be a stay at home mum, go out and work for less money than your male colleagues, but make sure you stay on top of the childcare and housework because that's your job; wear makeup and heels because you need to look pretty; shave your legs and armpits and get your pubic hair waxed; wear sexy clothes but try not to get raped because if you do people will say you were asking for it, or alternatively, wear a burkha but try not to get raped because if you do you'll be stoned to death for adultery.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with becoming a nurse rather than a doctor, or taking your husband's surname, or wearing makeup, or shaving your body hair if that's what you choose to do. But let's get real here. Gender just means the bullshit expectations which are placed on people because of their sex. The expectations placed on women are generally restrictive, whilst the expectations placed on men are generally liberating, although the weight of these expectations can be negative for men too.

So what on earth is a trans woman identifying with? Liking the colour pink and wearing dresses? That doesn't make you a woman and the idea that it does is regressive and insulting. Eddie Izzard was far more progressive when he considered himself a man who liked pink and wearing dresses. That's breaking gendered stereotypes. Claiming that you are a woman because you like pink and wearing dresses isn't defying stereotypes, it's reinforcing them.

Now of course I accept that a small number of people have debilitating dysphoria and feel very strongly that they were born in the wrong body and should have been the opposite sex. And for some of those people, cross sex hormones and surgery may help to alleviate their discomfort.

But the idea that we need to redefine what a woman is to accommodate not just these people - many of whom are not even asking us to redefine what a woman is for their sake but just want to live their lives in the way that makes the most sense to them - but also people who don't have genuine dysphoria but just want to have access to women's spaces and/or to be part of a special class of people who can do no wrong, is just absurd.

Especially when we're no longer just talking about pronouns, but about male inmates in women's prisons, male athletes in women's sports, male patients on women's hospital wards and women no longer having access to single sex support after they've been raped.

These woke young idiots who work for the BBC and think trans people are the most oppressed of all haven't given a moment's thought to people like Cheryle Kempton who was assaulted in prison by Karen White, because she's just not on their young, educated, middle class radar.

I think it's very telling that the issue which is finally making a few more young, educated, affluent people sit up and say "hey, that's not very fair" is women's sport. I mean, yeah, it's not fair, and whatever it takes to make people wake up, I guess. But it's because young, wholesome, female athletes are sexier and more relatable than immigrant women who don't speak any English seeking refuge from domestic violence, or practising Muslims who need single sex changing spaces due to their religious beliefs, or women in prison for stealing to buy drugs.

Smiling wryly from my middle aged life experience and the perspective of an old, past it, saggy titted female (and other reasons why those bright young things would try desperately to cast me as an irrelevance dontlistentoherpleasedontlistentoher)

This reminds me so much of the upper middle class snobbery and prejudice that got kids rounded up in their hundreds and shipped off to Canada and Australia with horrendous outcomes. The pieces of which are still being picked up. Often the Do Gooder Better Than You types in the committees would remove kids from women they dismissed as beneath them and having the wrong sort of values and Not Like Us, and after all it wasn't like those poor women were real people with real feelings like the betters, was it?

About the same Better Than You arrogance saw the Native Americans driven off their land and their kids removed for re education into the Right Ways, and forced Christianity across the world, and slavery too is founded on the belief that some kinds of humans are lesser than others.

This naiive little lot would shout in horror that they identify as having an identity that is passionately against all the above! In the same way they identify as Not Being Homophobic! And identify as being Against Misogyny!

The image means nothing at all, lovey. The actions are what matter, not the words, and you are kidding yourself to really fantastic levels. And when you are saggy titted yourself with fifty plus years of experience and the coming and going of fashions and you know what it's like to be naive but convinced you know everything and you are so passionately attached to Good and Making a Difference without the experience to see what lurks in the shadows around it all and the long term, big picture? You'll see life very differently.

It also amuses me no end that the harder the BBC earnestly tries to be diverse, (which largely, in their minds, means 'cool' and 'modern' rather than anything deeper) and the more noise they make about their programs being 'hideously white' and lots of throwing around of exciting jabber like 'heteronormative', the more traditionally white, wealthy, British upper middle class establishment in attitude and outcome they actually become. They are too stuck in that bubble to realise it or to have any contact with people outside of that bubble - and the voices coming in are just dismissed as 'well they're Not Like Us and don't know any better, but we shall continue trying to teach the savages the Right Way'.

It's really quite sad.

I need to qualify what I said last night and apologise for getting some of it wrong. I heard a few snatches of the programme on the radio while I was washing up. Some of them had really wound me up, particularly the upward-inflected millennial whose marketing is centred on being kind and the complacent John Lewis's representative. My partner walked in while I was listening to the bit I wrote about said 'Grrrr, we're not listening to more of Evan Davis's woke shite' and turned the radio off. So I thought I'd better go back and listen again carefully. The whole programme is interesting: it's all about companies adopting values as a means of marketing their product to customers and it highlights the fact that some companies are becoming more and more political with the suggestion that they are not always aware they're on dodgy ground.

Here's the programme if you want to listen for yourselves. Now I've listened to it properly I'm beginning to wonder if it's an indication that even Evan Davis is questioning the pro-trans stance he's displayed for the last few years:
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00194h3

The bit I posted about starts at about 15.30 minutes in, when the guy talks about bias and how the kind of people managing and handling marketing for a company are likely to hold certain views that are shared by educated, young people. I was scrubbing saucepans and thought I'd heard him mention the BBC but he isn't talking about any particular organisation. He goes on to warn that putting young, highly educated, 'progressive' people in social media and marketing can be a mistake for companies and they need to be aware that the views of their customers may not match the views of a a homogeneous few at head office. He actually, now I've listened on, is warning companies that they need to think more carefully about the political ramifications of what they say and do and not assume that everyone believes what the young graduates in the marketing department believe.

So I'm sorry. He was basically saying that the majority of people are less progressive, older, conservative etc — but not in the horrible way I thought he was. I have learned a lesson here.

"horny straight men don't know whom to objectify?"

We'll be waiting a while on that development I suspect...

It is certainly a reason why the BBC and advertising companies should try to have diversity of thought (in my view the most important diversity of any of them) rather than a woke left echo chamber of people with identical views who think everyone esle has those views and are 100% sure they are the one right set of views to hold.

As in The Handmaid's Tale, one thing you can be sure of is that men, especially powerful ones, will always have access to women and they'll have no trouble figuring out who the women are.

Great post. Articulate, comprehensive.

Now of course I accept that a small number of people have debilitating dysphoria and feel very strongly that they were born in the wrong body and should have been the opposite sex. And for some of those people, cross sex hormones and surgery may help to alleviate their discomfort.

And whilst I agree with this, it still reinforces sexism.

Fantastic post. The lack of logic with TRA ideology, the clear regressive nature of thinking acting or dressing a certain way makes you a woman, the inability to think about whether any of it makes sense for more than three seconds, is just maddening. This is why TRAs are so aggressive and reliant on societal pressure - the arguments don't stand up on their own without compulsion.