How is it a win to have the fact that men are not women legally classified as a belief?

[Davyjones]

Love to be proven wrong but it seems like a loss to have it legally enshrined as a belief because it’s always up for challenge now

any belief can be challenged and beliefs should regularly be reviewed

but this is not a belief but a fact so I can only see it as a negative

i know I’m missing something please tell me what it is

Must admit, I was confused by that too. I believe I’m gravity, which is a theory, and supported by the evidence of my lives wxperience and physics, but it’s a theory.

is “sex is binary” something like that? Has the potential to be disproved, but everyone knows it’s a fact?

Isn't it more the fact that it's a protected belief, so you can't be penalised for expressing it?

I thought the same when I first read the Forstater case, but having seen it applied since, I think I understand why the approached it that way.

By being a belief, it is covered by the Equalities Act under the protected characteristic of 'religion or belief'. As a protected characteristic, if someone discriminates against you because of your belief, they fall foul of the law.

So - knowing the fact that men are not women allows those who deny reality to discriminate against you without penalty. Believing that men are not women offers the protection of the Equality Act should you be discriminated against.

Well if biological sex could be changed, there would be no arguments about what to put on the "who needs smear tests" leaflets, as trans men would all end up with prostates and penises (and no ovaries or cervix or uterus to worry about...).

It's weird. Facts, truth should be more important than beliefs.

Because there are no universally sanctioned ‘facts’. Everyone is free to believe in what people call facts, or not. (MF was demonised for refusing to accept ‘new facts’ - those who oppose her are every bit as insistent on their ‘facts’ as we are.)

@stealtheatingtunnocks

You’re free not to believe in gravity. It’s like that. Trans activists are free not to believe in biological sex, even though most people believe (know) it’s a fact.

That’s my point
a protected belief
until it’s not

it’s not a belief though, it’s it? It’s a fact

There's no protection in law for those who know a particular fact is true. I can only assume because it would be utterly batshit to have to enshrine such a thing in law. But here we are! Now, without such a law, the Protected Characteristic (within the EA 2010) of "religion or belief" is all there is.

if there’s no universal facts how are court cases argued?

thank you for comments but unfortunately they only print solidify my stance which I didn’t want

I don't like it. To me it codifies the notion that we might be wrong. That people might actually be able to change sex.

However, I am am practical and this is the means to an end to make sure that there is a way for this to be fought. It's a mass delusion on a huge scale.

If everything was hard and fast facts then there wouldn't need to be court cases... thats the whole point of them. To examine the shades of grey and the bits that are up for debate to determine a fair judgement based on the information heard in court.

@Davyjones

Courts reach conclusions about things that happened in an individual case, but they can’t force me to agree with them.

It's not about whether it's a fact or not, it's about whether believing it is worthy of respect.

If it were only about facts, no one would shout TRANSWOMEN ARE WOMEN

Believing men are not women ? Not a belief

not sure I can express what I mean any other way

i don’t believe this. I know it

It is true that if this is a belief, so is everything else, including gravity, magnetism, laws of physics, sorry, beliefs of physics.

I have seen countless TRA's on here and other platforms insist that 'sex is a spectrum, not a binary' and usually produce that risible Scientific American blog piece or the existence of variations in sexual development as 'proof' that humans can change sex. It's a bit like arguing with flat earthers - the fact that the earth is not flat is observable but you will still get some people insisting that it's not.

Deluded people have managed to convince themselves that sex is not immutable. It's utterly ridiculous that the fact that sex is immutable has had to be categorised as a belief. Absolutely bizarre. The end result of pandering to people who seem completely unable to exercise independent thought away from mantras.

The law simply isn't set up to argue that facts are correct.

So when you have someone trying to state in law that what you assume is a fact - 'sex is real and immutable' - it has to be a belief, otherwise you couldn't argue whether it's correct or not in law.

MF was discriminated against for stating a fact. Those doing the discriminating purported not to accept it as fact, so I guess that's where it had to be posed as a belief.

I think back when Katie Alcock was taking GG to court I had similar questions as to why it was a 'belief' - www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3655701-Expelled-from-Girlguiding-for-putting-safeguarding-first

I can't remember if it was Maya, Katie or someone else, but someone did write a brief explanation as to why it was being brought under 'belief'. Maybe FWR regulars will remember?

It’s actually really important that courts don’t declare scientific facts. I know in this case it’s frustrating, but imagine where we’d be if courts could overrule scientists.

It's not that there are no facts - though I think it's perhaps more accurate to say that things are proven to a greater or lesser degree of certainty. It's that there isn't a specific protection, under English law, against discrimination for believing facts. The same principle applied a few years ago when someone won a claim for belief discrimination because he believed in climate change. The scientific community has a very, very high degree of confidence in the reality of climate change, but that wasn't material to the case.

In fact, one of the (many) criticisms made of the original (negative) Forstater decision was that the judge (being a sex-denier) had got caught up in the question of whether or not sex is real/mutable in human beings. His judgement, therefore, wasn't "whether Forstater is allowed to believe this" but "whether Forstater agrees with me".

I think that it's about considering where we actually were so a step in the right direction is still perhaps not everybody agreeing with the GC position, but it has really significant implications

It is a huge win for the UK because it sends a clear message to employers to treat it like they would a religion, and managers are generally pretty clear that hassling people for not being your religion is totally unreasonable.

It is also highly significant that it isn't just GC 'beliefs' but an absence of belief in the trans ideology which is protected. As Sex and Sexual Orientation are already protected characteristics this is a hugely helpful step.

But where we were was pretty damn shocking.

Is the protected bit not so much the fact that sex is immutable (after all whatever laws are passed this will always be the case) but the belief that the immutability of sex matters in certain circumstances?

Believing men are not women ? Not a belief

not sure I can express what I mean any other way

i don’t believe this. I know it

I agree with what you say here, but unfortunately I think our world has been sufficiently captured that you’d be hard pressed to establish that, given that a significant subset of medical professionals might argue that you are wrong.

I suspect you could not have established your fact as being one before the case started, so we are not worse off, as such, though I agree the optics are poor. It’s a shock to realise where we are perhaps, but I’d argue that the law reflects something stupid happening in the world, rather than establishing that this is a belief and not a fact.

The legal challenge isn't about if it's true or not, it's about if you can be fired for believing it.

Say there were a group of people that believe turtles have six legs. They get really angry if anyone challenges this.

A lot of them work for a company where most people believe this. Someone in the company tweets and says 'actually turtles have four legs, not six.'

The six letters get her fired as they think this is hateful.

The employment tribunal finds its not hateful to believe that and that they shouldn't have been fired for it.

Anyone is allowed to believe what they want. And it's not hateful for them to do that.