Legal question - how does swearing 'to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth' fit with 'misgendering as aggravated hate crime' in Court?

[IvyTwines]

This is in relation to what Starmer was apparently telling a Pink News audience last night. How does compelling someone to say a man is a woman square with the pledge you make in a court of law to tell the truth? Is the truth now something infinitely flexible and subjective, not grounded in reality but merely floating words that can now be changed by a parliamentary fiat or a court of law?

I obviously hope to never need to appear in court for any reason but if I did I would tell the actual truth as I saw it. I would call a man a man no matter how he identified.

That is the hill I'd die on.

Yes, but witnesses still either swear an oath or make an affirmation. In both cases you are making a solemn promise that you will tell the truth. If one person can say they won’t lie about reality, that sort of undermines all the others who haven’t made that statement.

This is the trouble when the state starts fooling around with a pretence that lies are true in xyz very specific circumstances only. You can’t ringfence a lie like that. It seeps through into other areas, some unexpected, some bloody obvious.

Same as the birth certificate nonsense. Now that people are allowed to change the sex recorded at birth, pretty soon someone is going to win the right to change the date, or the parentage. Why not? why would that be more of a lie?

And this was all so obvious from the beginning.

So, transideology requires legislation against perceived thought crime which contradicts hard science & impinges on the legal rights of others.

This is not a sign of a healthy society.

To say to a judge "I don't feel I can say that as the truth - I don't believe or perceive that to be the truth" would prejudice them?

Wow.

Really at that point where's the point in an oath or bothering with perjury? M'lud I perceive that I did not steal this car and drive it up a lamp post, I identify as driving it quietly and safely home. And that is my truth.

How this has fucked things up.

I think that I would ask if I could question the judge and say "I believe that biological sex is a real thing, and is unchangeable. I believe that this is biological fact and scientific reality, and I know that it is a belief that I am legally entitled to hold. I know that you want me to refer to the defendant as a woman but I believe that I cannot do that without breaking the oath which I have just sworn and risking perjuring myself. Can the court please provide me with legal advice because I am in a no-win situation here and literally cannot comprehend how I can be put in a position where I am obliged to tell the truth but am also obliged not to tell the truth and to go against my legally held views?"

This is the trouble when the state starts fooling around with a pretence that lies are true in xyz very specific circumstances only. You can’t ringfence a lie like that. It seeps through into other areas, some unexpected, some bloody obvious.

Essentially we're talking about the concept of making the law an ass. Something everyone involved in the making or administration of law should avoid.

"This is the trouble when the state starts fooling around with a pretence that lies are true in xyz very specific circumstances only. You can’t ringfence a lie like that. It seeps through into other areas, some unexpected, some bloody obvious."

Yes. We are on very dodgy ground here.

But what if the identity of the offender is under debate? If you say you saw a man and the person in court identifies as a woman do they get off? If you referred to them as 'she' you might be misgendering the real offender? Or the real offender might get off because you now say the attacker was a woman? How are you meant to know if you saw a man or woman if these terms become divorced from their sex? And why stop there? Black you say? But the offender identifies as white? Guilty? No, they identify as innocent.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

Absolutely. Not for the first time, I find the cognitive dissonance astonishing.

I keep going back to the fact that self invested individuals are allowed to write the "Equal Treatment Bench Book" for the judiciary and provide secret training for judges - the details of which must be kept hidden from the public (presumably because it's thoroughly dodgy).
Everywhere you look these mediocre individuals are given great power to misinform, mangle the law and reshape society to pander to their personal preferences - with so much of it being harmful to children and women. If you've not read it, the barrister Thomas Chacko demonstrates the extreme levels of manipulation involved in the bench book:
policyexchange.org.uk/publication/prejudging-the-transgender-controversy/

My post had a link to Policy Exchange and an article by a barrister Thomas Chacko detailing the levels of influence that self invested individuals have had on the judiciary. He examines the Equal Treatment Bench Book and demonstrates how a disputed ideology and factually incorrect beliefs are presented as facts - not surprisingly to the disadvantage of women and children.
Google will take you to an interesting article.

We should also consider what an accessibility issue this is for some people.

Autistic people are the group that spring to mind - as one myself, I couldn’t lie in court, or in any other situation. My neurology doesn’t let me. I would be unable to give evidence in this context, I literally wouldn’t be able to speak because I just can’t just shove an ideology between my poorly filtered sensory experience of the world and my mouth. Quite probably this would impact other groups too. Learning disabilities, children, elderly, ESL?

easy fix would be just to let everyone tell the truth in their own words.

Exactly this.

Accessibility and the equality act are not to enforce TQ+ privilege. There are nine characteristics, not one, and they are not in a hierarchy. And that the other eight need rigorous protection is being illustrated by the sheer power the one has to suppress and dominate and control to its own advantage.

It's amazing what power an oppressed minority can wield when it is largely controlled and led by white, straight, able bodied, well educated, affluent men.

That's exactly what my posts were about earlier in the thread. My link also got my post hidden then un-hidden!

"It's amazing what power an oppressed minority can wield when it is largely controlled and led by white, straight, able bodied, well educated, affluent men"

who, as we know, are the most oppressed people on the planet...

Very useful link, thanks MrsO. I've downloaded the document. It's an easy read, full of useful information. I love the pleasant, calm tone:

In 2019, an Employment Tribunal ruled that Maya Forstater’s belief (held and expressed by her as a private individual) that sex is an immutable biological fact is ‘not worthy of respect in a democratic society’. Reading this, many thousands of reasonable people must have scratched their heads in bewilderment.

It does have a pleasant, calm tone doesn't it Ofcourseshecan?
There is a place for that type of discourse but I find it increasingly hard to adopt as I watch the women and children casualties stacking up as institutions pander to powerful males demanding access to undressed / vulnerable women for their own validation / titillation.
All evidenced in the appalling incident at the Princess Grace hospital.

Even if the judge allows specific female victims of crime to refer to male attackers as male, the rest of the court- even the victim's own representatives- are still required to use the language of the gender identity belief of the accused. In effect, the entire court becomes a hostile environment for the victim, including the legal people representing her.
The massive negative impact the Bench Book has on victims is clear in this article
childrenoftransitioners.org/2021/12/28/the-judges-bench-book/

That's an interesting piece, Watermonster.

‘My father was first arrested when I was eight years old, possibly for voyeurism in the women’s public toilets while cross-dressing. The social worker was vague about the details. I was first called to give evidence against him when I was 11, but didn’t have to in the end. It was terrifying and I was reluctant to speak against him; even though he was violent, controlling and abusive to women and girls both in and out of the family it felt disloyal and I did love him. So children are already terrified and scared by the legal process, added to which you don’t want to give evidence against a parent. Now the court states you will be forced to lie about your father’s sex. I could not have done this as a child, and this seems to be a deliberate attempt by males to make it harder for girls to testify against male abuse and access justice. It must be even worse for girls and women who are victims of sexual abuse, as ‘women’ don’t have penises.

If the judge says a man is a woman if he says so, then women as a sex don't have any access to justice in the judge's court room. Like that recent hospital employment tribunal case, where the judge referred to a male as a woman in accordance with the Bench Book and then said they had the right to be undressed and get their penis out in the female changing area.

No one in the tribunal was able to acknowledge the abusive reality. As Helen Staniland asks ' Do you think males should be allowed to enter spaces where women and girls are undressing without their consent?'

The forced lying about sex in favour of a belief in gender identity required by the Judges Bench Book is just another way to dismantle safeguarding, female sex based rights and female privacy from males- another way to help those who abuse women and children.

I have often wondered about this.

Being forced to lie under oath so as not to "misgender" someone - is all sorts of wrong. Gender Identity isn't a protected characteristic, is it? So why should a witness be compelled to lie?

It also opens up a can of worms. The accused is on trial because they have pleaded not guilty - so therefore denying they committed a crime is their "truth", in the same way as their gender identity is their "truth" - so if you follow their broken logic - you would be "lying" if you didn't agree with their "truth", wouldn't you?

So why is the actual truth no longer allowed in court?

I have also seen Transwomen post online about how crimes committed as men, under their "dead name", should be wiped as they are a new person and not responsible for their former self. I have also seen this logical statement used in regards to debts - eg bank loans.