Legal action against Eventbrite for unlawful discrimination

[Spero]

On Oct 27 2022, Eventbrite pulled my book launch event for 'Transpositions - personal journeys into gender criticism'. This was a collection of stories from men and women about how they got involved in issues around sex and gender. Some of you may have contributed.

They told me that I was promoting 'violent and dangerous' content. I asked them to explain themselves. They haven't. So I am taking them to court for unlawful discrimination against my gender critical belief.

I wrote about it in the Critic here thecritic.co.uk/why-is-eventbrite-obstructing-my-book-launch/

I am hoping that some people may feel able to do a spot of gardening. I know its dark and miserable and not the best weather for gardening, but I think this could be quite an important piece of digging. There are some really important questions to ask about how private companies, based overseas are allowed to dictate what we think or say.

What @FlirtsWithRhinos said very eloquently. Any comment @DadJoke ? Can you see how defining woman to include males will affect women or are you still confused.

No, but if you’d RTFT and the Eventbrite T&Cs under which the OPs event was published you’d see that any content deemed to be “disparaging” towards an individual or group with a protected characteristic is a violation of their content T&Cs, which can result in them refusing to sell tickets and unpublishing your event. This is in the small print of the section they referenced to her as what she violated. These are the same T&Cs that the OP agreed to. So it in the strict sense (without arguing this is an unenforceable term), Eventbrite could well have viewed the addition of a Lineham to be a breach of the services contract by the OP and so refused their services.

This is what they are going to argue as a defence to the claim their action was discriminatory that the OP intends to file. She (& her solicitor) will have to be prepared to explain & defend the Lineham content as best they can. DadJoke makes a good point.

And a court isn’t going to be interested in arguing the merits of trans versus gender critical, as in who is right. This is a discrimination case with conflict of laws, and contract terms to consider in the mix.

The point of the thread is no, platforms don't get to decide their own conditions, if they violate the laws of the land.

Good sum up. But obviously, that’s an allegation that Eventbrite will defend itself against. And it would be seriously naive not to consider what sort of defences they have to argue to say they were not being discriminatory towards the OP. These range from arguing US & CA law apply per the express terms of the contract to they were applying their T&Cs in accordance with their procedures and in a fair and consitent manner. The addition of Lineham to the event announcement makes the OPs case a little harder to argue. And it would be wise to have an explanation or defence or precedent because his reputation and bans for hateful conduct will be an item of discussion.

Is this now gospel, that Lineham is a hateful figure? I have seen no coherent evidence of this. His banning from Twitter was complaints from ideologues and enforced by sympatheic TRA moderators. Nothing you can hang your hat on, certainly not a court of law. No better than hearsay and not something that I think needs to be defended.

I was suspended 'permanently' from Twitter for saying 'I know who he is'. They reinstated me without comment after I got solicitors to write to them. So either they made a mistake in banning me, or a mistake in re-instating me. Either way, to put any reliance on Twitter's 'moderation' policy as some kind of gospel truth as @DadJoke does, is risible.

I have spoken to my solicitor whose preliminary view is that the Equality Act does apply under the EU opt out clause and I have a few days left to decide if I want to opt out of arbitration or not. I am not that fussed, arbitration would at least be cheaper but I might not be able to live tweet the proceedings!

I have seen the proof copy and it looks amazing! It will out by December 2 so that's Christmas sorted!

🙌🙌

No need to be rude. Do you think individual companies can opt to break the law?

This is all because women believe in the concept of sex. It is ludicrous.

@Happylittlechicken do I believe all space should be mixed sex?

No, I am quite happy with the EA2010 which allows transgender people to be excluded from spaces if it's legitimate and proportionate. It usually isn't.

Why do you believe transwomen are women but women are not allowed to be referred to as such without obnoxious prefixes?

I don't believe that.

Usually it doesn't matter whether a person is cisgender or transgender except where doctors are involved, but because gender critical people spend so much time differentiating between women who are or are not transgender, it's a useful prefix.

No, I am quite happy with the EA2010 which allows transgender people to be excluded from spaces if it's legitimate and proportionate. It usually isn't.

Can you give examples of when you think it would be proportionate?

But what if a person os neither “cis” 🤮🤮 or trans? To say someone is cis requires that they believe in your concept of gender. I’d say most people don’t. So you have those people who are trans, those who believe in gender but are not trans who are ‘cis’ and the rest of us who don’t believe in gender. What are you going to call those people? Are you going to misgender them or try to impose your ideology on them? What is the word for adult human females as a sex class when most of them don’t agree with your ideology?

Good question.... I can't imagine an answer to this question that wouldn't be considered to be transphobic by ideologues.

Usually it doesn't matter whether a person is cisgender or transgender except where doctors are involved, but because gender critical people spend so much time differentiating between women who are or are not transgender, it's a useful prefix.

Oh dear. You seem to have entirely overlooked the many many female voices who have said again and again, in here and many other virtual and physical places, in courts of law, bravely in public spaces, through any media that do not silence them, in the very book whose launch led to this thread, that it does matter to us.

Why is that @DadJoke ? Do our voices not matter? Do we not matter, when weighed against the needs of a small group of males who believe their external understanding of womanhood has more validity and understanding than that of those who have lived it every day of our lives?

Indeed, when you assign female only spaces into those for cisgender women only (in theory, since you believe your own failure to imagine such things could be justified is argument enough to deny them in practice) and those for women of both sexes, what does that mean for people like me, who have a female body, no dysphoria, but unlike cis women (meaning here of course only those who actively and informedly identify as cis, not those who have the cis label arbitrarily applied to them by a genderists' need to impose their own assumptions about identity ) don't identify as having a "woman's mind"?

Where do we into your neat scheme?

What justifies your imposing upon us an obligation to share our formerly and intentionally single sex female spaces, identities, rights, protections and opportunities with people with whom.we share neither body sex nor mental gender?

Cis is not a valid prefix because it implies I am a subset of woman based on some nebulous stereotyped regressive concept of womanhood. I do not have the gender identity of woman: I simply am a woman.

This sums up the nonsense that is 'cis' quite nicely for me.

Funny, how the word "ciswoman" might be the most common case of misgendering in the world. There are many women (adult human females), much more than transpeople. And many of them (us) just don't feel internal sense of gender identity as described by gender ideology, which means that we literally don't follow the ciswoman definition.

So, what now? It is surely highly insensitive to assume someone has a gender identity if they don't have one.
(I'd know what, to keep "woman" for ahf no matter the identification and transwoman for those who are exactly that, but ..)

Yes, "cis" can only be a trans ideology thing.

Normal women don't go around being "cis" at anyone. We're just normal females with female bodies and female reproductive systems. Women and girls.

No need for the fucking "cis". We've got "women" "girls" and "female" already taken. Unhappy men need to sort out their own words.

Gender critical people /== women.

If you are cisgender you are not transgender. If you accept that transgender people exist, then whatever you think of them, a word for people who aren't when you are dicussing transgender people makes sense. Even if you think religion is bunk, atheist is still a useful word.

@FlirtsWithRhinos do the voices of gender critical people matter? They've pretty much captured the MSM and they are platformed everywhere, even if it's a full-page article in the Times telling everyone they've been cancelled. The GC movement literally exists to restrict transgender people and you are doing a pretty good job of it. You aren't advocating for male cleaners to be removed from toilets, or male staff from prisons, even though your ostensible reason for fearing transgender women is "because they are men". The GC movement has been very succesful in undermining transgender rights - I'm pretty sure that the GRA would have been modified by May without that, Even the LibDems have restricted their definition of transphobia.

@AlisonDonut single-sex spaces which meet the EA2010 criteria easily are support groups for pregnant people and ailments which only affect people with female reproductive systems. Perhaps instead of attacking existing rape crisis centres, well funded GC people could set up support groups for cis women with this exception. The important thing is that the EA2010 doesn't oblige anyone to do this - it merely permits it.

So @DadJoke you are persisting in misgendering people who have told you they are neither cis or trans? Isn’t misgendering literal violence? You may use those words about yourself if you so wish, that’s your prerogative, but to be fair, I’d be slightly worried about using a term coined by a pedophile apologist. I think it’s bad enough for the gender ideologists that the term gender and the way in which they use as they know it was coined by John Money, who they never seem to want to reference for some reason, but to use a term coined by Volkmar Sirtusch, who’s work with Schmidt on the premise that sexual intercourse with adults was not necessarily bad for children, seems rather dodgy. I’d rather not be called anything coined by a pedophile apologist but you do you. I always say you can judge people by the language they use….

single-sex spaces which meet the EA2010 criteria easily are support groups for pregnant people and ailments which only affect people with female reproductive system

Nice to know that women are only entitled to single sex spaces if we are performing our reproductive duty!
Dadjokeobviously quite happy to have male sex offenders in female prisons and refuges. Who cares about the women in these places, certainly not Dadjoke.

Single-sex spaces which meet the EA2010 criteria easily are support groups for pregnant people and ailments which only affect people with female reproductive systems.

So the female reproductive system exists? You are presumably including trans men and AFAB non-binary people as having a female reproductive system?

That must mean that TW have a male reproductive system?

Bit transphobic.

If you are cisgender you are not transgender. If you accept that transgender people exist, then whatever you think of them, a word for people who aren't when you are dicussing transgender people makes sense. Even if you think religion is bunk, atheist is still a useful word.

No.

Cisgender is not the equivalent of atheist.

Cisgender/transgender is more like Protestant/Catholic. Atheists are neither.

@Onnabugeisha 'Cis woman' is a gender identity, women on this board don't have a gender identity, so calling us 'cis' assigns us a gender identity we do not have, that is it 'misgenders' us. Does that help?