Guardian: A politically toxic issue: the legal battles over gender-critical beliefs

[CheeseChamp]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/19/a-politically-toxic-issue-the-legal-battles-over-gender-critical-beliefs

"The social worker Rachel Meade’s win against the council and her profession’s regulator means she joins a select but growing group of gender-critical feminists who have successfully brought discrimination claims on the basis of their beliefs.

Gender-critical feminists believe sex is biological and cannot be changed, and disagree with trans rights activists who say gender identity should be given priority in terms of law-making and policy. Clashes in workplaces – in some cases with those who regard the focus on biological sex as transphobic – have led to a string of employment tribunals.
On Monday, a tribunal began hearing a constructive dismissal claim from Roz Adams against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. Next month, Kenny McBride’s case against the Scottish government is due to be heard in Glasgow, while judgments are pending in a claim from Prof Jo Phoenix against the Open University and that of the Green party’s former deputy leader Shahrar Ali against the party.
In all four cases – and more in the pipeline – the claimants argue they were discriminated against because they hold gender-critical beliefs."

Not sure I agree on the last part:

"She added that the media attention afforded to gender-critical cases perhaps suggested that they were more common than they really were. In fact, she suggested there were likely to be a greater number of claims brought by transgender people alleging harm, though many go unreported.
“The overwhelming majority of employers are not setting out to discriminate; they’re not just thinking ‘well all people with gender-critical views are bad, so we’re just going to get rid of them’,” said Lewis.
“They just have got strong alternative views in the workplace and they haven’t known how to navigate through that conflict.”"

I think there is an automatic assumption by grifting good for nothing HR types that gc views are bad. And hopefully that is now being set right. Well done to strong women getting us here.

Ah sorry I didn't see there was another thread!

Well, on the one hand, kudos to the Guardian for running this. (It's the first mention I've seen in the national press about the Roz Adams case in Edinburgh.) On the other hand, while it started off well, it descended into the usual Guardian one-sidedness.

The sentence people have already quoted - 'In fact, she suggested there were likely to be a greater number of claims brought by transgender people alleging harm, though many go unreported' - does not have any supporting evidence. I'd go so far as to say it's nonsense. Yes, there have been a few high-profile gender-critical cases, but as we know there are many more cases of gender-critical women being discriminated against that have been completely unreported. So many women don't have the legal resources to bring a case.

I really doubt there are thousands of trans people all over the country bringing discrimination cases when HR departments have universally bought into this ideology.

A decent article would have focused on the relentless bullying and intolerance displayed towards people expressing the perfectly ordinary and unexceptional belief that humans can't change sex.

Im going to copy over my post from the thread I started:

This part isn't wholly accurate though, having read the whole Mackereth appeal judgment only this week. He didn't actually misgender anyone, it never got that far. He wanted to be able to avoid using preferred pronouns, and he resigned on the basis of being told he couldn't. The first ET was prior to Maya Forstater's and he was told his gender critical belief wasn't worthy of respect in a democratic society, like Maya's.

At appeal this part of the case was overturned in the same way it was in Maya's (her successful EAT had already taken place). He was still found to have not been discriminated or harassed by the DWP pronoun policy, as it was considered that it was reasonable to expect him to use the vulnerable service users' preferred pronouns, and it was not very often.

The tribunals have made clear that it is not a free-for-all but a balancing exercise. For instance, David Mackereth – an outlier in that he lost his case based on gender-critical beliefs – was found to have crossed the linee by misgendering service users at the Department for Work and Pensions, making its decision to dismiss him reasonable.

I prefer to go by what can be proven. I'm not gender critical, it's just that my GCSE biology course informed me it's impossible to change sex. Reality, in other words.

Apart from that, this Graun might be retreating, just a tiny bit?

“The overwhelming majority of employers are not setting out to discriminate; they’re not just thinking ‘well all people with gender-critical views are bad, so we’re just going to get rid of them’,” said Lewis.

The employers who have been found in court to be discriminating did seem to think exactly that. Some of them were more than happy to say so.

Who could forget Kirrin Metcalf's email that Allison Bailey presented a danger just by being in the building? The judge in Rachel Meade's case had to say explicitly that "gender critical" does not mean "transphobic". The ERCC case hasn't been decided yet but part of the evidence that their current CEO said in public that people with such views need to be got rid of.

could be better, but good to see it in the mainstream media

I thought that was a really balanced and thorough article from the Guardian! (apart from that last bit perhaps). And it wasn't something they "had" to report on, they didn't need to write/publish that at all.

Absolutely right, Amaryllis - it's been quite clear in a number of these tribunals that the claimant is regarded as a terrible human being just for believing in reality. That came across very strongly in the Forstater, Bailey and Phoenix cases.

Imagine if we all had to start believing in astrology and putting our star signs in our signatures, and we could be disciplined or sacked for refusing to accept that a person's star sign mattered. Would "lack of belief in astrology" or "refusal to accept astrological beliefs" be regarded as a belief in itself?

Some of these people don’t just think people have different bodies and that that matters; they believe people are male and female ‘really’ based on a male / female essence. It’s the same kind of belief (a belief in male / female essences) which some, but not all, transgender people have. They just believe in a different male / female essence. A lot of people think people have different bodies without the belief in male / female essences that some of these people have.

Quite. If trans people really were bringing cases where they were told they should be fired, or people were scared of them being in the same building, we'd know all about it.

I agree with this. Even most TRAs don't pretend biological sex doesn't exist, just that it's not the criterion that should be used for grouping, and should be replaced by some transcendent, ill defined notion of gender identity. That's a belief. The contrary position, that the grouping factor should remain biological sex is similarly a belief, but one which is very strongly supported by very clear concepts, argument and evidence.

Imagine if we all had to start believing in astrology and putting our star signs in our signatures, and we could be disciplined or sacked for refusing to accept that a person's star sign mattered. Would "lack of belief in astrology" or "refusal to accept astrological beliefs" be regarded as a belief in itself?

When I was reading the Mackereth case EAT judgment the other day, they go into quite a lot of detail on this and interestingly they concluded that a lack of holding a belief is protected under the "belief" protected characteristic as much as the actual belief is, before you even get to having a positive belief that gender identity/astrology was wrong.

This article reminded me just how important all these legal cases are. They set the terms for our future!

The article doesn't mention what these women have gone through to do it - the years, the effort, the money, the uncertainty, for some the personal harassment from trans activists. Or the public support that has gone in to raise the money - half a million pounds in donations for Allison Bailey's crowdfunder alone.

Props to all the strong brave determined women who have put these cases forward.

Would the ‘essence’ be biological difference at the chromosomal level?

If so, I am one of ‘those people’. Nothing to do with glittery eyeshadow or preferring toy trains, though.

It varies depending on the person.

The glaring omission in that article is that employers have been "guided" by stonewall et al to discriminate against these women.

Is the Makareth case finished? The last I read dated June 1993, I think, he was going to appeal. Unless I misunderstood.

@IcakethereforeIam 1993?! Quick edit needed I think 😆

Nope, I haven't picked a book up in, oh, it must be 30 years 😄

Sorry, 2023 that should have been.

Is the Makareth case finished? The last I read dated June 1993, I think, he was going to appeal. Unless I misunderstood.

He said he was going to, and he had the backing of a powerful Christian organisation, but I haven't heard that he is.

And many judges had Stonewall-based guidance too. After which pronoun madness took over and it took time before judges could even accept that witnesses in rape cases (aka victims) shouldn't have to refer to the accused (aka their attackers) as "she".

The successful trans discrimination cases for employees that I've seen quoted are a few years old, before every organisation started prioritising "inclusion" and doing EDI training and employing people to do EDI. I haven't heard about any more cases from the last couple of years and surely they'd have been all over social media and X and Pink News and we'd know about them!

But the successful GC cases are more recent.

So this is not just a neutral judicial process working nicely to balance people's rights from the start. It is much more like a political swing being corrected - at great effort by (mainly women) with GC views.

Aaaaaaaaand then the wild swing in the other direction.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/19/gender-ideology-tories-ministers-schools-conservative

I mean, I don't disagree about the ridiculousness of traditional gender roles, clothing restrictions, etc.

But on the one hand this article calls for not pathologising gender identity, when that's exactly what gender ideology leads to?!

You can't have both these things in the same worldview. The cognitive dissonance of this person is mind bending.

Also for the record, Finn: I am not a tory.

(This has been put where it belongs, in the opinion section, I note)

I've just read this. Comments not open, which tbh is par for the course with the Guardian.

Where does Finn live? I'd assume somewhere like Iran or Afghanistan from this:

The real gender ideology is the binary sex and gender system that requires all of us to be either male-masculine-heterosexual or female-feminine-heterosexual; and which attaches harsh penalties to those who deviate from this script.

There is no 'binary sex and gender system' which requires these things in the UK. There is a sex binary, but that is out of our hands, being a product of biology. Nothing compels a man to be masculine or a woman to be feminine, and nobody of either sex is compelled to be heterosexual.

It seems as though Finn, in common with many gender zealots, had a particularly gendered upbringing.

Almost all of us will have been socialised on to pink or blue paths from birth, if not by our immediate family, then by the books, TV, toys, clothes and adverts that surrounded us in wider society. This socially prescribed gender informs our gender identity.

Shame that Finn can't join the dots and see the solution to this is to do away with the stereotypes, not pretend that some people are the opposite sex (or don't have a sex) so that the stereotypes no longer apply to them.

"The overwhelming majority of employers are not setting out to discriminate; they’re not just thinking ‘well all people with gender-critical views are bad, so we’re just going to get rid of them’,” said Lewis."

Missed the point or what? That is exactly what employers have been doing to MF, RM etc. Mirdul Wadhwa has been quite explicit about firing terfs