In the actual Guardian! "The law is now clear: you can’t be punished for having gender-critical views. So why does it keep happening?"

[AlphariusOmegron]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/26/law-clear-cannot-be-sacked-gender-critical-views-women-sex?CMP=share_btn_tw

Wow the tide IS turning!

Well done to the Guardian for publishing.

I bet a certain young man by the name of Owen is quietly seething somewhere!

My god.

It was… factual. Rational. Fair. Ever-so-slightly, plausibly-deniably snarky in places. ('But a statement made by Social Work England shows how partisan that organisation’s position was. It said that gender-critical people “are unlikely to accept that transgender people who have socially and/or medically transitioned from one sex to another, are as matter of fact, biology and reality members of their chosen sex”. Given its treatment of Meade, it seems clear that SWE believes people can indeed choose their sex – not only as a matter of legal registration, via the gender certification process introduced by the last Labour government, but as a matter of “fact, biology and reality” – even if they have undergone no medical treatment and their transition is a purely social one (clothes, name-change and so on). It is the core of gender-critical belief that this is not true.')

My gob is smacked.

Susanna Rustin has always championed women's rights but an amazing sign of the times that it's been published in the Guardian and not the Observer!

Blimey OReilly! Happy weekend everyone!

It's a great piece, and so brilliant to see it in the Guardian

Perhaps he should quit and work for Pink News 🤔

Holy mo.

What a good article! Bet Owen Jones is fumming!

I'd say Owen and Zoe are exchanging furious texts as we type.

Kinda ironic it's in the guardian given what happened to some of its female columnists.

Absolutely excellent. Thank you Susannah.

'Whatever their views on sex and gender, liberals should be curious about why women are being ostracised and punished for their conviction that sex differences are important. So should trade unionists, whose job it is to protect people’s rights at work.'

I felt the need to check in on oj, I think he's okay. He's hiding over on twitter, resolutely ignoring the story by focussing on suffering in Palestine.

I imagine the money would not be so good.

But of course this is good news. I've been a Guardian reader for much of my life (not now, though), and it's good to see some small steps back to sanity.

Am I dreaming? What is happening here????

What noise does a reversing ferret make? Is it a beep beep beep like a lorry?

I just saw this, and came here to see if you'd all noticed it. Can't believe it is in the Guardian - reverse ferret ahoy

Owen Jones now has a column in The National, the Scottish newspaper which cheers on the SNP and the Scottish Greens.

Maybe he saw that the Guardian was about to fall into a teeny tiny puddle of rationality and jumped ship in time (I'm sure he'll be back to give us a good scolding any moment now).

A fantastic article, so glad to see it in the Guardian of all places. Well done to Susanna Rustin.

Great article and good to see it in the Guardian (finally) I do hope Susanna is OK.
We've seen how many women have been hounded out of that comic for "wrongthink" by other employees. It must be a scary place for women with opinions to work.

Susanna has always been immensely supportive of gender-critical views - the interesting thing is that she managed to get this past her senior editors. Thank goodness.

Well they should all be grateful they haven't ended up in an ET. I suspect they might have lost too.

Susanna Rustin has always been great on this issue. The only reversing ferret is the guardian - which still has other ferrets wending in their original direction for 'balance' (the balance between factual reporting and 'progressive' virtue signalling, presumably).
Still, the guardian can't have looked at the ERCC tribunal without having an 'Are we the baddies?' moment.

Here are some of Susanna's other great pieces over the years:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/28/erase-biological-definition-sex-gender-self-identification-trans-transgender-feminist-case (in the Guardian proper)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/06/labour-policies-trans-women-rights-gender-recognition-act (also in the Guardian)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/13/discussion-women-trans-rights-feminists (also in the Guardian)

Still, stark how few pro-women articles there are and how unbalanced the paper is. Hopefully all of the ETs will open eyes via wallets if not consciences

With a caveat...

It's in the Opinion section . It's not an editorial.

Still, at least the Graun has published an opinion markedly different from its own bias. Even if only in a "look we 're balanced, we publish stuff from the wrong side" way

This is such an improvement over their previous comment piece, which included the following egregious quote from a lawyer:

“Above all, in a pluralistic society, which is what we want, you have to accept that people are going to have different views and some people are going to find their colleagues’ views completely obnoxious – but nevertheless protected because freedom of speech is something that … has been really promoted and underlined."

completely overlooking the fact that ETs keep finding these views to be not obnoxious.

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

Holding a gender critical belief is protected, as are the belief that gay people are sinful, that marriage equality is wrong, and that there are differences in intelligence between races, as, I suspect, is climate change denial. However, there are many circumstances in which expressing or acting on those beliefs are discriminatory and grounds for dismissal - for example, misgendering or deadnaming transgender employees or clients.

Employers are going to have to be a lot more careful in future.