Some helpful Mumsnetter posted the quote from relevant paragraphs from the Bench Book earlier in the threads and I'm beginning to develop a theory. Apologies for the lenghty post but its burning up my brain and I need to download and share!
I think the J will have had some Stonewall induced training within the last decade. He probably didn't pay too much attention but has become used to certain trans activist-enforced behaviour in the work-place, and through discussions with family and colleagues. He hasn't thought about things too much since, and certainly not at all from the perspective of women, and he accepts uncritically the 'be kind' instruction as it seems reasonable to him, and he is trained to find the reasonable position.
I think he takes pride in his professionalism and so reviewed the guidance in the Bench Book but then he didn't apply any critical thinking to it. Instead, he took its surface message as a need to be kind to transwomen witnesses. Again, he did not think about it from the women's perspective and did not think about sex accurate pronouns being a necessary aspect of the case before him now because there are no allegations of rape or sexual harassment. Ie he only gave the guidance a surface read.
I think Judges gossip like everyone else in the world and NC kicking arse will not being going down well. Not only is she kicking J arse regularly but she is winning regularly. Not only is she kicking J arse regularly and winning regularly she will go to appeal if the J needs his/ her arse kicked further. I think he has taken agin her because he is a misogynist at heart (but doesn't think he is) and thinks she's a bisim (Scottish term) and he has been influenced by backroom gossip. He will have laughed with colleagues about the introduction of the imaginary Pete. He will have paid attention to the furore around Kemp and has persuaded himself that the women need taking down a peg or two and he is the man to do it. He will be congratulating himself that he will be better than Kemp.
He doesn't see why there is any reasonable position against 'just be kind'.
By asking for his reasons for the gender neutral language instruction, NC is putting him on notice that she is preparing to kick his arse.
He didn't think she would kick his arse because he has all the arrogance of a man who has been in charge and not sufficiently questioned...probably ever. It has made him pay a bit more attention because he doesn't want his arse kicked.
He realises he hasn't thought it through sufficiently well, just thought be kind was reasonable, and so has given himself time to re-read the guidance over the weekend and cobble something together that does not admit a fuck-up on his part but which works within the guidance to the degree that NC won't have an opp to kick his arse. There can be no other reasonable explanation for him not to explain his reasons right away and to keep delaying the written instructions NC has requested.
I also think within his original mindset he genuinely believed that women, on the whole, are transphobes (as set out by the TRAS) and that the witness is being generally discriminated against and has come into the case willing to look for proof of some level of harassment.
I think he has been taken aback by the distinction between the poor, confused, ill-treated traumatised snowflake of the WS and the confident, articulate, intelligent and arrogant witness in person. I think he had made an assumption he would be meeting a delicate effeminate man, who had been quite cruelly disregarded, and would have been all sympathy. He had decided this in advance, and it took a while for him to register that ST was actually something very different than he had imagined and there is a significant dissonance between the person and the claims.
I think the J is experienced enough to be realising that he might have been sold a dummy, but it took him a while to get there because the legal clusterfuck around paperwork and disclosure masked it. ST as a witness was hidden behind the chaos and so the J became even more persuaded that this witness needed a gentle and caring hand, something Elspeth wouldn't need because although none of us has seen her WS yet there is no doubt she will come across as rational, intelligent and capable. Very far from the damaged snowflake ST wrote about in his WS and so not requiring the care the J thought ST needed and deserved. That all fed into his decision re gender neutral language.
But after the first day of questioning, I think he became a bit discombobulated by the dissonance between tone of WS and actual ST. It has slowly been dawning on him instead that this is a witness suffering from narcissism and a need for control, that there are deeper issues behind the claims of being trans that are being ignored by the TRA movement – and that the web Stonewall spun has been like a drug he has become addicted to beyond all reason.
DEFRA have countered the coming scrutiny from the off by attempting to ensure ST was given every accommodation he asked for, and more, and has had to be checked by the HR team who are more au fait with actual equalities and the need for balance than many in management roles. They will have been paying attention to the number of ETs won by women and will be trying to play both sides in terms of process. Balance has to be found somewhere and they are not sure how to get rid of the legacies of Stonewall bias and prejudice but what their awareness of scrutiny means is that the J doesn't have an easy place to go in his judgment (lots more to hear yet of course).
He can't just avoid the credibility issue of ST by laying his judgment at the door of a failure of process. I suspect that was why he was so keen to know if ST had asked for a further appeal rather than an appeal review and been refused. If ST had asked and been refused there would be wriggle room for a judgment around process. ST's answers to his questions also revealed a further lack of credibility with regard to ST (I wouldn't have known the difference/ I did know the difference equation).
I think the J's questions are all about trying to find wriggle room for a judgment around process that will mean he does not have to engage with the issue of sex at all.
I think he completely underestimated the intelligence of Elspeth and NC, nor how committed NC would be to accuracy.
I think he will be spending the weekend thinking how not to get his arse kicked. I don't think he thought he would lay himself open to that in the way he has.
It reminds me of the Sara Morrison case where the panel could not really have anticipated the evidence NC managed to expose around the complaints being made up, for example. No reasonable judge would have anticipated that being at all likely from a well-respected arts organisation. I suspect that ET judge is in a similar quandary: how to protect their own reputation ie how to skirt over many of the ridiculously stupid presumptions (and also Professor anyone?) but also prevent getting emboiled in the debate. I suspect they have also desperately looking to find around process rather than engage with witness credibility. ]
Anyhoo, thanks for the brain dump space in amongst so very many interesting takes and viewpoints.