A particularly interesting case
A feminist barrister has been attending Maya Forstater’s tribunal and livetweeting it; Thread Reader has stitched it together.
I’m at the Employment Tribunal this morning to watch closing submissions for the #MayaForstaterCase2019. It’s a particularly interesting case on whether a) gender critical beliefs and / or b) a belief in innate gender identity are protected philosophical beliefs.
Does there have to be a belief in innate gender identity in order for absence of belief to be protected? Possibly not, say the judge and counsel for the Respondent (employer)
Respondent kicks off with the assertion that MF’s beliefs fail on Grainger 5: that they are incompatible with human dignity.
She explains Grainger later on. Meanwhile, note the claim that it’s incompatible with human dignity to fail to believe that men can become women. I think you could make a case that it’s the other way around – that if you think sex is that fungible, that easy to swap, that loosely worn – then we become something more like dolls than complex beings with biology and history and life experience. I don’t particularly want to make that case (because it’s beside the point, for one thing), but I would if the law started telling us we have to believe the “you can change sex at will” nonsense.
She argues that MF’s belief in biological sex do not reach a minimum level of coherence to satisfy Article 9 (freedom of belief). Many beliefs fit this category – eg an architect who refused to sign up to architect association, anti-vaccination, someone who wanted to marry an underage girl, refusal to wear a seatbelt. None of these were protected by Art 9 and she argues that MF’s belief in biological sex is in the same category.
The architect is a wild card; I don’t see how that fits so let’s ignore it (no doubt it was explained in the hearing). The other three have to do with harms to others – definite, clear, specifiable harms. The harms that result from failure to believe that men can become women are not like that at all – they’re notional, projected, guessed-at, attributed. One can argue that the harms of sexism and racism are like that too, but on the other hand women and brown people are real, while the designation “trans” points to something unreal.
Counsel for Respondent says almost all of MF’s beliefs stray into Art 9(2) territory – not protected because they are offensive in a democratic society, and should be suppressed for protection and freedom of trans women.
Let’s be charitable about the word “offensive” here; let’s read it as meaning “an offense to a democratic society because the basis of unjust discrimination” as opposed to merely referring to worked-up outrage. Even then, is it true? It’s not true if you don’t consider it unjust discrimination to fail to believe that men become women by saying so. I don’t think we have to accept other people’s accounts of themselves in every particular in order to treat them as equals and deserving of respect.
Jumping ahead:
Comparison to anorexia is an odious view. Anorexics are ill, while trans people are trying to make the outside match the inside. Can’t be a protected view.
In x-x MF insisted that Pips Bunce is male, even though in fact he is gender-fluid. [pronoun counsel’s own, if I heard that correctly]
Oops. How odious.
In x-x she also said she would not accept a panel made up of men and trans women was a mixed panel, and that demonstrates the absurdity of her beliefs. They are not worthy of respect in a democratic society bc that panel would be legally mixed.
Ah yes, how “absurd” for women to believe that a panel made up of men, some of whom called themselves women, was a panel made up of men. What possible reason could we have to object to such an arrangement, and to the insistence that we have to believe the claims behind it ourselves, and endorse them, and say nice things about them?
This is outright insane. Science, biology… do not reach a minimum level of coherence. This has to be the most bizarre trial outside of Kafka.
Maya Forstater is trying to get legal protection to express: 1) Her belief that sex is immutable, and 2) Her lack of belief in gender identity. But the law requires that a belief (or a lack of belief) must be “old” (going back many years).
On #1, Forstater testified earlier that her beliefs about sex go back to her childhood education. So far, so good.
But on #2, gender identity is new, so her lack of belief in gender identity is “young” and therefore not protected. Gotcha!!
Anorexia was exactly the comparison I come back to every time… Reinforcing people’s untrue beliefs about themselves is not ok.
And what can trans(women) people be if not ill? Their gender identity isn’t consistent with their bodies, therefore something must be wrong with them even if you accept their delusions.
Seriously? That seems a bit…screwed up…to me. Beliefs change with evidence and age, and to expect that all the beliefs I have that are protected must be going back many years (how many? I suppose that would differ for a 14 year old and a 54 year old) is to suggest that there is something wrong with changing your mind based on changing life experiences, changing knowledge, and simply a society changing. A belief that slavery is bad goes back all my life, but what if I were brought up in the south, and only recently left the insular bubble my parents had wrapped around me? Does that mean that my belief that slavery is bad could not be protected?
I believe that Twitter is a cesspool. I base this on the s**t I see floating in it. I have not had this belief for many years, because (1) Twitter has not been around for ‘many’ years; and (2) I had little knowledge of Twitter for the largest part of it’s existence. So my belief could not be said to be “old” or going back many years.
And what about a newly minted Christian who sincerely, deeply, completely believes in their born-again status? Is this not a protected belief? Or does the fact that Christianity goes back “many years” automatically confer protection, even though the individual may have rejected it until recently?
It’s incoherent to believe that sex is linked to anatomy? Incoherent? I understand that you can think that view is wrong. But I don’t even know what it means to say it’s incoherent. It’s easily understandable, it doesn’t contradict itself, its terms are plain. It’s so coherent it’s boring and commonplace.
(Is coherence being used in some arcane technical sense here?)
So it doesn’t matter how long you have believed something as long as the thing you don’t believe is new?
I believe I’m a giraffe. But only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
But isn’t that exactly what someone suffering from anorexia is doing? Trying to make the outside match the inside version of themselves? The problem in both instances is that there is a disconnection between the “inside view” and reality. In one it’s an “illness”, in the other, proof of being Brave and Stunning.
Is Bunce’s “gender fluidity” in fact a fact? I just see a man who sometimes likes to wear dresses. That doesn’t make him “not a man.”
The most chilling of the quotes. It’s the very legality of that “mixedness” that is what’s being called into question. THE LAW IS AN ASS. The proof of that is the claim that a panel of men and trans identified men constitutes a mixed panel. Here’s an instance where acceding to the linguistic demands of TRAs masks reality. Because trans “women” are not, in fact, women. Letting them appropriate the term “woman” wins them half the battle. I don’t give a shit if “trans identified male” is not the correct, favoured usage. It’s an ACCURATE description of REALITY. They are males who identify as trans. It does not make them women, any more than my claim to be a stapler would make me a useful thing for connecting bits of stationery, however sincerley held or vociferously declared, and however many staples I load myself with. They are not women, and such a panel would not be in any way “mixed” with regards to sex. This counsel is on the wrong side of “absurdity.”
It’s all just incredibly, chillingly, enragingly bonkers, isn’t it.
It is at a very basic level rather odd that an empirical claim is being adjudicated on the basis of protection of beliefs.
But Omar, if you’ve only heard about the belief that you’re actually a pterodactyl today, then you can have no long-standing belief that you’re not.
Papito,
Now see what you’ve done..? Forced me to reconsider my identity.
I’m going to take this to the UN.
Omar, at least it’ll be quicker now that you can fly.