Incompatible with human dignity
Kathleen Stock on the judge’s ruling in Maya Forstater’s case:
Today, an UK employment tribunal judge ruled that the belief that biological sex is immutable, and that it is impossible to change one’s sex, is “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”.
He writes: “I do not accept the Claimant’s contention that the Gender Recognition Act produces a mere legal fiction. It provides a right, based on the assessment of the various interrelated convention rights, for a person to transition, in certain circumstances, and thereafter to be treated for all purposes as the being of the sex to which they have transitioned.” Please note: all purposes. The judge has therefore apparently ruled that there are no contexts whatsoever in which it may be permissibly denied that a person with a gender recognition certificate is the sex they say they are.
In other words in the UK people are required by law to agree that men are women if they say they are.
This judge has concluded that nothing illegal happened when Maya Forstater lost employment at the Centre for Global Development for stating these beliefs. The precedent is now set, and a message sent to UK employees: don’t express the view that people can’t change sex. Your job will not be protected if you do.
That is, for stating beliefs that contravene the judge’s ruling.
As I say, I am a professor of philosophy and I share Maya’s belief. I think it is perfectly true. My grounds are summarised in this short article. I have also written about why this belief qualifies as a philosophical belief.
I too share the belief that biological sex is immutable and that it is impossible to change it. In addition I believe that humans can’t become giraffes or geckos or hummingbirds. Go ahead, fire me.
Over the past year and a half, I have encountered many academics and public figures who have scornfully dismissed my and others’ claims that women, in particular, are losing their legal capacity to discuss what they see as their distinctive nature and interests, in certain important political contexts. This is happening because of well-funded lobbying groups like Stonewall, and their incredible reach on institutions and employers (including Universities).
We all know it’s the mantra, the mandatory imposed enforced mantra: trans women are women, trans women are women, trans women are women. It’s forbidden to deny or question that, and punishment for doing so is instant and harsh. This is ironic because women have never enjoyed that kind of swift and forceful solidarity, but for men who decide they are women it’s there at the flip of a switch. It’s almost as if men get better treatment than women do, and that remains true even after they decide they are women, it remains true even as they bully women for not agreeing that they are women just as the women they are bullying are, only better. Can you say “entitlement”?
Stonewall explicitly yet tendentiously interpret the Equality Act as saying that organisations should allow transwomen into every single space where women are present, and into every single resource already specially devoted to women.
Because trans women are women, trans women are women, trans women are women. Now do you understand?
Kathleen calls on philosophers to stand up.
I therefore call upon the British Philosophical Association, all learned Philosophical societies in the UK, and all British academic philosophers working in UK departments, to stand up and say out loud — or better, write it down where members of the public can read it: people should be legally permitted to believe that biological sex is immutable and cannot be changed, without fear of losing their jobs. You are philosophers. This is your moment. If not now, then when?
This is something Spinoza and Bruno would recognize. That’s what makes it so ironic that PZ is so far gone on this issue. He can’t recognize dogma when he sees it, at least if it doesn’t come bearing an obvious god. You must believe what I say you believe.
Imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
Doesn’t it though.
This is just batshit crazy, the sort of stuff that makes people take Jordan Peterson seriously – he has been ranting for years that this would happen in Canada (it hasn’t), and generally speaking his views have been disproven. This judge has taken all but the last step of criminalizing a basic disagreement.
But biological sex is
notimmutable. You can’t legislate reality. Reality doesn’t care what you believe. It doesn’t care what you feel, what bits you get lopped off or added on, what hormones and drugs you pump yourself full of. It doesn’t care what your preferred pronouns are.E pur si muove.
@YNnB: Looks like you have a renegade “not” in there.
@Naif: I was actually just thinking about how everyone was telling Jordan Peterson he was being nothing more than a paranoid alarmist vis a vis compelled speech. And now … Well, broken clocks.
Yes, a renegade not… sigh.
Naif, Nullius, I have a colleague who is willing to believe that since Jordan Peterson is right about trans, we must listen to him about all other things – particularly women and lobsters.
I suppose it is fortunate that although my boss is an idiot, he is also me and I’m unlikely to fire myself. Again. Of course, all views are mine and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
This is so worrying in and of itself, “a boot stamping on a human face forever” indeed. And it’s also deeply worrying because who can say what’s next? Can anyone with a sufficiently bullying tone warp what’s legislated as reality to their will? Or does the face being stamped on have to be a female one? I rather suspect it does.
I have no idea what Peterson thinks about lobsters.
Naif:
Peterson believes that since lobster nervous systems react to human antidepressant drugs, lobsters are analogous in every way to humans, particularly when it comes to selecting mates. Therefore human women should behave as female lobsters do. Not the living in the sea part, you understand, just the bits that happen to roughly match the way Peterson wants women to behave.
Peterson’s stated position on lobsters:
* lobsters naturally develop hierarchies of power
* therefore it is reasonable to believe that hierarchies exist in human societies as more than the result of systems of oppression
* therefore it is reasonable to doubt the claim that all hierarchies are bad and stifle human flourishing
* humans tend to arrange themselves according to hierarchies of competence
* humans tend to do better when their mates are more competent rather than less competent
* this hierarchical mating selection in humans is analogous to that in lobsters
God, I hate defending Jordan Peterson.
What the actual fuck? He reasons from lobsters?!? I did not need any additional reasons to think Peterson is a loon as it was, but that is next level.
*Sulk* – my explanation was better.
The problem with Peterson’s lobster analogy is that he appealed to evolution without understanding it.
He originally claimed that, since even lobsters form hierarchies, the human tendency to form hierarchies is obviously very ancient–in fact dates back to our most recent common ancestor with the lobster, before we were human.
Problem is, our MRCA with lobsters was likely a wormish creature that didn’t form hierarchies.
*
His basic point was cromulent enough if he was just responding to woke college kids who insisted that evil Western colonial imperialists invented human hierarchies for their own nefarious blah blah.
It’s surely a natural tendency, and probably began very early in our lineage. But we didn’t inherit it from our MRCA with lobsters, and it was foolish of him to bring them into it. (He also babbled about serotonin, because apparently it has something to do with the dominance strivings of our lobster friends. But serotonin works differently in humans and lobsters.) (Whodathunkit?)
Also see too the appeal to nature fallacy.
One strange thing about the criteria for protection is that recency of belief acquisition apparently matters. If the fact that my belief is recently formed disqualifies it for protection, then that is frightening. It declares that every new convert and apostate alike must shut their filthy whore mouths. I can’t get on board with that.
No new thoughts allowed!
Gee, what does that sound like, I wonder.
If the recency of a belief makes it invalid, then why are we favoring the belief that men can be women just by saying so? Or by putting on a dress? Or dying their hair pink? That is not a long standing human view (I know, I know, two spirit and all that, but I think from what I’ve read that is somewhat different than what the trans community would actually like it to be).
That’s where the critical-theory born, revisionist history comes into play. The notion of binary sex is an invention of white colonialists!