Conflicts how exactly?
The Guardian does a better job than the BBC of giving Maya space comparable to the space it gives a dissenter.
Forstater said of the judgment: “It doesn’t mean the freedom to harass others. That was never what my case was about. Gender-critical beliefs and gender identity beliefs are both protected under the Equality Act and so, too, is lack of belief. No one can be forced to profess a belief that they do not hold, like trans women are women, trans men are men, and [be] punished if they refuse. The judgment means that organisations now need to consider whether their policies, encouraged by trans rights organisations, discriminate against people with gender-critical views.”
Louise Rea, a solicitor at the law firm Bates Wells, which advised the CGD, called the decision “concerning” and “a much narrower interpretation of the previously understood position that a belief which conflicts with the fundamental rights of others will not be protected.
“The EAT’s decision sets the threshold for exclusion so high that it will leave marginalised groups more vulnerable to discrimination and harassment and place employers in an impossible position. Our clients are considering their next steps.”
That’s at least more balanced.
I think Louise Rea’s claim is very odd. What is this “belief which conflicts with the fundamental rights of others” she mentions? How can a belief that men are not women “conflict with the fundamental rights of others”? What is the fundamental right, or what are the rights if there are more than one, that conflict[s] with the belief that men are not women? I can see that it conflicts with the demand that people believe the men are women if they say they are, but that’s not a fundamental right.
We’re clear on this, yes? There is no such thing as a fundamental right to require people to believe a man is a woman.
It’s not a right at all, not even a less than fundamental one. I don’t know how people have managed to convince themselves that it is, apart from the power of endless repetition. It may be a kindness, a generosity, a social nicety – but it’s not a right.
If anything it’s the other way around. It’s perhaps a right of sorts to be free to recognize who is which, because if we can’t, we swiftly run into problems. We already know we have a legal right to separate spaces, which is exactly the right the trans activists are trying to take away. They can’t both be rights – the right to recognize who is a man, and the right to force us to pretend not to recognize who is a man.
So no, I really don’t see how our “belief” that men are men conflicts with any fundamental rights of others.
It goes like this:
1.) If transwomen are women, then they have a right to be acknowledged and treated as women.
2.) Transwomen are women.
3.) Therefore, they have a right to be acknowledged and treated as women.
That’s logical. Affirming the antecedent. Modus Ponens.
1.) Transwomen are women.
2.) Therefore, Transwomen are women.
A=A. More logic.
That’s TWO logical arguments!
Sastra, I suppose the circularity of your second argument is not really an argument against the logic of TWAW? Using a circular argument just proves beyond a doubt that TWAW, right?
Exactly. It’s logic so simple, that Maya Forstater simply must have been motivated by hatred in order to ignore it. Sort of like atheists looking at the sun while denying it exists.
Yeah, I do that every day, at least once. Probably why my eyesight isn’t very good and I need strong glasses.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t she saying that a man professing to be a woman is a belief which isn’t protected, because it conflicts with the fundamental right of women to have single-sex spaces?
I don’t think so, because she’s quoted as the dissenting view.
I understand that she was dissenting, but if she really did say the sentences quoted, and nothing further to clarify, surely that is very much the implication?
As far as I can tell she’s referring to the “protected” belief that trans people are what they say they are.
I believe TTW is saying that the same argument, in those exact words, can be used to say that “a belief (e.g. TWAW) which conflicts with the fundamental rights of others (e.g. women’s rights to single-sex spaces) will not be protected”. It’s a consequence, unintended, of the principle Rea is setting out.
Thank you, Sackbut, for translating my sleepy late-night comment into coherent English! That is exactly what I meant, but (it seems) largely failed to convey.