These rococo claims
A win…but how grotesque that there was ever a contest. Frederick Attenborough at the Free Speech Union underlines how grotesque it all is:
A gender critical social worker was harassed by her colleagues after making “non-inclusive and transphobic” comments about a co-worker’s “gender-neutral” dog, a tribunal ruled. Elizabeth Pitt, who worked for Cambridgeshire county council, was awarded £63,000 after bosses reprimanded her for expressing gender critical views at an online meeting.
The background to Ms Pitt’s claim is that she made various comments during a Zoom meeting of the county council’s LGBTQIA+ Group in January 2023. The meeting began with a male colleague claiming that his dachshund was “gender-fluid” and that he put a dress on the dog “to prompt debate about gender”. No doubt feeling that there’s only so much of this sort of thing anyone can reasonably be expected to put up with, Ms Pitt and a lesbian colleague of hers, who was also in attendance, went on the offensive, expressing their belief that sex is binary and immutable, and pointing out that there are two sexes and people cannot change sex.
It was, after all, a meeting for lesbians and gay men. Lesbians ought to be free to say that men are not women in meeting for lesbians and gay men. Wouldn’t you think? But no, apparently that’s too boring now, the only interesting people in LGBT alphabet soup are the ones who claim to be the sex they are not. All make-believe all the time.
The reaction of Ms Pitt’s colleagues to hearing perfectly lawful views that they disagreed with, but were apparently intellectually incapable of rebutting, was to accuse her of “symbolic violence”. One attendee described Ms Pitt as having “a really aggressive tone,” and said he found it “quite inappropriate” that she and her colleague had commented on “transwomen participating in women’s sports and sharing women’s spaces”.
Wawawa. The women are talking. Make them stop. Wawawa.
Following receipt of these rococo claims, the council’s management wrote to Ms Pitt to tell her a “formal concern” had been received in relation to “some views” she had expressed during the Zoom call, which were “perceived to be of an inappropriate and offensive nature”.
It’s “inappropriate” to say that men are not women, so lesbians just have to shut up and take dick it.
Management then prepared a report claiming Ms Pitt’s “comments… were perceived to be non-inclusive and transphobic”, had “caused significant offence”, and had been “particularly inappropriate and ill-judged”. It said they had “a detrimental impact on the mental health and well-being” of the complainants”.
It is not reasonable, or fair, or just, to try to force women to be “inclusive” of men in the category of women.
Four months later, in October 2023, Ms Pitt took the local authority to an employment tribunal, pleading harassment related to sexual orientation and her philosophical belief that gender is immutable.
Her tribunal had been due to commence on Monday 29th July 2024, but after making their former employee wait around for 10 months, Cambridgeshire county council decided to back down at precisely 8:38am on the morning of the hearing. Having accepted liability for direct discrimination on the grounds of Ms Pitt’s gender critical beliefs amounting to a philosophical belief within the meaning of section 10 of the Equality Act 2010, it agreed to pay her compensation.
Hostile work environment much?
Scientific fact, not philosophical belief. I don’t need to tell anyone here, but HUMANS CANNOT CHANGE SEX!
All of which proves two things:
1. Stonewall isn’t a legal authority.
2. Lesbians aren’t to be messed with.
The punishment is the process. Fortunately, at least in the UK, it’s turning out to be an expensive process.
The bit about philosophical belief is because that’s what’s protected in law, cf the Forstater case.
FB: When the process becomes too expensive even for the State, we will probably have to go back to duelling – which seems to be a pretty good match for the underlying psychology in too many such cases and for too many institutional egos.
Even if you bought into the gender goblin nonsense, it’s a bloody dog, whatever concept of gender identity they’d have (no reason to imagine a species without an actual language would have something even analogous) you wouldn’t understand it and it wouldn’t feature a dress. A telepath trying to read a dog’s brain would get a stroke because their thought processes and brain architecture are entirely different.
They equate philosophical beliefs with religious beliefs. They are not the same, but try asking those people what a philosophical belief truly is. You’ll get crickets. What Maya Forstater has is scientific knowledge (see iknklast @1). I suppose it’s good if it’s protected, but scientifc knowledge is what should be protected, and not as a “philosophical belief.” My, but people are daft.
Ophelia is correct in #3, and I can elaborate.
Maya Forstater won her landmark employment case in the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) on Thursday, June 10, 2021. The UK EAT is a high court, so she won a binding precedent for lower court cases (e.g. in the more recent case of Elizabeth Pitt that the FSU reported above).
Later that day, Freddie Sayers interviewed Maya about her case, and Ophelia posted the interview video here. In my comment #6 there, I transcribed part of the video, where Maya explained that her legal position had two parts to be taken together:
(1) The scientific FACT that “sex is real” — as her shorthand for “binary, immutable”, and “a scientific fact”.
(2) Her philosophical BELIEF that “sex matters” — as her shorthand for “it’s a social and political, and economic, salient, important thing.”
In my comments on my transcript, I noted my relief that her legal position did not claim the fact of sex to be a belief. My transcript is a good reference to read her explain this more.
Thank you Dave. That’s very useful.
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