Sarcasm makes the point better.

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.

Even the god damn chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission is doing it.

In other words…Maya’s beliefs are evil but she has the right to hold them.

Thanks a lot.

Leaves an opening for the misogynist trans women.

The way so many trans activists campaign against women’s rights and freedoms?

Also the TUC. The TUC ffs! As if there were no women in trade unions!

Also including WOMEN – but the TUC implies that women are the enemy here. Not the bosses, women.

Any resources on misogyny and sexism at work? Anything at all? Hello?

Glosswitch says it.

Take a bow, BBC.

Nailed it.

Just look at the TUC doing exactly the thing Glosswitch said – repositioning feminists as aggressors. The past half century might as well not have happened as far as feminism is concerned.

What, all of them? My bathroom is TINY.

But more seriously – oh fuck off. Ok not so much seriously as angrily. Bathrooms/toilets/restrooms are separated by sex because women don’t want to take their knickers down in the presence of men. It’s not safe. If David Paisely doesn’t know this at his age there is something badly amiss with the inside of his head.

Besides, I don’t say I “love” LGBT+ people. Of course I don’t. I don’t know them all, so how could I say that? Rights and equality have nothing to do with “love.” Rights and equality are general, not personal; they’re universal, not particular. Love is to do with people who know each other.

The BBC is very grudging. Of course it is.

In the initial tribunal employment judge James Tayler concluded that Ms Forstater was “absolutist” in her view and said she was not entitled to ignore the rights of a transgender person and the “enormous pain that can be caused by misgendering”.

The usual shit – accusing us of planning or trying or wanting to ignore the rights of trans people.

Also, “misgendering” is a novel word and concept, and one with some sinister implications.

Ms Forstater said she was “delighted to have been vindicated” but [her former employer] CGD said the decision was a “step backwards for inclusivity and equality for all”.

Amanda Glassman, executive vice president of CGD, said: “The decision is disappointing and surprising because we believe Judge Tayler got it right when he found this type of offensive speech causes harm to trans people, and therefore could not be protected under the Equality Act.

“Today’s decision is a step backwards for inclusivity and equality for all.”

In a video statement, Ms Forstater said: “I’m proud of the role I’ve played in clarifying the law and encouraging more people to speak up”.

Notice how much more space the BBC gave the other party to make their case than it gave to Maya.

Then the analysis, by Dominic Casciani:

Where does this leave employers? Equality and employment law require them to recognise and uphold the rights of all in the workplace.

Ms Forstater’s speech and beliefs are protected – but so are the rights of trans people. And if speech crosses the line from an honestly held belief to bullying, attacks and intimidation, then the scales very obviously tip in favour of protecting the victim.

As if Maya were planning or hoping or campaigning to bully and attack and intimidate people.

I wonder if Mr Casciani is aware that women are sometimes subject to bullying, attacks and intimidation. I wonder if he’s aware that we’re sometimes subject to bullying, attacks and intimidation by trans people and their self-appointed allies.

And when I say “sometimes” I mean constantly.

Lui Asquith, director of legal and policy at Mermaids, a charity that supports transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse children and young people, said: “This is not the win anti-trans campaigners will suggest in the coming days.

“We, as trans people, are protected by equality law and this decision in the Maya Forstater case does not give anyone the right to unlawfully harass, intimidate, abuse or discriminate against us because we are trans.”

Again – nobody is planning to unlawfully harass, intimidate, abuse or discriminate against you, and by the way could you stop doing it to us?

The BBC: institutional capture.

Well THAT’S a massive relief.

Gender critical beliefs are protected under the equality act.

The previous judgement was overturned.

We have to tackle institutional capture.

It went from a day to a month to now a whole fucking season?

What is the 2 in LGBTQ2? Last I saw it was + but now it’s 2?

Anyway…this is a government thing. Not some hopped-up “gender fluid” loony but a government Something, complete with Twitter account that tells people to be respectful or else.

Women have never had a month, let alone a season. All women do is create all human beings, so they don’t matter enough to have more than one day.

Alison Phipps wrote a blog post a month ago to air her smug misogynist shite about “white women’s tears” again. Nothing novel, just the same trendy smearing and hissing, not to mention victim-blaming.

She starts with the murder of George Floyd and Amy Cooper’s calling the cops on Chris Cooper in Central Park, then announces that they’re connected.

These incidents are linked by more than just a moment in time. White women are deeply, and often deliberately, complicit with white supremacist violence, and our complicity usually takes the form of victimhood that appeals to the punitive power of the state. And although her allegation against Christian Cooper was false, Amy Cooper has something in common with mainstream feminist movements that coalesce around genuine victimisation and trauma, such as the recent viral iteration of #MeToo. The focus of these movements tends to be naming and shaming perpetrators and calling for institutional discipline or criminal punishment to get these ‘bad men.’

Oooops! She totally forgot to say how the incidents are linked. Even if she’s right that “White women are deeply, and often deliberately, complicit with white supremacist violence,” she forgot to say what that has to do with the murder of George Floyd – which would have been difficult since the answer is absolutely fucking nothing.

Sorry. I get heated. She really infuriates me with this glib destructive careerist garbage.

My book Me, Not You describes the political dynamics of mainstream white feminism in the core Anglosphere and parts of Europe. It makes a difficult and uncomfortable argument: that this movement, exemplified by #MeToo, not only centres bourgeois white women but also treats other groups as disposable.

It’s not an argument though, it’s just an assertion. She’s a bad writer and a bad thinker and she doesn’t have an argument.

She cites the protests in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everhard.

Yet mainstream demands following Everard’s murder promised more power to the carceral system – calls for the criminalisation of street harassment and for misogyny to become a hate crime.

The demands themselves were unsurprising, but that such carceral feminism persists even after a white woman has allegedly been murdered by a cop shows how deeply mainstream feminism is mired in white supremacy.

Women should just put up with it, I guess.

White women’s experiences of sexual violence enter a world in which ‘protecting white womanhood’ is really about protecting racial capitalism and white supremacy. Because of this, we claim protection that has always been predicated on Black death and the deaths of other marginalised people. Furthermore, although bourgeois white women are not usually subject to state violence, the same white men who purport to protect us from the Others do reserve the right to abuse and kill us themselves.

This is what I mean – there’s no argument there. It’s just saying.

And what it says has now made its way into Oxfam’s staff training. Brilliant.

EXCUSE me?

An Oxfam staff training document says “privileged white women” are supporting the root causes of sexual violence by wanting “bad men” imprisoned.

Sexual violence is…the fault of women?

It seems to me we’ve been here before.

In the wake of sex scandals that have rocked the charity, Oxfam has produced guidance which states that: “Mainstream feminism centres on privileged white women and demands that ‘bad men’ be fired or imprisoned”.

Uh huh. It’s all rich bitches forcing men to rape them so that they can complain to the manager.

Accompanied by a cartoon of a crying white woman, it adds that this “legitimises criminal punishment, harming black and other marginalised people”.

Jesus. I’ve run out of sarcasm.

I can’t find the “training document.” I want to read the whole thing. A search turns up only the Telegraph article and shares of the Telegraph article.

Oxfam says it’s not their guidance and they just want to help staff understand the issues.

However, the charity was warned on Wednesday night that the document, compiled by its LGBT network and seen by The Telegraph, could breach equality laws as it suggests reporting rape is “contemptible”.

The four-week “learning journey” recommends that staff read Me Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism, a book by Alison Phipps, a professor of gender studies at the University of Sussex.

Oh that book. Sure enough, we have been here before. The feminism of people who hate and have contempt for women.

Summarising the book’s central premise, the Oxfam document says white feminists need to ask themselves whether they are causing harm when they fight sexual violence.

It then links to Prof Phipps’s Twitter account and a thread which summarises the main themes of the book, including: “White feminist tears deploy white woundedness, and the sympathy it generates, to hide the harms we perpetuate through white supremacy.”

This is why I loathe Alison Phipps.

Naomi Cunningham, a discrimination and employment law barrister, says the document may breach the Equality Act, which bans harassment in the workplace on the basis of sex.

I wonder if that will make Alison Phipps proud.

The training manual was written after the charity’s LGBT+ network wrote to the leadership team demanding that they publicly support trans people and suggested that any debate about rights was part of a “patriarchal and white supremacist narrative” used by the far right.  

In other words men wrote to the leadership team demanding that they demonize women and order them not to report sexual violence, and accuse them of racism and white tears for good measure. Trans rights are human rights!!

The letter called for specific resources to be made available, adding: “To argue that trans-inclusivity would undermine the vital work we do for women and girls is not only transphobic, but also perpetuates the white saviour complex that assumes that we know best for the people we work with.”

And instead of telling them to fuck right off Oxfam said yes sir yes sir whatever you say sir, women are the worst.

The document produced in the wake of the complaint tells staff that protecting single-sex spaces for women has “contributed to transphobia and undermining of trans rights”.

It says the charity stands “firmly against” any attempt to exclude trans women, adding in an “important context note”: “Oxfam stands actively against any implication that the realization of trans rights and inclusion poses a threat to creating a safe environment for all.”

Now is it clear enough that “trans rights” mean the cancellation of women’s rights?

Ok when sports stars are saying it some people might actually listen.

Save Women’s Sport Australasia has penned an open letter to Minister for Sport Grant Robertson and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern over concerns around the “fairness and safety” of women competing against transgender athletes.

The letter, signed by some of New Zealand’s highest-profile athletes and administrators, has called for Sport New Zealand to urgently extend consultation on its draft document ‘Principles for the Participation of Transgender Players in Sport’ and is seeking the support of Robertson and Ardern to extend the period of consultation while widening its scope.

The letter starts with saying All the Right Things before getting down to it, because of course you have to.

“However, the inclusion of trans women athletes, specifically those who have transitioned after puberty, raises issues of fairness and safety in all sport. And in this context, we believe an important principle of women’s rights has been disregarded in the draft principles.”

It quite obviously has. Belief isn’t necessary.

The open letter reads like a who is who of New Zealand sport with five-time Olympian and gold medallist Barbara Kendall CNZM and MBE, former All Black Jeff Wilson, Professor David Gerrard who has been a New Zealand team doctor and Chef de Mission at the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games plus a Commonwealth Games gold medallist, Boston and New York City Marathon winner Allison Roe MBE, Double Olympic gold medallist Danyon Loader ONZM, former All Blacks, Olympics and Commonwealth Games team doctor Dr Deborah Robinson and two-time Ironman World Championships gold medallist Erin Baker MBE among the 43 names in support of the letter.

Another step.

H/t Rob

It’s interesting how often fundamentalism and exploitation get married and have kids. The NY Times last month:

Federal law enforcement agents descended on a massive temple in New Jersey on Tuesday after workers accused a prominent Hindu sect of luring them from India, confining them to the temple grounds and paying them the equivalent of about $1 an hour to perform grueling labor in near servitude.

Lawyers for the workers said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, a Hindu sect known as BAPS that has close ties to India’s ruling party and has built temples around the world, had exploited possibly hundreds of low-caste men in the yearslong construction project.

The workers, who lived in trailers hidden from view, had been promised jobs helping to build the temple in rural Robbinsville, N.J., with standard work hours and ample time off, according to the lawsuit, a wage claim filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey. The majority are Dalit, the lowest rung in India’s caste system.

Of course they are, and that makes it easy for a fundamentalist Hindu sect to treat them like shit.

They were presented to immigration as skilled workers, but they were treated as…Dalits.

Lawyers for the men, however, said they did manual labor on the site, working nearly 13 hours a day lifting large stones, operating cranes and other heavy machinery, building roads and storm sewers, digging ditches and shoveling snow, all for the equivalent of about $450 per month. They were paid $50 in cash, with the rest deposited in accounts in India, the complaint said.

…

The lawsuit said the men’s passports had been confiscated, and they were confined to the fenced-in and guarded site, where they were forbidden to talk to visitors and religious volunteers. They subsisted on a bland diet of lentils and potatoes, and their pay was docked for minor violations, such as being seen without a helmet, according to the claim.

A diet of lentils and potatoes isn’t just bland, it’s also extremely low in nutrition. And what else? Cheap.

“They thought they would have a good job and see America. They didn’t think they would be treated like animals, or like machines that aren’t going to get sick,” said Swati Sawant, an immigration lawyer in New Jersey who is also Dalit and said she first learned of the men’s plight last year.

She said she secretly organized the temple workers and arranged legal teams to pursue both wage and immigration claims.

…

The organization has strong ties with Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party…

The organization also pledged the equivalent of about $290,000 to Mr. Modi’s most important election promise: building a temple in the city of Ayodhya, where a mosque had stood before Hindu devotees destroyed it in 1992. The destruction of the Babri Mosque set off waves of sectarian violence, and the construction of the temple in Ayodhya is a significant step in the quest by Mr. Modi and his party to shift India from its secular foundations toward a Hindu identity.

And towards an obliteration of Muslim identity, along with Sikh and Jain and so on (which is one reason secularism is so necessary).

Daniel Werner, a lawyer in the wage claim suit, said he believed this could be the first forced-labor case of its scale in the United States since dozens of Thai garment workers were discovered laboring in horrible conditions in El Monte, Calif. in 1995 — a landmark case that helped lead to the creation of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

Same old same old – squeeze the poor to make the rich richer.

Oh good, another “how about injecting bleach to kill the virus?” moment.

Welp, Keir Starmer just threw women under the bus.

At 2:22 he says Labour is committed to updating the GRA to introduce self-declaration for trans people.

Spared punishment for…saying women have vaginas:

A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.

She had argued the difference in strength between the sexes meant it was not fair that women should have to compete against trans women in sport.

Which you’d think would be something everyone knew, and the reason women have their own teams and games and competitions in the first place, but you know…”offensive”…

Ms Keogh, who was supported by the SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC and the Free Speech Union, said she was delighted at the victory but saddened the episode took place.

She said she had been targeted in a “modern day witch hunt” because of her gender critical views and belief in sex-based rights, and accused Abertay of being “needlessly cruel” in dragging on an the investigation for two months during her final year exams. 

She was targeted and she’s far from being the only one. This is the new Social Justice: organized persecution of women for saying that women are women and men are not women.

Keogh continues:

“No woman should face discrimination in the way I have because she believes in sex-based rights.

“I want to say a special thank you to the Free Speech Union for helping me through this stressful time, in particular Fraser Hudghton, the Case Management Director, who has been on hand at all hours to answer my calls and navigate me through this.

“I also want to say a massive thank you to the SNP MP Joanna Cherry who is someone who I look up to. The fact that she had my back throughout gave me the strength to carry on.

Ms Cherry added: “I’m pleased at this outcome. But Lisa should never have been put through this ordeal in the first place and the University should review its free speech and equality policies to make sure that future students are not subject to the stress of spurious complaints nor discriminated against, harassed or victimised for their beliefs.”

And that should go double for “beliefs” as fundamental as the “belief”(actually the knowledge) that men are not women.

Women who are academics can’t really rely on their union, because its secretary is Jo Grady, who…

He feels it in his very BONES.

“You don’t even have bones.”

Well that could change things.

Police forces have been threatened with legal action over their links to Stonewall, amid concerns the controversial charity’s transgender training is impacting their impartiality.

Campaigners have written to chief constables warning they will begin legal proceedings against any force that remains part of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme beyond a “period of consideration”.

I wonder if Police Scotland is having second thoughts.

Some 250 public authorities, including about half of police forces in England and Wales, pay at least £2,500 a year for advice on gender-neutral facilities and pronouns, which leading barristers have said “misrepresents” the 2010 Equality Act.

It’s an odd thing when you think about it. Who are Stonewall to be giving this “advice”? They’re a campaign group, not a collection of legal experts. Campaign groups are a good thing, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily have a kind of expertise that police forces should be paying for.

I also wonder if any women’s group has ever had this kind of ability to tell the police what’s what.

Now in a letter to police chiefs, seen by The Telegraph, former constable Harry Miller has warned forces that their affiliation with Stonewall breaches police rules on political activity and association with groups that could create a conflict of interest.

That’s another way of saying the above. Stonewall aren’t experts but activists; why do cops get training from activists rather than experts? What’s the thinking here?

The Telegraph understands that two forces are currently investigating officers’ use of Twitter accounts to push Stonewall’s trans stance, including one tweet that said it had “reported” users’ comments deemed “hateful” towards trans and non-binary people.

Finally! We’ve been objecting to this pattern for months and months.

The pressure comes as the Ministry of Justice is leading an “exodus” of Government departments from Stonewall, with Justice Secretary Robert Buckland understood to be concerned about its “dubious” training and approach to free speech.

A Stonewall spokesperson said that “organisations come and go” from their Diversity Champions programme, but it is “continuing to grow” with 30 organisations joining in the past year.

They said they are “confident in our advice on the Equality Act” and “very proud” of their work with member companies.

But who made them the boss of anything? Are they accountable to anyone?

Karen Ingala Smith has a more detailed transcript of Benjamin Cohen’s disinformation about what Stonewall is advocating.

Justin Webb: Just on the point about abolishing legal provisions for single sex spaces, do you not accept that it is perfectly acceptable for women to campaign for those single sex spaces and to say that those who have changes sex should not be in them?

Benjamin Cohen…..[Evades question and talks about something else for a few moments]   and goes on to say, over again, it’s a debate about trans issues without a single trans voice being heard

Justin Webb: Hang on, number one, you don’t know anything about me; number two, I asked you a question, would you answer it?

Benjamin Cohen: Sure but, I just, I’ve made a statement, is this a debate about trans issues with no trans voice?

Justin Webb: Yeah, you’ve made your statement, now could you answer the question?

Benjamin Cohen: You made the statement which is that the provisions around who gets access to single sex spaces has changed, that hasn’t changed, the Equality Act was passed in 2010, there’s been no changes to that

Justin Webb: Yeah, hang on, what I’m suggesting is that Stonewall would like to change it, and a lot of women are worried about

Benjamin Cohen: Sorry, you just claimed that but that’s not actually true. So, Stonewall supports self-ID  (Justin Webb : Exactly) which is about, simply about paperwork, so you’ve been able to self-ID for practical purposes for the Equality Act, since 2010,

Justin Webb:  But not for instance to go to a safe space for women, like a women’s refuge, those are protected aren’t they

Benjamin Cohen: (speaking over Justin Webb): yeah, and they continue to be protected.

Justin Webb: And does Stonewall …

Benjamin Cohen: Can you answer me a question, Justin, has Stonewall said that those spaces should be open to trans people, I don’t believe they have

Justin Webb: Well, exactly

Benjamin Cohen: this is the problem,

Justin Webb:  But hang on, I think we agree on this

Benjamin Cohen: It’s such misinformation

Justin Webb:  Hang on,  I think we agree on this in that case because, is it the case, or is it not the case that Stonewall, is campaigning for those safe spaces not to be women only?

Benjamin Cohen: They aren’t campaigning for that, that’s just misinformation being spread by a homophobic and transphobic media, I’m afraid.

Karen then comments:

The thing is, Benjamin, you’re the one that’s not telling the truth here. The extract below shows that Stonewall are campaigning or did campaign for the removal of the protection of women’s single sex spaces. This is from Stonewall’s  submission to Women & Equalities Select Committee Inquiry on Transgender Equality submitted on 27 August 2015. Stonewall’s recommendations included:

““A review of the Equality Act 2010 to include ‘gender identity’ rather than ‘gender reassignment’ as a protected characteristic and to remove exemptions, such as access to single-sex spaces”

She has the screenshot to prove it.