Suzanne Moore on that ruling:

What a huge amount of time, money and, for Maya Forstater, unimaginable anxiety it has taken to establish that she should not be sacked for believing simply that biology is real.

For knowing what we all knew until 5 minutes ago, when we received strict orders to stop believing it.

At a time when the scales are falling from people’s eyes about just how campaigners such as Stonewall operate, Fortstater’s win is cheering for all of us. I was never sacked for my gender critical beliefs but I was certainly made to feel that my workplace had become a hostile environment. How many people are labouring under the same pressure?

Approximately way too many.

For it is mostly women who are losing jobs and being abused if they do not accept extreme trans ideology. This week, after a two month “probe” by Abertay University, a Scottish law student called Lisa Keogh was finally cleared of “wrongdoing“ after saying that “women have vaginas”. Her classmates reported this as an offensive comment. Marion Millar, another gender-critical feminist, was recently arrested and charged by police in Scotland for her tweets.

And a judge forced Maria MacLachlan to call the man who punched her at Speakers’ Corner “she.”

The road back is long and twisty.

Death threats.

Metro Vancouver says yeah!

Our “pronouns” will be was/were.

Much progressive.

Updating to add screenshot:

Well…

Assuming “1940s Germany” is meant to suggest Germany 1940-45 as opposed to Germany 1945-50, I have to say well but what about the fact that Germany 1940-45 was engaged in genocide as well as global total war with casualties in the millions? What about that part? I’m not seeing that happen to trans people, or anything resembling it, or anything that looks as if it could possibly if left alone over a long time end up resembling that.

To put it more crisply, I’m not seeing the persecution.

Not seeing you as you see yourself is not persecution. It’s the universal human condition, and it’s not persecution, it’s just how things are. We all look different from the inside as opposed to the outside. That’s just how “inside” and “outside” work.

People who see this tweet will think of Willoughby as the person who composed this tweet. That’s not everybody else’s fault, it’s Willoughby’s.

H/t Dave Ricks

Maybe it’s nature’s desperate last gasp effort to get us to stop destroying the planet – convince enough of us that we don’t know the difference between female and male and surely the birth rate will plummet.

Holding on to it like an exposed lie, you mean.

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.