Maya Forstater on gender fluid people in the workplace:

The case of Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover has been trumpeted as a “landmark”  employment tribunal decision recognising that people who identify as non-binary or gender-fluid can be covered by the Equality Act protected characteristic of “gender reassignment”.  

The case concerns Mr/Ms Taylor, a man who began to wear women’s clothing to work in 2017 as part of a process of exploring his gender.

It makes me feel tired already. Work is work, it’s not therapy, it’s not your living room, it’s not a place to “explore” your anything. Do your exploring and navel-gazing and self-actualizing and diary-keeping and mirror gazing on your own time, away from the job and your bosses and above all your fellow workers, who have other things to do and don’t want to have to spend their time and attention on your Journey.

The Equal Treatment Benchbook, which guides judges’ conduct, says:

It is important to respect a person’s gender identity by using appropriate terms of address, names and pronouns.

It isn’t though. It isn’t important. It’s trivial. People have been shouting and screaming it into importance over the past 10 or 20 years, but that’s what people do; in reality it isn’t important, it’s silly. It’s just silly. It’s like saying it’s important to respect a person’s Star Wars identity by using appropriate terms of address, names and pronouns. It’s treating adults like very young children, and playing along with them.

But what if following this guidance means the court loses sight of reality itself? 

What indeed.

Jaguar Land Rover is a male dominated company.  Women make up 1 in 10 of the workforce. With 50,000 staff in the West Midlands, it is the region’s largest employer. Sean Taylor had worked at Jaguar Land Rover as an engineer for 20 years.  He was based at Gaydon – a complex with some 13,000 staff; the size of a small town. In the building where he worked there were over 1,000 people. 

The case against Jaguar Land Rover was that in not protecting him from colleagues’ comments, and asking him at one point to use the accessible unisex toilets, they engaged in a course of harrassment and discrimination. 

Harassment in the Equality Act is defined as “unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, and which has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”.

I wonder how many women dealt with unwanted conduct of that kind at Jaguar Land Rover. I wonder how much time anyone spent fixing that problem.

There was a big issue about the toilets. Which oh which oh which toilets to use.

On 16 July 2017 Taylor wrote to HR saying he was not sure what the toilet arrangements should be.

On 19 September 2017 Taylor sent an email to a manager, saying: “I don’t know what toilet to use, I raised this three times with no progress over six weeks. I spoke to HR twice about moving as part of the transition at work, but this was ignored.”

How about using the same ones you’ve been using for 20 years? That way you won’t be bothering the women in their toilets – or maybe you don’t care about that. Maybe it’s all about you and your “exploring.”

Finally, following on from the grievance meeting there were a series of discussions between local management and HR, and it was decided to allow Taylor to use whatever toilets he wanted on any given day…

Ah that’s great. And if any women on any given day don’t want to use a toilet with him in it well that’s just tough shit, isn’t it. It always is.

The tension between the exception applied to Taylor and the general rules of the company quickly became a  problem.  Taylor complained that the women’s toilets were locked (with a code) in some locations to avoid vandalism, and this caused him stress. He was concerned that trying to gain access to the women’s toilets would involve “difficult conversations with local staff”.

He was apparently not, however, concerned that trying to gain access to the women’s toilets would be unpleasant for the women who needed them.

The employment tribunal was keen on grand gestures – comparing Taylor to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, and rewriting history so that the events it considered appear to relate to a woman called Rose, rather than a man called Sean. They refer to Taylor, a man in his 40s, as a “poster girl for LGBT+ rights”. 

So much more interesting and glamorous than mere boring women, who are just women. Yawn.

They are less keen on the idea of occupational health support for Taylor’s mental health issues, including self-harm and suicidal ideation, saying these were only the symptoms. They diagnose the way Taylor was treated by colleagues as the cause of his distress, apparently without the benefit of any expert evidence.

It is notable that Taylor began the “social transition” to dress in women’s clothing at work without any diagnosis, or medical or psychological support. His mental health seriously deteriorated. A therapist might have been able to better prepare him; helping him to anticipate how colleagues might respond, and supporting him to develop resilience strategies for when those responses did not align with his inner world.

The tribunal’s enthusiasm for playing along with the fantasy meant that it failed to consider the practical dilemma faced by Jaguar Land Rover, namely, where there was a mismatch between Mr Taylor’s self-perception and material reality, what exactly should the company have done to protect him from feeling distress at how others perceived him? What rules should it have communicated to all employees? 

And even more basically, why should a workplace play along with one employee’s fantasy (at the expense of all the other employees) in the first place? Why has this whole idea of playing along with the fantasy of “becoming a woman” taken over so completely? It’s definitely not a general rule that employers and workers have to play along with other workers’ fantasies on the job. Why is this one fantasy treated so differently? Massive social pressure is one reason, but why isn’t there more resistance to the massive social pressure?

Maybe someday people will start to notice how damn silly it all is.

Republicans continue the effort to break what’s left of democracy in the US.

Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and nine other Republican US senators or senators-elect said on Saturday they will reject presidential electors from states where results are contested by Donald Trump’s campaign, “unless and until [an] emergency 10-day audit is completed”.

Which is anti-democracy, because they’re “contested” because Trump wants to steal the election. It’s like going into someone else’s house and screaming “This house is mine!!!” and then announcing that the ownership of the house is contested.

Cruz and Johnson were joined in issuing a statement on Saturday by Senators James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Mike Braun (Indiana).

Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Roger Marshall (Kansas), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) and Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) also signed on.

“The election of 2020,” they said, “like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.”

There again – the allegations are bogus. They’re just Trump screaming “This election is mine!!!”

Regardless, the senators said Congress “should immediately appoint an electoral commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.”

The senators made reference to the most direct precedent for their demand, the contested election of 1876, which ended in the appointment of such a commission.

“We should follow that precedent,” the Republicans said.

Many well-informed voices would suggest that would be a bad idea, given that process led to a political deal which put an end to the process of Reconstruction and led to the institution of racist Jim Crow laws across the formerly slave-owning south

Unfortunately that’s what they like about it.

In August, the Pulitzer-winning historian Eric Foner told the Guardian: “The election of 1876 would not have been disputed at all if there hadn’t been massive violence in the south to prevent black people from voting and voter suppression like we have today. Now, voter suppression is mostly legal.”

Presciently, given claims by Trump and his supporters that mail-in voting used under a pandemic was widely abused by Democrats, he added: “Today, I can certainly see the Trump people challenging these mail-in ballots: ‘They’re all fraudulent, they shouldn’t be counted.’ Challenging people’s voting.”

Yay, we’ve gone back to 1876 and the murder of Reconstruction.

It started earlier. It started Thursday.

Too many of you fail to rage daily about transphobia when as everyone knows it’s BY FAR the most urgent brand of phobia in the entire world. Fear and hatred of women, of infidels, of other races, of immigrants, of workers, of lesbians and gays, of foreigners, of Jews, of socialists, of witches – all those are trivial compared to transphobia.

And of course by transphobes he means not people who harass others in public places, but people who disagree with the truth claims about men who say they are women and women who say they are men.

I doubt that he has the power to make gender skeptics unwelcome anywhere he works (how would he even go about that?), but the fact that he says it is ugly enough.

BLOCK EVERYONE. Just to be on the safe side.

Dominic Berry is (according to his profile) a historian and philosopher of science.

Yeesh. He cares so much that he goes to the trouble of figuring out how many of his followers also follow Nigel, and he then tries to use that knowledge as a cudgel to convince them to stop following Nigel. I in that situation would of course stop following the dictatorial intrusive cudgel-waver instead. I would first tell him off for being so intrusive and dictatorial.

And this goon is a philosopher.

Ah good, they’re doing that very thing.

“You must choose! You must choose between following Warburton or following me!”

“Ok bud, that’s an easy one.”

Updating to add:

Hilarious. On the one hand stop following Warburton this instant, and I know who you are so don’t think you can escape, and oh also please tell me what he says about me kthxbye.

First,

Next,

A couple of weeks ago,

So it’s “taking sides” to congratulate Kathleen Stock on an honour, but it’s not taking sides to congratulate Sophie Grace Chappell on finishing a book and promote the book and a talk Sophie Grace gives on the book. The tweet congratulating Kathleen Stock must be taken down, but the tweets promoting Sophie Grace Chappell’s book and talk and congratulating her for finishing the book must remain.

Why?

Allison Bailey is deeply unimpressed by Judith Butler.

Feminist “icon” Judith Butler is shitting on women from a great height. Very iconic.

It is. It’s stunningly disgusting.

Party? What party?

Guests who paid four-figures for tickets to President Donald Trump’s annual New Year’s Eve party were left to party with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, his two adult sons and various figures from the conservative media — none of whom wore masks — after the President made a last-minute decision to ditch the event and return to Washington.

No refunds, folks. In fact, kindly donate another four figures, or why not make it five, to my campaign to remain president for all eternity and to buy more ice cream for me.

No official explanation for the President’s early departure from Mar-a-Lago was given, though he remains consumed with efforts to overturn the election results and tensions are ratcheting up in the Persian Gulf ahead of the one-year anniversary of the US killing of Iran’s top general.

Peasants don’t get explanations. Peasants give money to Trump.

Without the President as the centerpiece, the wattage of Thursday evening’s party was somewhat dimmer. Performers whose heyday came decades ago — Vanilla Ice and Berlin — performed from the ballroom’s main stage. Guests angled for selfies with Giuliani, who was wearing a blue velvet tuxedo jacket, and Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro, along with personalities from the right-wing television network OANN.

In short, it was excruciating. (I can’t say I think Trump’s presence would have made it better though.)

But hey Don 2 and Eric were there with their squeezes, and Tiffany was around somewhere. Princess Ivanka and Prince Pencilneck were no-shows – probably snuggling on the sofa reading novels about rich people.

The tables were set for ten people, with no social distancing. Dinner was beef with cheese tortellini and Trump “wedge” salad. Sounds like a Denny’s, but whatever.

The President had been expected to attend as late as Wednesday. But by the evening, word had emerged that he and the first lady would be departing early the next day. Trump remained largely out of sight at his club during his stay as he fixated on the election results and the January 6 effort to delay certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

In other words he was watching tv and shouting.

Also –

But on the other hand –

So a white woman saying she’s black is still bad, but men saying they’re women is awesome and anyone who says otherwise is “dehumanising.”

Why? What’s the difference between the two?

Also –

That last sentence in particular – I wonder about it. It’s typical enough, and I wonder about it. She “chooses her trans siblings every second of every day over others.” Why? It’s typical in the prioritization, and I wonder why it is. It implies that trans people are the most oppressed, the most in need of friends and allies and support of all kinds, the most deserving of solidarity. Why? Why is that? Why such intensification, such first-putting, such passion?

It’s not a trick question; I have no idea what the answer is. I don’t understand it. There are many millions of people in this world in far more dire straits than trans people in the UK and the US – refugees fleeing gang violence, famine victims, Uighurs being tormented in camps in China, girls subject to violence and forced marriage in all too many places, people battling floods or droughts, workers in chicken plants in South Dakota, and on and on. Being trans does not seem as desperate as any of that, does it?Judging by the Twitter activists, for a lot of people it’s just a “lifestyle choice,” and a way to annoy the parents.

Why does anyone “choose” them over everyone else?

It’s an enigma.

The bit where they said it and the bit where they took it back.

The answer seems to be:

Except that’s not how that works, is it.

This William Clare Roberts fella wrote a long blog post in May 2019 responding to that Medium piece by a bunch of pesky feminist women.

This is a response to the essay published on Medium yesterday by Sophie Allen, Jane Clare Jones, Holly Lawford-Smith, Mary Leng, Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, and Kathleen Stock.

He doesn’t link to the essay itself, which is bad form.

I am not a woman. I am not trans. I am a feminist – my earliest conversion experience was reading Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon. I love very dearly a little trans girl who I hope grows up in a world where she is safe and free, or at least has a righteous and fierce community of people fighting at her side for safety and freedom. 

That is, a little boy, who is apparently being raised by people who subscribe to the dogma, which could make for a bumpy future for him.

3. ‘You want to reduce women to their genitalia, or to womb-possession’.“None of us,” the authors maintain, “hold a view according to which either a woman or a female is defined as such by her current possession of a particular configuration of genitalia, womb, or any other single primary sex characteristic, for that matter. … In the light of this, the correct question should be, not ‘Do we ‘reduce’ women to their genitalia, or wombs?’ but ‘Do we ‘reduce’ women to a cluster of primary sex characteristics?’”

I disagree. The real question is actually this: how do we police women? When and how do we – in our social and political arrangements and institutions – stop people and ask them if they are “really” women or not? The authors are concerned to keep (some) people who claim to be women out of (some) “women only” spaces and institutions. In practice, that means looking in people’s underpants. It means empowering the police, social workers, volunteers, and people on the street to demand to know what is between other people’s legs.

No, it’s not “policing” women. It’s just refusing to pretend that men are women if they say they are. It’s not subscribing to the view that one’s sex is a matter of assertion as opposed to a matter of fact. Yes it’s boring and humdrum compared to the exciting new approach of pretending that it’s all up in the air and we can’t assume that an obvious man is in fact a man, but then lots of things are boring and humdrum in that way. They sort of have to be if we want to have any kind of society at all. We have to have agreed meanings of words in order to communicate and interact. Roberts is trying to bounce us into agreeing with him by treating the category “women” as Open To All, like a Walmart.

4. ‘You think there is a “right way” to be, as a woman/ lesbian/ mother’ (etc.).The authors think that this objection “trades on an ambiguity between two separate senses of the word ‘right’: normatively right versus descriptively right (i.e. descriptively correct). As such, it’s another rhetorical move. It can quickly and unfairly bring to the reader’s mind a metaphor of our gatekeeping for a special club — ‘you can come in, but not you!’.”

The “gender critical” feminists object, “To say that we think there is a definition of femaleness or womanhood is not to say that there is a ‘right way’ for females or women to be, in any normative sense.” Ah, but it is to say that there are people who shouldn’t call themselves women, and that the police should be able to check your papers (or your genitals) to see whether or not you are authorized to call yourself a woman. The “gender critical” definition of womanhood is normative in this sense: it is political and enforceable. It is, indeed, gatekeeping, and it does say, precisely, “you can come in, but not you!”

That’s because there are people who shouldn’t call themselves women, just as there are people who shouldn’t call themselves Native Americans, or African Americans, or First Nations. It’s not “gatekeeping” and it’s not summoning the police, it’s refusing to have other people’s fantasies imposed on us.

Some academics are not happy about Kathleen Stock’s OBE.

Says, as usual, a man complaining about a woman getting recognition for defending the rights of women. It seems like only yesterday that men who wanted to be seen as progressive at least pretended to understand that women are a disproportionately vulnerable segment of society.

They seem so happy that now they don’t have to any more.

William Clare Roberts has locked his account since posting his rage, so an image has to do.

Women are the enemy, yeah? Let’s hope they all rot.

Roberts is a political science academic at McGill.

Janice Turner reviews Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage:

In both the US and Britain, Shrier shows, adolescent girls have record levels of anxiety and clinical depression, expressed in spiralling rates of self-harm, anorexia and suicidal thoughts. Overprotective modern parenting has rendered girls less resilient while the iPhone in their pocket tells them their bodies fail Instagram’s feminine ideals and shows them graphic pornography in which women are debased. No wonder the geeky or less “girlie” girls we once called tomboys, especially those who are becoming aware they are attracted to other girls, “flee womanhood”, as Shrier puts it, “like a house on fire, their minds fixed on escape, not on any particular destination”.

The girls she describes — like those I’ve met since I started reporting on this three years ago — show no discomfort in their female bodies until puberty. Then at secondary school, when gender roles turn starkly pink and blue, these non-conforming girls feel lost. Online they quickly find forums that diagnose their problem: their “gender identity” is really male. They are encouraged to assume he/him pronouns and boys’ names, which would matter no more than becoming, say, a goth, except for the insistent accompanying narrative that only after testosterone and surgery will they find happiness as their true male selves.

…

Yet only ten years ago children with gender dysphoria were treated with “watchful waiting”, an approach pioneered in Canada by Dr Kenneth Zucker, who believed “a child or adolescent in distress is not reducible to one problem”. He found that over time this dysphoria faded for about 70 per cent of patients. But Zucker was hounded out of practice by activists and now transition is presented as a universal panacea. Even in more cautious Britain probing a child’s underlying trauma is classed by the memorandum of understanding that governs gender treatment as “conversion therapy”, akin to the barbaric practice of trying to brainwash a gay person straight. Except, argues Shrier, homosexuality is innate, prevalent in the most repressive countries. But “gender identity” is fluid, malleable by peer pressure or social contagion.

…

None of this would matter if transition made these girls happy. But while initially testosterone makes them fearless and swaggering, the Tavistock GIDS (gender identity development services) clinic’s own report shows no long-term improvement in psychological wellbeing. This rare piece of research was published reluctantly only a few weeks ago, perhaps because it threatens an entire ethos. In clinics from Finland to Australia red flags are rising. “Detransitioners” are speaking out. Medical negligence class actions will begin.

Let’s hope grinning doctors posing with teenage breast tissue in pickle jars will be consigned alongside other collective medical madnesses such as false memory syndrome or 1950s lobotomies. And that girls’ bodies, as Shrier’s fearless book bleakly reveals, cease to be collateral in adult culture wars.

Let’s hope so indeed.

It’s so shaming.

Meaning, if they had their druthers, the election would be thrown out and they would make Trump the winner. They would like to cancel a presidential election entirely, and impose a criminal corrupt sadistic evil incompetent man on us for another four years…during a lethal pandemic which he has made vastly more lethal than it had to be.

Shaming.

Jake Tapper at CNN:

President Donald Trump’s Republican allies have virtually zero chance of changing the result, only [the chance] to delay by a few hours the inevitable affirmation of Biden as the Electoral College winner and the next president.

There have been no credible allegations of any issues with voting that would have impacted the election, as affirmed by dozens of judges, governors, election officials, the Electoral College, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the US Supreme Court. But Trump is determined to claim he didn’t lose — which he did, significantly — and many GOP politicians either share his delusion or fear provoking his wrath — even if that means voting to undermine democracy.

Both a House member and senator are required to mount an objection when Congress counts the votes. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Wednesday he will object, which will force lawmakers in both the House and Senate to vote on whether to accept the results of Biden’s victory. Other senators — including incoming ones — could still join that effort, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has privately urged Republicans not to do.

It’s shaming and disgusting.

What is this “toxic masculinity”? Summoning Google to assist I get:

Toxic masculinity involves cultural pressures for men to behave in a certain way. And it’s likely this affects all boys and men in some fashion.

Toxic masculinity refers to the notion that some people’s idea of “manliness” perpetuates domination, homophobia, and aggression.

Domination of what, though? Primarily women, surely. Men jostle for domination among themselves, but domination of women is deeply ingrained. It’s odd to mention homophobia but not sexism.

This idea that men need to act tough and avoid showing all emotions can be harmful to their mental health and can have serious consequences for society, which is how it became known as “toxic masculinity.”

“Their mental health; consequences for society” – still this strange avoidance of mentioning women. What’s the opposite of masculinity? Femininity. What would toxic masculinity be likely to teach men? To hate femininity, and the people who are stuck with it.

There are many definitions of “toxic masculinity” that appear in research as well as pop culture. Some researchers have come to agree that toxic masculinity has three core components:

Toughness: This is the notion that men should be physically strong, emotionally callous, and behaviorally aggressive.

Antifeminity: This involves the idea that men should reject anything that is considered to be feminine, such as showing emotion or accepting help.

Finally we get the word! But we still don’t get the people, only the adjective. The idea that men should reject anything that is considered to be feminine is naturally going to lead men to think women are rejection-worthy.

I know there’s the idea that men taught to fear and despise all things female can think they’re fine for female people, and just despise them when attributed to male people, and violently reject them when attributed to themselves. I know that’s one view of the matter, but I don’t believe it. I don’t think it works that way. One reason I don’t is decades of living in a world full of misogyny and generalized contempt for female people.

Another source:

A study in the Journal of School of Psychology uses the following definition to explain toxic masculinity: “the constellation of socially regressive [masculine] traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence.”

There we go. Thank you. It’s weird to avoid it when surely it’s a major part of what makes the toxicity.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain has news on Zara Kay:

Zara Kay, an Australian citizen and founder of Faithless Hijabi, was summoned to the Dar es-Salaam Oysterbay Police Station on 28 December 2020 and was held in police custody for 32 hours without an initial clear indication of charges.

Zara is a well-known ex-Muslim and women’s rights activist. Faithless Hijabi, which she founded in 2018, supports women who have been ostracised or abused for leaving Islam. Whilst in police custody, Zara was asked about the work of her organisation and why she left Islam.

Farking hell can you imagine? Being summoned to a police station, detained for 32 hours, and interrogated about your views on religion? As if it’s anybody’s business, let alone the police’s?

Zara was bailed on 29 December 2020 and told to return to the police station on 31 December. Her passport was also confiscated. This morning, at the police station, Zara was given permission to return on Tuesday 5 January 2021 with her lawyer. This is because stress caused by her initial police custody exacerbated Zara’s underlying health condition.  Late last night, Zara had to go to the local hospital where doctors reiterated her diagnosis of Generalised Anxiety Disorder.

There’s a list of three stupid charges – mocking the president of Tanzania, failing to return her Tanzanian passport after gaining Australian citizenship, using a family member’s SIM card.

These charges are politically motivated and believed to be initiated by those from the Khoja Shia Ithnasheri Jamaat who have threatened Zara with death for leaving Islam and for her activism in support of ex-Muslims and women.

Thus demonstrating how urgent it is to leave Islam. If you want people not to leave your ideology or religion, try not coercing them. It works wonders.

What’s this now?

What the hell is “toxic femininity”? Is that like “black racism” or “homophobic same-sex attraction”?

Let me guess – it’s what Karens have, right?

The Trump people are, of course, failing dismally to get the vaccines out there. No biggy, it’s only 4000 deaths per day.

The Trump administration’s Covid-19 vaccine distribution program needs a major shot in the arm because at the current rate, it would take almost 10 years to inoculate enough Americans to get the pandemic under control, a jarring new NBC News analysis showed Tuesday.

On the upside, by then the population will be a lot smaller.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading epidemiologist, told CNN on Tuesday, “Well, we certainly are not at the numbers that we wanted to be at the end of December.”

The Trump administration’s Covid-19 testing czar, Dr. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health and human services for health, told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday that the reported 2 million shots given already is “an underestimate.”

But he agreed that the government won’t meet the goal of inoculating 20 million people before the New Year.

That’s ok. No hurry. The longer it takes the fewer arms there will be to jab, so it works out well.

That’s…interesting.

And by “supporting” they of course mean “encouraging in the trans ideation.”

In #6 he means “unlikely to be able to consent” [with full understanding]. They’re all too likely to consent, all the more so if urged on by a “Kathryn” Bigelow.

This is truly horror movie stuff.