Graham Linehan on JK Rowling and The Outrage:

The response to Rowling’s statement demonstrates what women with less power, but just as much compassion and sense, have been trying to tell us for a number of years. Namely, that gender ideology is bad for women. That it erases them and insults them and endangers them, and when they dare to discuss this issue—and ONLY this issue—they are subject to disproportionately severe penalties. Maya Forstater lost her job, remember.

…

Rowling chose her words carefully. The first four sentences are almost an apology for speaking out at all, because she knows how her support for Maya will be received. She front loads the statement with mollifying phrases to protect

“Charlotte” Clymer, who gained fame as a patronizing male “feminist” under the name Charles Clymer, has a piece in the Washington Post telling JK Rowling what to do.

Woven throughout the narrative is an insistence on love and community and integrity and inclusion, which is why it has broken my heart in recent years to see Rowling’s inexplicable replacement of justice-minded imagination with a bigotry-driven rejection of science and reality.

So Team Trans gets to claim both imagination and science & reality, while taking them away from Rowling?

In her tweet, Rowling effectively dismissed [the judge’s ruling in Maya Forstater’s suit], suggesting that Forstater was being fired for “stating that sex is real,” a common transphobic assertion that has

Basic fairness in reporting the issue? Oh don’t be silly, that would never do.

All men aren’t rapists and trans women should not be regarded as walking sex offenders https://t.co/15gP5YfOUt

— Sarah Baxter (@SarahbaxterSTM) December 22, 2019

She means “not all men are rapists,” not “all men aren’t rapists” which is a far broader claim (wouldn’t you think journalists of all people would get that right?), but that pales next to the hostile hyperbole of the next clause. Who the hell claims that trans women should be regarded as walking sex offenders?!

So let’s read Sarah Baxter on being kinder.

The author of the Harry Potter novels has frequently been damned as a snooty elitist for being pro-Labour and

Gaby Hinsliff says a thing about the law and the ontology of women that brought me up short.

This ruling was purely about whether Forstater’s views count as a so-called protected belief, like religious faith, which employers can’t discriminate against someone for holding. And while she met four of five legal tests for that, the sticking point was her insistence that a trans woman is still a man even if she holds a GRC confirming her legal status as a woman.

That’s what Forstater thinks. It might be what a number of other people think. But it’s not what the law says and the judge ruled that Forstater’s desire to be able to refer to someone by the sex she

CNN reported on the Forstater ruling and Rowling’s shock-horror tweet.

LGBT rights charity Stonewall declined to comment on Rowling’s statement, but addressing Forstater’s case, a spokesperson told CNN: “This case was about the importance of dignity and respect in the workplace. Trans people are facing huge levels of abuse and discrimination with one in eight (12%) having been attacked while at work in the last year.”

What about dignity and respect for women in the workplace? Have we just forgotten all about that whole thing entirely? If so, could that perhaps explain why women aren’t entirely ecstatic about the “women are people who identify as women” cult?

More chilling though is what one of the lawyers says:

Commenting on

Ohhh I’ve just been reminded who Gregor Murray is – the guy Maya Forstater “misgendered” so outrageously that she lost her contract. I was reminded by Jarvis Dupont at The Spectator:

Yesterday we witnessed a stunning and brave victory of tolerance over reality. Vile TERF, Maya Forstater lost her case at an employment tribunal for, amongst other things, referring to former SNP councillor and non-binary transgender individual, Gregor Murray as ‘he’…

… Before quitting the party, Gregor had been suspended for ‘abusing a woman on Twitter’. They has obviously been targeted because in my opinion, calling an ignorant TERF a ‘cunt’ is a perfectly legitimate way for a non-binary politician to behave.

Oh, thought I, that’s familiar, … Read the rest

James Kirkup points out that many people have been staying quiet despite concerns, some even despite having plenty of money and clout.

Yet slowly, slowly, things are starting to change. More people are starting to talk, calmly and sensibly, about a matter of policy and culture that needs more discussion. Bit by bit, more people are starting to see that this is an issue that can and should be talked about.

That turning of the tide has been slow and modest, but today the pace quickened, a lot. The gender debate has seen an event that many people have been waiting for. JK Rowling has spoken.

In a single tweet, the woman who gave us Harry Potter, has quite deliberately

Even The Guardian doesn’t seem entirely convinced by the judge’s ruling in Maya Forstater’s case.

A researcher who lost her job at a thinktank after tweeting that transgender women cannot change their biological sex has lost a test case because her opinions were deemed to be “absolutist”.

You can read that as straight-up reporting, but you can also think there may be a hint of skepticism that it’s really “absolutist” to think that people can’t literally change sex any more than they can change age or species.

In a keenly anticipated judgment that will stir up fresh debate over transgender issues, Judge James Tayler, an employment judge, ruled that Maya Forstater’s views did “not have the protected characteristic of philosophical

Kathleen Stock on the judge’s ruling in Maya Forstater’s case:

Today, an UK employment tribunal judge ruled that the belief that biological sex is immutable, and that it is impossible to change one’s sex, is “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”.

He writes: “I do not accept the Claimant’s contention that the Gender Recognition Act produces a mere legal fiction. It provides a right, based on the assessment of the various interrelated convention rights, for a person to transition, in certain circumstances, and thereafter to be treated for all purposes as the being of the sex to which they have transitioned.” Please note: all purposes. The judge has therefore apparently ruled that

A feminist barrister has been attending Maya Forstater’s tribunal and livetweeting it; Thread Reader has stitched it together.

I’m at the Employment Tribunal this morning to watch closing submissions for the #MayaForstaterCase2019. It’s a particularly interesting case on whether a) gender critical beliefs and / or b) a belief in innate gender identity are protected philosophical beliefs.

Does there have to be a belief in innate gender identity in order for absence of belief to be protected? Possibly not, say the judge and counsel for the Respondent (employer)

Respondent kicks off with the assertion that MF’s beliefs fail on Grainger 5: that they are incompatible with human dignity.

She explains Grainger later on. Meanwhile, note the claim that it’s incompatible … Read the rest

Madigan is busy covering himself with glory as Labour Student Women’s Officer.

https://twitter.com/realLilyMadigan/status/1125388875877244930

https://twitter.com/realLilyMadigan/status/1125422347215888384

But he’s Labour Student Women’s Officer. Surely he’s supposed to represent (or advocate for or whatever it is that a student women’s officer does) her regardless of her views.

https://twitter.com/realLilyMadigan/status/1125438712429649921

I don’t know that that’s true, and I have my doubts, but even if it is true – what a rotten, psychopathic way to look at it. “There is no explicit rule against the Labour Student Women’s Officer telling women to go fuck themselves, so I as the Labour Student Women’s Officer am going to feel entirely free and entitled to tell women to go fuck themselves whenever I dislike what they think.”

https://twitter.com/realLilyMadigan/status/1125457954940039168

That’s not … Read the rest

Labour Students National Women’s Officer in solidarity with Maya Forstater:

https://twitter.com/MForstater/status/1125314388968316928… Read the rest

Speaking of firing people for not believing that men are women…

An internationally renowned researcher on tax avoidance is believed to be the first person in Britain to lose her job for saying that transgender women are not women.

Maya Forstater, 45, was told by her managers that she had used “offensive and exclusionary” language.

…

Forstater has begun employment tribunal proceedings against her former employer, the London office of the Centre for Global Development (CGD) think tank. She hopes it will be a test case establishing that “gender-critical” views — which hold that being a woman is a biological fact, not a feeling — are protected beliefs under equality law. She is starting an appeal on the Crowdjustice