The Rowling vs. Trans People Hijack

[Josquius]

Guilt by association isn't a totally invalid concept.

There is no difference between your thinking and witchcraft accusations in some flyblown African village. It's the exact same mental process.

Not in the slightest.
Bigots are real things that exist and its entirely your choice to be or not be one. You don't even have to get out of your chair.
Witches are make believe.

This is the defense lawyer's page:
https://womansplaceuk.org/2020/06/27/i-am-suing-stonewall-stop-policing-free-speech/

Wow. This is far worse than I thought.

This is the page she referenced where she learnt what was a TERF:
https://terfisaslur.com/


And apparently, questioning this made her a TERF herself.

As Gupta said, she won her case, the tribunal judge her speech not transphobic and she was unlawfully sacked.

She didn't.

JKR helped her get funds to defend her cause.  Like many celebrities do with many causes.  You call it culture war.  Your tribunals call it free speech.

That is still not transphobia from JKR.

Its hard to get more transphobic than trying to sue Stonewall for their position that trans rights need protecting .

When did she start doing that, exactly?
Was it before or after she started receiving death threats for insisting a women is a women and not "a person who menstruate" ?

It seems to me her views on bathrooms as some kind of sanctuary for women are somewhat extreme.  But, when she gets accused of transphobia for saying gender is a biological construct, she's not the one going too far.

So, random nutter on twitter says a mean thing to you= its OK to support hate groups that target groups said nutter claims to belong to?

[Admiral Yi]

I can think of much, much, much more transphobic things than suing an organization.

[Josquius]

I can think of much, much, much more transphobic things than suing an organization.

Figure of speech. Obviously directly killing a trans person whilst screaming anti trans nonsense would come a fair bit higher.
Chasing after Stonewall because you object to the T part of LGBT rights is pretty damn transphobic however.

[Tamas]

I don't get the whole "hate group" thing with that organisation. On the surface of it, the argument between them and some seemingly at least as vehement trans organisations seems to be that they are saying "sex and the fact that we are attracted to our own sex is a key part of our identity, and we don't want you to alter our own self-identification to conform to your gender-based identification". Which is apparently unacceptable.

I am going to sound very non-progressive I guess, but one thing that keeps up my skepticism regarding such radical trans-phobic claims by trans organisations/people is that it reminds me of the zero tolerance yelling from radical religious people. And when I encounter it from religious people I always think it is because of their own insecurity/uncertainty in the position they represent.  I know it is different with trans people because they have had to suffer a lot over the last, well, two thousand years? But if I see someone aggressively trying to yell somebody into silence, I am instinctively pushed toward the view being aggressively yelled at.

[Tamas]

Not in the slightest.
Bigots are real things that exist and its entirely your choice to be or not be one. You don't even have to get out of your chair.
Witches are make believe.

This is the defense lawyer's page:
https://womansplaceuk.org/2020/06/27/i-am-suing-stonewall-stop-policing-free-speech/

Wow. This is far worse than I thought.

You know what, I actually agree that there are several uncalled-for generalisations there that are seriously off-putting, and she does seem to be using hearsay and isolated examples to describe all trans people.

But the generic point of many trans activist coming off as aggressive seems valid, as I guess my previous point shows.

[Josquius]

I don't get the whole "hate group" thing with that organisation. On the surface of it, the argument between them and some seemingly at least as vehement trans organisations seems to be that they are saying "sex and the fact that we are attracted to our own sex is a key part of our identity, and we don't want you to alter our own self-identification to conform to your gender-based identification". Which is apparently unacceptable.

I am going to sound very non-progressive I guess, but one thing that keeps up my skepticism regarding such radical trans-phobic claims by trans organisations/people is that it reminds me of the zero tolerance yelling from radical religious people. And when I encounter it from religious people I always think it is because of their own insecurity/uncertainty in the position they represent.  I know it is different with trans people because they have had to suffer a lot over the last, well, two thousand years? But if I see someone aggressively trying to yell somebody into silence, I am instinctively pushed toward the view being aggressively yelled at.

The entire reason for their existence isn't to protect LGB people, its specifically to push to exclude T people.
If protecting LGB people was the primary aim, there's plenty of organisations covering this. Stonewall for instance, who they're throwing vast sums at attacking.
Nobody wants to force non trans people to be trans.

I have the same logic and its why I support trans people.

[Sheilbh]

She didn't.

She won.

The decision follows the Maya Forstater case. The point is that under UK law you cannot be fired for a philosophical belief. There are tests around that - whether the belief is genuinely held, does it relate to a substantial aspect of human life, is it cogent and serious and is that belief worthy of respect in a democratic society and does not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.

Forstater had already said that the core gender critical belief was covered under the Equality Act as a belief. That is that sex is real and an observable, biological fact, while gender is a subjective identity: "immeasurable, unobservable and with no objective basis". Bailey's case expanded that quite broadly to a whole other set of other beliefs.

At a high level, the courts have a relatively low bar for what constitutes a belief or philosophy which can be protected from discrimination by the Equality Act. That protection is restricted if it results in unwanted conduct towards another person - for example, you could be fired for misgendering or discriminating against a trans person. So I think US-style language that someone's beliefs or speech outside of work made them feel "unsafe" gestures towards that, but it seems that UK courts would require some act within an employment context to consider that clash of rights and freedoms. Merely holding the opinion or expressing the opinion in another setting is not enough to conflict with the rights of a trans person (obviously expressing it to them - especially repeatedly - would likely constitute harassment).

UK courts have also decided that those very broad gender critical views (unlike hate speech) are "worthy of respect in a democratic society" - and they're otherwise cogent, substantial etc.

She didn't win on every specific claim against her chambers - and she failed in claiming that Stonewall had "induced, instructed or caused" that discrimination. I don't know that area but that always felt a little speculative. But I think the core of the case was discrimination by her chambers which she won and also expanded what is protected speech/belief under the Equality Act.

[Josquius]

She won.
She didn't win on every specific claim against her chambers - and she failed in claiming that Stonewall had "induced, instructed or caused" that discrimination. I don't know that area but that always felt a little speculative. But I think the core of the case was discrimination by her chambers which she won and also expanded what is protected speech/belief under the Equality Act.

Which is what we're talking about here. She didn't win.
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/stonewall-statement-outcome-allison-bailey-case

[Sheilbh]

Which is what we're talking about here. She didn't win.
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/stonewall-statement-outcome-allison-bailey-case

Stonewall have every right to be happy. Their schemes and their advice do not constitute "inducing" or "instructing" employers on how to behave so they are not liable for what employers do.

However a very broad definition of gender critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act, particularly in these cases from employers.

My point is that the Stonewall bit of case is secondary and peripheral. On the core issue, Bailey won - she was unlawfully discriminated against on the basis of her beliefs. Those (very broad) gender critical beliefs are legally protected in the UK.

[viper37]

So, random nutter on twitter says a mean thing to you= its OK to support hate groups that target groups said nutter claims to belong to?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_Bailey

n December 2021, it was reported that a judge ruled against Stonewall and Garden Court to allow an amendment of the discrimination claim to include arguments based on the ground of philosophical belief, as allowed in the case of Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development.^[16]
The hearing of Bailey's tribunal case began on 25 April 2022, considering a number of claims against Garden Court Chambers and against Stonewall.^[17] The tribunal's decision was published in July 2022. In terms of the claims against Garden Court Chambers, the tribunal ruled in favour of her claim that Garden Court Chambers had discriminated against her by tweeting that complaints against her tweets would be investigated. It also ruled in favour of her claims that Garden Court Chambers had discriminated against her and victimised her by concluding in that investigation that two of her tweets had potentially breached the core duties of barristers. One of the tweets was about the concept of a "cotton ceiling" and the other regarded her belief that Stonewall has a dangerous agenda regarding gender self-identification.^[15] She was consequentially awarded £22,000 in damages for injury to feelings.^[18] The tribunal ruled against her other claims against Garden Court Chambers, ruling that she had not lost income or work opportunities due to the complaints, nor that that Garden Court Chambers had a systemic policy of treating gender-critical beliefs as bigoted. The tribunal ruled against all her claims against Stonewall, ruling that Stonewall did not influence the complaints procedure or the policies of Garden Court Chambers.^[19][20] Bailey is appealing the ruling on the claims against Stonewall. ^[21]

Seems to me like she won a large part of her case.

[The Minsky Moment]

Whether she won depends on the objectives.  She was awarded 22K for "injury to feelings" but did not get any lost income or work opportunity damages - which I assume would be the bigger part of the damages claim.  If I were representing Chambers, I would feel pretty good about that result, other than the bad publicity, which was locked in anyways.

[Josquius]

The relevant part we're talking about isn't the tribunal vs her employer. Its the attempt to sue Stonewall. Which failed.

[Sheilbh]

Whether she won depends on the objectives.  She was awarded 22K for "injury to feelings" but did not get any lost income or work opportunity damages - which I assume would be the bigger part of the damages claim.  If I were representing Chambers, I would feel pretty good about that result, other than the bad publicity, which was locked in anyways.

This is fair.

I should say the reason I think she "won" is because I think her primary objective was not a standard employment/discrimination case, but as an activist who set up LGB Alliance and was running sites like that one about suing Stonewall. I think she wanted the declaration on the Equality Act and the precedent that a very broad definition gender critical beliefs are protected by UK law, which is far more expansive than the Forstater case.

It's why I also suspect - and I could be wrong - that the main reason she was also suing Stonewall was partly attention but also disclosure. I think it was more of a strategic/activist litigation than a standard employment claim.

If it was a normal claim and she was "genuinely" suing for discrimination then I'd agree.

[garbon]

Stonewall also did suffer a huge reputational hit since then.

[Barrister]

There's a curious podcast on this: The Witch Trials of JK Rowling.

It came out last week, and first two episodes have dropped.  It features extensive interviews with Rowling herself.

First episode is Rowling's history - that she was a single mom fleeing an abusive relationship while she wrote the first HP book.  I knew a little about this, but certainly gives a lot more detail than I had ever known about Rowling.

Second episode is all about the attempts to "cancel" the HP books... in the 1990s by religious conservatives.

The host is someone who grew up in the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.  So you can sort of see where they're going with this.

But only 2 episodes released so far, and they haven't gotten into the "trans stuff" yet in any substance.  It'll be good to get Rowling's perspective on the controversy, but I do hope they give a good faith hearing to the anti-Rowling argument.

The whole podcast is done by Bari Weiss's organization Free Press - which again is enough to utterly dismiss it by some, but I've never found Weiss to be a polemicist.