Skip the bridge though

Index on Censorship steps up:

This week Index on Censorship took the unusual step of legally intervening in an employment appeal tribunal.  As always our focus was on the core principle of free expression and protecting free speech in law. The tribunal has now concluded and has reserved judgment – we expect to learn the result in the coming months.  Much will be discussed and written about in the coming days regarding the Maya Forstater tribunal, but for your information on what Index provided to the court please access our skeleton argument here.

Whatever the outcome of the Employment Appeal Tribunal the toxic nature of the current conversation on gender and trans rights is doing little to build bridges or solidarity.  As promised by our Chief Executive, in the coming weeks Index will seek to provide a platform for considered debate and engagement.  We plan to publish the words of those people who are being silenced and provide a space for people to highlight their lived experiences without fear or favour.  So watch this space.

To be perfectly honest I’m not as worried about building bridges or solidarity as I am about being free to tell the truth. I don’t really want to cross a bridge that leads to people who want to force me to call men “women.” I don’t want to sign a treaty or make peace or give concessions on the question that should never have been a question, “are women the only people who are women or can men be women too?”

As has been pointed out many times, it’s a kind of blackmail or con game. If Boris breaks into your house in your absence and changes the locks and won’t let you in, you don’t have to build bridges with Boris. You just get Boris out, and that’s the end of your dealings with Boris. You don’t owe him anything and he doesn’t get to commit an outrage against you and then offer a “compromise.” Boris is the aggressor and thief and Boris gets nothing in reward. Women don’t owe men anything for refusing to agree that men too can be women if they say so.

It’s not women’s job to build bridges to men who have stolen the word “women” from women, and refused to give it back, and flung threats and insults at women, and gotten women fired and shunned and socially punished, merely for continuing to say that only women are women.

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