That’s not what the law says
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 felt appropriate, even if that created an “intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”, failed the fifth test – that a protected belief can’t violate human dignity or conflict with fundamental rights.
Emphasis mine.
What I’m left wondering – does she mean the law says trans people are in a legal sense the sex they say they are, or does she mean the law says they are the sex they say they are?
If it’s the second…is that real? Can laws do that? Can laws create reality in that way? Does a false claim become true because the law says it’s true? Can legislators just say “men are women if they identify as women” and lo it becomes true?
I think people are losing their grip on the difference between claims and reality.
Hinsliff finds it all very reassuring, but I don’t share her enthusiasm.
Put simply, those seeking the protection of the law can’t ignore the protection it affords others. Even the vulnerable must acknowledge that others can be vulnerable too.
Crucially, that doesn’t mean women can now be sacked just for criticising self-identification or for objecting to trans women having automatic access to women’s prisons and domestic violence shelters. But what it means is objections shouldn’t be based on arguing that trans women are men really.
So we “shouldn’t” argue that Rachel McKinnon/Veronica Ivy is a man really, even though he transparently is one, and acts like one, and bullies women like one. We shouldn’t argue that even though it’s true.
The grip, it is lost.
judge ruled that Forstater’s desire to be able to refer to someone by the sex she felt appropriate, even if that created an “intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”
Does this mean somebody specifically asked Forstater the question
‘Would you refer to someone by the sex you felt appropriate, even if that created an “intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment” ?’
and she answered “Yes”?
If I considered myself to be a giraffe, would the law recognise that?
If yes, the mind boggles.
Am I missing something here?
Why isn’t this burden of proving a “protected belief” being placed on people claiming to believe they are a sex other than the one they appear to be? How can anyone be permitted to compel others to concede that, and behave as though, their own internal and unprovable belief is True, upon pain of lawsuits and unemployment?
Good question. If they mean exactly like religious faith then they mean a belief that is just a belief, an act of will, not an opinion based on evidence or reason or both, which in turn seems to mean that it’s only arbitrary, willed beliefs that get protected, because the ones based on reasonable grounds don’t need protection.
That of course is how the anxious protection of religious belief works, but when was it decided that all beliefs should be sorted into protected and unprotected that way?
Except it can. Christian beliefs frequently violate the dignity of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or atheist individuals, and sometimes (when acted on) conflict with fundamental rights. The same with each of the others.
And it is more than obvious that almost anything can be said about women, even when it violates our human dignity, and some of it conflicts with our fundamental rights.
And in the US (though I don’t think this has reached the UK yet), beliefs of believers can indubitably conflict with human rights to the best health care, and to choose their own health care options. Abortion, fertility treatments, end of life issues – all of these are things that can be, and are, frequently violated by laws passed by believers.
It seems to be only trans people that have this absolute right to human dignity that extends to everyone else having to cater to their delusions. I might have some delusions myself, but the courts are not likely to cater to them. If my boss refuses to put in a pool to accommodate trans-otters, the courts are not going to require they do that. They are not going to require that my co-workers refer to me by my otter name, or stop calling me a person.
Trans rights = special rights. (Should I say it six times?) Rights no one else has. Rights that inherently conflict with the rights of others, such as our right to think for ourselves and be comfortable within our own spaces.
This reminds me of the law passed in North Carolina outlawing climate change, or the one nearly passed by the Indiana general assembly mandating that the value of pi is 3.2 exactly.