I’m reading Joshua Rozenberg’s post on today’s hearing and I stopped to re-read one bit from the original ruling.
In a judgment he delivered at the end of 2019, Tayler held that Forstater’s belief in the difference between sex and gender was not a philosophical belief protected by the Equality Act:
I consider that the claimant’s view, in its absolutist nature, is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others. She goes so far as to deny the right of a person with a gender recognition certificate to be the sex to which they have transitioned.
Stop right there. She what? How would that even be possible? What does it mean? People in the legal profession choose their words with great care, for obvious reasons, but this statement looks like carelessness. How could Maya deny someone’s right to be one sex or the other? I mean, she could say the words, but they would be gibberish. You are one sex or the other, and rights don’t come into it.
I suppose he must have meant “She goes so far as to deny the right of a person with a gender recognition certificate to claim to be the sex to which they have transitioned,” but including the “claim to be” would have admitted too much – so instead he talked meaningless nonsense.
That’s where this warped belief system gets you – that, and allowing your young daughter to share a cabin with a bunch of boys because she claims to be a boy.
Comments
11 responses to “Speaking of going so far”
Legal people choose their words with care, but that doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes speak nonsensical gibberish, just that they do it on purpose as in this case. The purpose is to mislead, after all, not to describe something true.
Yes, I suppose so. I seem to have been ambivalent about it – one minute it’s carelessness and the next minute he’s careful not to say “claim to be.”
This “activism” has broken so many people’s thinking.
Matters of biology are not within the purview of legal declarations. It is obviously ridiculous here:
You are the height you are because your body is that height. You are the skin colour you are because your skin is that colour. You are the age you are because your body is that age. You are the sex you are because your body is that sex; legal declarations do not have any bearing on what a body is.
If a legal declaration attests to a falsehood, the claimed thing is still false.
But Stephoknee Whasthisname is six years old! Age identity is formed in the brain during gestation, and is sacred, and is much more important than what age your so-called “body” is! You TERF!!!
This appeal to legal declaration is not dissimilar to the appeal to scientific consensus, although it should be more obviously irrational. Unlike science, we know that law doesn’t map to reality, doesn’t try to map to reality, and has no jurisdictional authority over reality aside from determining that which is legal or illegal. So there’s that, which should make it obviously silly to appeal to law as justification for TWAW/TMAM/TOAO. But whatever, even without that, whether the law (or scientific consensus) is correct in this matter is the very thing in question, so appealing to current law (or putative scientific consensus) in the argument is petitio principii; i.e., begging the question.
It would be no less circular when responding to a young Earth creationist. Either we provide an indirect argument by demonstrating that the consensus is trustworthy on this subject, or we provide a direct argument that the Earth is billions of years old. We don’t get to just say, “Sorry, the scientific consensus is that the Earth is billions of years old, therefore you’re wrong.” Because the scientific consensus can be and has been wrong, our truth table contains an inconvenient combination of Ts and Fs.
Not that I want to take the time to actually find out, but I wonder if this guy’s “identity” is aging? Has “Stephonknee” gotten any older, or is “she” going to be a perpetual child, like the characters in Peanuts, only less cute?
I consider that the claimant’s view, in its absolutist nature, is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others.
So, taking that statement to it’s logical conclusion, doesn’t this also support blasphemy laws?
I say that God doesn’t exist, that much of the worlds holy works are a human construct consisting of a mashup of sensible rules for living at the time, arbitrary in-group conditioning, misogyny, racism, and gibberish. Jesus may not have existed at all and Mohammad was a deranged, aggressive tribal warlord and a pedophile.
Someone else can say that my absolutist view offends not only their rights, but the rights of their society and their joint religious views – which are beyond question.
Has to be an arguable case, doesn’t it? I mean, we already know that having said the above I can’t ever go to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, or Mauritius at the very least. Is England going to be off the list as well?
The courts declared the tomato a vegetable; it remains a fruit, though there may be some tomatoes that identify as vegetables.
The courts declared the whale a fish; it remains a mammal, though there may be some whales that identify as fish.
Biological truths are not subject to the whims of courts and political systems; they are based on evidence, and change when evidence shows them to be false. To date, I have not seen one whit of actual evidence that suggests that men can be women; all I see is special pleading, whining, and threats.
Make Monty Python Comedy Again!
#4 GW
That numpty is the reason I included age in that list ;)
As someone who has recently lost a lot of height, I pretend to find that offensive. I don’t have enough energy for real fake outrage though, so please just consider it done.
Rob: a blasphemy law is precisely what they want. I know of no better name for it.