See you in court
Game on.
My planned talk was cancelled on the ludicrous grounds that my views on transgender rights are ‘at odds’ with civic policy. Without speaking to me, or bothering to discover what I actually believe, the council decided to deny me the right to speak on their premises.
So I am going to sue them. On behalf of every woman who is being told to shut up and stay quiet, during the worst misogynist backlash I have witnessed in my lifetime, I’m taking the council to court.
They’ll hear very soon from my lawyers. And there are a lot of us, because from the moment news began to spread on Saturday that I was barred from addressing the sold-out meeting at Aspley Library, my email inbox was pinging with messages of support and legal advice.
The Equality Act of 2010, articles 9 to 11 of the Human Rights Act and the recent ruling in the Maya Forstater case — where a woman who lost her job after saying transgender women are ‘not women’ won her appeal against an employment tribunal — were cited.
In layman’s terms, that all means Nottingham City Council doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
What they did to her is more outrageous than I knew. She was pleased to be asked to speak at Aspley Library, because it’s in a deprived area and at risk of being closed; she thought she was doing her bit to help it stay open. There was no fee, and she was paying her own expenses, including a hotel because there was a rail strike on the day. She was on the train when the organizers phoned her with the news the council had vetoed her. It’s astoundingly rude, and just plain mean.
To abandon the talk was unthinkable. Every ticket had sold, which meant there were dozens of women eager to learn how they could get involved in campaigning to end rape and domestic abuse.
So they held the event in the car park.
The self-proclaimed ‘trans activists’ were shouting abuse before I even started to speak.
It’s almost as if that’s all there is to “trans activism” – bullying women at every opportunity.
That’s it in a nutshell. Their whole transUniverse revolves around it; with malice galore: of critical importance in defamation cases.
YESSSS! I can hardly wait to hear the “testimony” of these spineless officials as they’re made testify under oath exactly what Bindel has said or done that was so evil. I want to see them justify their actions on the basis of hearsay, baseless accusations and lies, and then get hammered for it. I want to see them pay for following Stonewall’s “guidance.” The tide has turned, and their boat is stuck on a mud flat, far from smooth sailing.
I wonder if Ben Cooper is available? He’s getting lots of practice at this sort of thing! He asks exactly the right sort of questions to get people to damn themselves. Whoever she has as counsel, this council doesn’t stand a chance.
Same. Same same SAME! They haven’t got so much as a toenail to stand on, let alone a leg.
Today I had the Wayback Machine save:
1) The Nottingham statement, where the first sentence names Julie Bindel, and the second sentence says their reason to cancel her booking.
2) Up one level, the Nottingham Equalities page that links to the statement on top of their list. Again, it shows the first sentence naming Julie Bindel, and the second sentence saying their reason to cancel her booking.
3) Up one level up from that, the My Nottingham home page that links to their statement.
4) I also saved their tweet, “Read our statement on why we are not allowing an event to go ahead at one of our libraries today here:” (linking to their statement).
My saves above have timestamps consistent with me saving these pages today. It took me about 4 hours overall to figure out, because this was my first time saving to the Wayback Machine, and each save behaved differently. I wrote a page of notes explaining why, but I won’t get into that here.
Before I made my saves today, I checked, and I did not see that anyone else had saved any of the links above. But after I made my saves, I see one or two other people made some saves the 25th and 26th. I think the Wayback Machine was not showing the latest saves yet. In any case, the four things above are saved.
Thank you Dave!