Sigh.
It’s not a “belief.” It’s a fact. An ordinary humdrum fact. Nobody has to waste any energy “believing” it; it’s just there. Of course humans “exist in two sexes.” If they didn’t there would be no Stephen Whittle saying they don’t.
What is “acting on your belief” that there are two sexes? What does that mean at all? Does Whittle mean we’re not allowed to say men are not women? Is that the subtle thought?
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11 responses to “You may not act on your belief”
I don’t know, but could it conceivably be that the term “protected characteristic” is used in a very narrow legal sense here? It’s tricky listening to lawyers, as they sometimes (often? always?) use language differently than the rest of us.
Oh how nice. We get to have our political stance, so long as we capitulate on everything anyway.
Okay, so I searched and found a defnition of the term “protected characteristic” in the (UK) legal sense here.
Perhaps, just perhaps, believing in scientific facts goes under the “belief” umbrella in the definition, as just the belief that the Earth is flat. But if your employer requires it, you may have to act like up is down at your work, even knowing (“believing”) this is false.
Interestingly, it seems perfectly okay by these rules to discriminate against someone because they have dyed their hair yellow. Unless that is covered by a different law.
What if the elusive Arbiter of Respect is gender critical? What then, PROFESSOR?
Ha! Even gender loonies know that “humans [only] exist in 2 sexes.” That shit cartoon the other day, in the “Quack definitions department” post, admits as much: “If you could pick which body (of two), male or female, (yep! only 2 sexes!) that you’d prefer to be, which one (of the only 2 on offer), would you pick?” Even gender loonies know this fact: fact, not ” belief”!
Maybe they make it make sense (to them at least) by thinking/saying: it’s a fact, yes, but I BELIEVE it, so it’s also a belief. Presto: you can’t tell me I’m wrong, nyah nyah.
I expect the position they are going to take is that belief may be protected, but expression of belief is not.
And “expression” is going to be interpreted extremely broadly. Basically, if they can discern that you hold a disfavored belief, then they can fire you for it. You must have expressed it, or else they wouldn’t know, right?
I don’t think that that is precisely what is intended.
See this tweet and Whittle’s answer:
It seems to me that Whittle is saying that people can think what they want about the legislation, and about the material and immutable nature of a person’s sex, and even state it, as a general point. If I understand correctly, that much was established by the Maya Forstater case. But, according to Whittle, they must not take actions in relation to others that are based on what sex they think they are, as opposed to how those persons present – at least, I believe that’s the point being made.
I am not a lawyer, but: if I understand correctly, in order to be protected under the Gender Recognition Act, which Whittle, reportedly, played a large part in drafting, a person has to have obtained a gender recognition certificate (GRC), possession of which grants certain legal protections. The catch is that under the legislation, persons who present as trans cannot ordinarily be required to produce a GRC. Moreover, it has been reported that most people who describe themselves as trans have not availed themselves of that legislation.
So, what Whittle seems to be saying is that even if you can see damn well that the other person is not the sex they are presenting as, you still have to play a game of make-believe or risk getting into legal trouble.
Whether the above is entirely correct, I cannot say. As I have said, I am not a lawyer.
Whittling away to no end.
I don’t actually know about the UK, but is it really the case that religion is NOT a protected characteristic if such religion is not worthy of respect? If so, who gets to decide? If they let me decide, I’m really going to go to town here…
iknklast @ #10
Here are some clarifications of the judgment from the website of Sex Matters, the organisation that Maya Forstater set up after her victory in court:
The full judgement is here. It goes into quite a lot of detail about what the court deems “worthy of respect”. This is what it has to say about religious belief, quoting an earlier judgement: