January 9, 2024 - 5:30pm
A social worker has won her claim for harassment after she was suspended for expressing gender-critical beliefs — and the judgment has far-reaching implications for freedom of speech. For years now, activists have claimed an exclusive right to decide what constitutes “transphobia” and too many organisations — employers, regulators and political parties — have let them get away with it.
Not any more. An employment tribunal has found that Rachel Meade suffered harassment by her employer, Westminster Council, and her regulator, Social Work England (SWE). It’s a stunning vindication for Meade and a warning to other organisations that take accusations of transphobia at face value.
Meade’s ordeal began when the regulator received a single complaint about her sharing gender-critical posts on social media. SWE responded by launching a lengthy “fitness to practise” investigation and issuing a formal sanction. It was later withdrawn but Westminster Council suspended her for a year. A finding of gross misconduct was eventually withdrawn, but by then the damage had been done.
Now the tribunal has stated what the council and the regulator should have acknowledged from the start: Meade had not broken any law or said anything that compromised her ability to do her job. “All of the claimant’s Facebook posts and other communications fell within her protected rights for freedom of thought and freedom to manifest her beliefs,” the panel held.
The second half of that sentence is vitally important. Ever since Maya Forstater won her landmark tribunal case three years ago, trans activists have tried to argue that it’s okay to hold gender-critical beliefs, but not to express them. Those of us who believe in biological reality are supposed to keep quiet and avoid upsetting people who hold bizarre and extreme views about the human body. The Meade judgment establishes that this is quite wrong, and that merely expressing or supporting gender-critical beliefs doesn’t amount to an assault on the rights of others
The ruling goes further, calling out organisations which passively accept allegations of transphobia without considering that they might be malicious. The judgment explicitly criticises the regulator for “an apparent willingness to accept a complaint from one side” of the debate without any attempt at objectivity or balance — and for failing to look at the complainant’s own tendentious social media posts before initiating action against Meade.
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I have no idea who this trans activism is supposed to help? Not those with gender dysphoria by the look of it all. Some years ago I had a friendship with a transsexual over a good number of years. When we first met he was into heavy therapy and just starting hormone treatment and to move to living as a woman. We lost touch when I moved miles away by which time she had fully transitioned.
For her life had become much easier.
She never asked for any special treatment, she received help and support from many women friends about all sorts of things and I was happy to have her friendship.
My imagination suggests she would be/is horrified by the recent rampant trans activist stance, knowing her I believe this.
For now. Recent history shows that they won’t be content until every company and institution has made a ‘brave’ and bold statement swearing to commit to and enforce LGBTQ values.
MTF trans-ideology is rooted in sexual desire. The reason it is mostly young women who support it is that they are extremely naive to the considerable lengths some men will go to to elicit sexual gratification.
In fairness sexual desire is only one possible reason (covering those who once would have been known as ‘transvestites’, maybe?). Most importantly there are those who do have a strong and deeply felt identification with the non-natal sex and a need to live that way – we should not pretend that they do not exist. Additionally there are surely a lot of people who feel very bad in their current life, who cannot make sense of their social role as men or women, of their sexuality, or of life in general. They might well jump at having an explanation that makes sense of their situation, that gives them a reason why they are different, a lot of political allies, a claim on the rest of the world to accommodate them. It always helps to have an explanation – whether the explanation is true or not. One way or the other, the explosively growing cohort of young women who identify as trans are unlikely to fit into your model.
Life has some hard lessons to teach these young women.
Yes but we all have to deal with and accept what we can’t have or be. Even thinking you can change sex, no matter how much medical treatment you have is totally nuts. I have little sympathy with the ideology…those who publicly challenge it have my gratitude
“those who publicly challenge it have my gratitude”
Absolutely.
I agree about FTM. That’s something entirely different. I accidentally found myself in the middle of a gay parade last summer when a float carrying trans men sailed by. They were bare-chested and proudly displaying their mastectomy scars. It was truly horrific. I felt nothing but abject pity for them and fear for young girls contemplating similar procedures.
*a float carrying “trans men” sailed by.
“A float carrying trans identifying females/gender dysphoric females/females with mental health issues about their sex sailed by”
It’s odd that no-one seems to be making any connection between this phenomenon and the frighteningly low levels of testosterone in gen z.
This is an interesting point, which I, too, have pondered. I have wondered whether the seeming increase in male homosexuality (and I don’t think it’s just a result of greater societal acceptance) is linked to what you have noted, and to falls in male fertility. These things may well have environmental causes, linked, for example, to the increase in female hormones in soil and water. However, I don’t think LGBT activists like to hear this sort of suggestion!
‘Tell me about it honey’
As one frog said to another
It’s about time we abandoned this coercive acronym. The LGB, of course, have nothing to do with the TQ+.
Thank you. The appropriate acronym is TQ. In Australia the TQs have demonstrated forcefully their disdain for Lesbians. The letter L in their chosen acronym remains only to affirm men with intact genitalia who call themselves women and want to have sex with women.
“In Australia the TQs have demonstrated forcefully their disdain for Lesbians.” <– Nonsense.
Those “low levels of testosterone” are probably the only thing preventing us from throwing-down and having a few proper shooting wars. We should count our blessings.
I strongly suspect the demonization of masculinity and the proliferation of online pornography are largely to blame for that.
Surely the latter would cause outbreaks of visual impairment.
The growing cohort may be FtM, but those you see are almost exclusively MtF.
(In the case of the complainant above I think it was a FtM, though)
Are we to offer the same breadth of accommodation – personal, social, legal – to those who find it challenging to ‘make sense of their situation’ in other ways? Examples might include those who feel uncomfortable in that they were born white but would rather be black, those who are in their sixties but feel like teenagers ‘on the inside’, or those who were born into modest circumstances but have always felt an intimate affinity with royalty.
I’d agree. Not being able to ‘make sense of your situation’ is not sufficient reason for others to comply – that part of it I was describing, but not agreeing with. You can agree that those people feel bad without accepting their solution. Still, there are people who have a strong and stable need to be of their non-natal sex, and provided the transition is demanding enough to keep the piss-takers out, accommodating them as far as pronouns, dress and social interactions go is important for them and does not cost us very much. It does not follow that people have to be treated as women for the purposes of sports teams, prisons, or women’s refuges, even if you agree to refer to them as ‘she’.
The problem with your position is that the ideology – pseudo-scientific, even cult-like, as it is – means that you cannot keep ‘the piss-takers out’. Nicola Sturgeon tied herself in knots in that famous interview about the double rapist Adam Graham/Isla Bryson and suffered the consequences. No sensible person is buying this nonsense. It’s also not true that use of preferred pronouns ‘does not cost us very much’. Perhaps within friendship groups this might be acceptable, but certainly not within policy, statistics, media or law.
Having a “strong and stable need” to be the opposite sex to the one they actually are is self-evidently a mental disorder, and since it is one which causes distress, it qualifies as a mental illness. You cannot have a “need”, however “strong and stable”, for something which is literally impossible. What these people actually have is a strong and stable desire to be something they are not: sadly, strong and stable desires for impossible things are all too frequent.
@carl t, Russell S
My basic position is that you can only have one set of overall norms in society, and they pretty much have to fit the majority well and the minorities less well. Still we can at least try to give a bit for everybody, We do not insists that everybody learn sign language, for instance, but we do provide subtitles, and a certain number of interpreters, etc. to help out the deaf.
For this one there seems to be a (limited) number of people who would be free from an immense amount of strain if they could live and be treated as the opposite sex, where this really is the main problem and – mental illness or not – where there is really nothing you can do to change it. Debbie Hayton, who sometimes writes here might be one example They can not become the opposite sex, and they can not demand to be treated as such where this does not make sense, But if we can get away from the discussion whether trans women *really are* women, or not, we could look to see if there are things society might reasonably do in particular areas that would make their lives easier without imposing excessive costs on everybody else. I am actually quite restrictive here, but this does not have to be all-or-nothing. Sex and prisons would naturally go with the external genitals, sports teams would go with the with the physical body, as would medical statistics, and here I’d put trans people with their natal sex, or alternatively in a group of their own. All-women shortlists, women’s officers, and feminist conclaves are up to those who choose to practice such woke things. I’d draw the line at the non-binary – you cannot invent a whole new social role for yourself and demand that everybody else comply. But if we limit ourselves to pronouns and social interactions it really should not be that hard. And if the change is controlled, demanding, and more or less irreversible (no self-ID here), we might spread the pain a bit and allow people with a gender-change certificate into women’s loos and dressing rooms. After all they look like women, and they have to wee somewhere.
The Bible expressly forbids this. Societies that lack strong masculine and feminine role models fall prey to those that do.
Christ forbids you to have your way. Much of the Bible is an example of what not to do, but none of Christ’s example is.
Agree with everything here. I think what you are talking about is old fashioned tolerance and sympathy. Great posts.
“I think what you are talking about is old fashioned tolerance and sympathy.” <– Read the rest of what he says, no, he is not.
“My basic position is that you can only have one set of overall norms in society” <– And as we shed bestial obsession with what has no moral significance — aka, the un-Christlike bone in the nose primitivism of much of the Bible — we do have to define men and women in a consistent and factually coherent way.
What you want to avoid cannot be avoided.
Which means Social Conservatives will lose, because they are animated only by bestial emotion, and no relevant facts.
If we want to define men and women in a consistent and factually coherent way there is only one answer: we have to base ourselves on the objectively verifiable facts of biology and ignore the vague and purely subjective concept of ‘gender identity’. Presumably that is not what you had in mind? Personally, though, I am willing to accept a certain amount of inconsistency in the interest of people getting along.
If you want to take this further, please be advised that on principle I refuse to discuss who is an imbecile, a moron, or animated by bestial emotion.
The trouble there is, gender identity is not particularly subjective at all, and it is an accurate measure of who is a man or woman more than 14999 times out of 15000. It certainly beats phenotypic sex or chromosomal sex.
“If you want to take this further, please be advised that on principle I refuse to discuss who is an imbecile, a moron, or animated by bestial emotion.” <– I won’t discuss it either. You are, so are all Social Conservatives.
You are here to advocate for the grotesque abuse of children.
Well, tell me then how it is possible for a third party to determine objectively the difference between someone having a female gender identity, a man being mistaken about his gender identity, and someone faking one in order to obtain some benefit – like being moved into another prison.
“Well, tell me then how it is possible for a third party to determine objectively the difference between someone having a female gender identity, a man being mistaken about his gender identity, and someone faking one in order to obtain some benefit – like being moved into another prison.” <– With 100% accuracy, it is never possible.
Grow up.
The 99.99998% accuracy now seen is good enough for rational, unbigoted people.
I claim zero % accuracy. All you know is what the person tells you. There is no way from the outside to distinguish whether the person is transgender, sincere but mistaken (possibly with mental a problems) or simply lying. If you know such a way, tell me how.
“Having a “strong and stable need” to be the opposite sex to the one they actually are is self-evidently a mental disorder” <– Nonsense moron, because it that same reason why anyone is happy as is usual, to be the sex they are.
You are claiming it is necessarily a mental disorder for anyone to happily be a man or woman.
“What these people actually have is a strong and stable desire to be something they are not:” <– No, imbecile, the desire to have all of them as much as possible be congruent to how the determinate portion of them already is.
You say:
‘One way or the other, the explosively growing cohort of young women who identify as trans are unlikely to fit into your model.’
Can you point me to some evidence of this ‘explosively growing cohort’?
This phenomenon, described as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria by Lisa Littman, which affects adolescent girls in the manner that eating disorders do, is very real. I believe that the statistics for referral to the GIDS at the Tavistock bear this out. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find.
“This phenomenon, described as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria by Lisa Littman” <– That is a thing which does not exist.
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/no-social-contagion-gender-transition
No evidence for it has ever existed.
Most “trans” males are AGP – Autogynephilic. It is sexual paraphilia – a fetish. They are sexually aroused by thinking of themselves as a woman, dressing as a woman etc.
Another group of trans males are what we used to call “peeping Toms” they just want to get in the girls changing rooms for the obvious reason.
Another group are homosexuals in denial.
For trans females there are another set of reasons. The main one seems to be body dysmorpia – teenage girls who 20 years ago would have been anorexic.
Girls who have an extreme adverse reaction to going through puberty.
Those who have actual Gender Dysphoria are probably the smallest group of all, and you would have to justify your statement that these are the most important.
Well expressed. This is my understanding, too, having read a lot of the literature on the subject.
I would not disagree with any of that. Those who have actual gender dysphoria may indeed be a relatively small group. I still think they are important, because for them it is neither a mismatched solution to a completely different problem, nor a way of getting their rocks off.
Transvestism ‘may’ be a sexual fetish, but not necessarily. Autogynophilia, however, is definitely a sexual fetish, and arguably it’s adult men with this paraphilia who are predominantly responsible for pushing this ideology. The numbers of children, young people and adults who have gender dysphoria is probably very small, but the whole issue has been obscured by pseudo-science and political activism. As you say, the explosion in the number of teenage girls now claiming to be dysphoric – Littman coined the term Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) to describe this cohort – have a raft of other co-morbidities, and are prey to social media influencers and social contagion.
A thoughtful post, which has predictably got you downvotes. Upvote from me though
I share your concern that a few judgments like this will not reverse the advance of Wokeism in HR departments.
This article does not mention what financial award was made by the Tribunal. The maximum award for standard unfair dismissal is £105k but these awards are often much lower and insufficient to scare progressive HR Managers.
We need a change in HR Law to add both political persecution and free speech censorship into the unlimited award category as is already the case for Sex, Age and Race discrimination at work.
A few well publicized £1 million awards following such a change in law might finally persuade progressive HR types to stop practicing political hate under the guise of diversity protection.
Compensation is decided at a separate hearing.
Although many young women are active supporters of trans ideology, it’s mainly young men who police statements online and show up at protests. They are intimidating and often violent, and the police just stand by. Eventually, a woman is going to get killed.
It depends where you are wrt the police response. I’ve been to KJK’s Hyde Park events and they have been well-policed. The cops certainly know where the disorder is likely to come from. You are correct to say that the protesters tend to be men, either middle-aged AGPs or young Antifa leftists. I agree, though, that the cops are different depending which regional force you are talking about.
Most of these transvestite men are just perverts.
Another comment below says that this “victory” is a push-back on weirdness. I think the latter part of your comment contradicts that.
“MTF trans-ideology is rooted in sexual desire.” <– Baseless horseshit, and quite reminiscent of other bigots claims RE other minorities, that differing minorities were after the bigots’ “wimmen”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=493pL_Vbtnc&t=15s
The role of the AGP fetishist male in this ideology/movement cannot be emphasised enough. They are the groomers at the top of the pyramid: everyone else is either a dupe, a collaborator or a victim.
There is no such thing as AGP — it is a theory bereft of evidence for itself. There are no such groomers — it is not possible to “make” anyone gay or transgender.
AGP seems to be favoured as an explanation by “gender critical” feminists because it has a good fit with an anti male ideology. I doubt it explains much.
Nonsense.
Upvote from me for sheer staying power. Way too much cosy consensus on here on this topic.
Meade’s ordeal began when the regulator received a single complaint about her sharing gender-critical posts on social media.
There should have been no “ordeal”. The regulator should have responded that any posts she made on social media were none of their damn business, and the complainant should get back to them when she does something objectionable that actually impacts her job performance.
Extraordiinary how the cultural juggernaut keeps pushing largely in the trans direction, yet the law is building a meaningful body of judgements in the other. It will be interesting to see how Labour fares. I’m betting that a failure to grasp the economic nettle.will see Starmer double down on the.culture with Momentum as the scorpion on his back.
With regards to ‘the law building a meaningful body of judgements’ I cant wait until the medics start getting sued – the insurance companies should be quaking as well.
“the judgment has far-reaching implications for freedom of speech.”
JS is correct about this. But it should be noted that “far-reaching” on this occasion means a big step on the path back to the realms of reason and sanity which we should never have been forced to leave.
Anyway. I am delighted for Rachel Maude. While its true that “the process is the punishment” it must at least be a great relief to have been so categorically vindicated.
I’ve said it before but gender critical activists have been thrust into a position where they are not just defending vital single sex spaces for women, but at the vanguard of the never-ending battle for freedom of speech.
2+2=4. Everything else follows.
It is wonderful to see the push-back on weirdness.
Hear hear.
The idea that one person can speak but another cannot is what?
WtF…
If you follow the link clicking on “launching”, you read:
“In June 2020, a *friend* of Ms Meade raised concerns with Social Work England in relation to her comments on social media”
With friends like this, who needs enemies (and who needs the SWE).
Stonewall and other activist organisations must no longer receive tax payer funding and be excluded from formal advisory roles in schools and local government for there to be any real progress on this issue.
Quite right. It is one thing for the law to make a sensible decision in a single case but it is pointless if we taxpayers are forced to actively promote the malevolent propaganda of Stonewall. I am against subsidising any propaganda but if any public money is to be spent in this area let it go to the LGB Alliance.
Agree. But we as a nation still fund UN Women and the WHO ….
Rachel Meade quite rightly won her case against her employers and the regulatory body that persecuted her for expressing a legitimate view and she will win compensation. However, at the end of the day the individuals who took the decision to persecute her will pay nothing the cost will fall on us the taxpayers.
Is it not time that individual activists within these organisations who took the decisions to persecute Rachel Meade should bear the cost of their decisions? I am sick of picking up the cost of the malevolent wrongdoing by various civil servants. Those who sanctioned and supported the steps taken against Rachel Meade should jointly and severally bear the cost and the organisations should ensure that the costs are recovered from the individuals concerned including the senior personnel to the extent that they sanctioned and supported the actions. Directions should come from the Ministers that legal action be initiated accordingly for their wrongful actions that exposed the service to costs.
I couldn’t agree more! It would be interesting to know how much this pointless and malevolent persecution of Mrs Meade cost, and from which budget it was taken.
Presumably, a good chunk of it will come from the council tax payers of the Borough of Westminster, not that the council will ever inform them of that fact ….
‘Cole Khan Solicitors, called the judgment a “landmark victory for common sense and free speech in the culture war on gender issues”.
Following the judgment, Westminster city council apologised to Meade “for the way she has been treated and the upset that has been caused”.’
I hope that tomorrow there’s a letter from Cole Khan Solicitors, awaiting the arrival of Westminster City Council’s people who decided to mount this assault on one of its employees, demanding massive damages and abject apologies for their behaviour.
It is not possible to be “gender critical” without simultaneously stating that transgender people do not really exist to have any rights at all — to be gender critical is exclusively to be gender denying, the claim all transgender people are really mentally ill cisgender people. The all but explicitly genocidal transphobia to being “gender critical” is inherent to the “gender critical” viewpoint.
I’m sorry that Unherd does not provide a laugh emoji. Your delusion deserves no response other than that.
I have no delusion you can identify, because you are only wishcasting I have any.
Your post is nonsense. I know of several individuals who present as persons of a sex other the one they were born as and spent their early years as. You would describe them as transgender. They exist and are able to exercise their normal rights and no one, even if they believe them to be deluded in their belief that they have a gender that differs from their natal sex, either has a phobia about them or wishes to subject them to “genocide”.
Some may regard them as mentally ill but as the idea that they have a gender different to their natal sex is regarded as a delusion that is largely harmless to anyone else for all practical purposes they can go about their life in peace and are fully entitled to believe that those who believe them mentally ill are mistaken.
“Transgenderism” only becomes an issue when some muscular man who claims to be a woman wishes to compete in sports reserved for females because they are naturally physically weaker on the whole. It may also be an issue if male rapists who claim to be women want to be imprisoned with women. Sensible “transgender people” see the problems and don’t make a song and dance about these sort of issues and don’t claim with wild exaggeration that “transgender people don’t really exist to have any rights at all”.
You convince no one by your bald jargon ridden assertions.
“They exist and are able to exercise their normal rights and no one, even if they believe them to be deluded in their belief that they have a gender that differs from their natal sex, either has a phobia about them or wishes to subject them to “genocide”.” <– Lies and nonsense entire from you. You think forcing a woman to use them en’s room because she is too masculine is her being able to exercise normal rights.
Every stage of genocide against transgender people is explicitly present throughout the Western world to some degree except outright “hunt them down” extermination. The hunting sometimes takes place, but not so far much official extermination.
http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide/
You are personally are here to indulge in several of them.
““Transgenderism” only becomes an issue when some muscular man who claims to be a woman wishes to compete in sports reserved for females because they are naturally physically weaker on the whole” <– Which still has nothing to do with, and is only a predicate for your genocidal bigotry. The thing to do whether someone is cisgender or transgender is require they have 2 years of a effective blood testosterone level appropriate to the gender category they are competing.
But you don’t want a reasonable solution, you want an excuse to be an abusive demagogue.
Why not grow a toothbrush mustache while you’re at it?
Except that the relevant factor for athletic prowess seems to be your sex at puberty, not your current testosterone level.
And you are incorrect there as well.
https://www.cces.ca/transgender-women-athletes-and-elite-sport-scientific-review
As well as it being obviously not the case, or near every MtF transgender person attempting the Olympics would have “dominated” those events.
For near 20 years.
It never happened because you are only FoS.
I’m gender critical, and I don’t deny the existence of trans people. In fact, I believe they should have all the rights of any citizen, which they already have. To be gender critical is simply the belief that women should have their own spaces—restrooms, changing rooms, rape crises centers, prisons— without male-bodied trans women. Trans women are males. If they want to live as women, fine. Just stay out of women’s spaces. Start your own rape crisis centers and homeless shelters.
“and I don’t deny the existence of trans people” <– What was everything I wrote?
Gender doesn’t exist. You’re either male or female. Sex is dimorphic. This is scientific fact.
Look, if you want to put on a dress and pretend to be a woman, go knock yourself out. There are plenty of bars and clubs that cater to that. No-one is stopping you, so you do you. The problem here lies more in that what should be a bit of harmless fun is now being adopted into official government and corporate language.
I’ll use smoking and drinking as an example. I have no problem with people doing either. I myself used to smoke and I still drink occasionally. However, if smokers and drinkers were demanding that smoking and drinking should be permitted absolutely everywhere and that those who oppose it are unmitigated bigots who need to be cancelled then most people would react unfavorably to smokers and drinkers. This is where trans-activism is today.
You have a ‘right’ to put on make-up and wear women’s underwear if that’s your thing, but you can’t force others to believe that you are a woman. This is what most people here are complaining about. If you want to or even need to indulge in a cross-dressing sexual fantasy, that’s fine, but please stop forcing others, especially the young and impressionable, to participate in it.
“Gender doesn’t exist.” <– Abject nonsense for you to claim it. All of the evidence in existence refutes you. You literally have none backing you up at all.
“Sex is dimorphic.” <– Yes, and between the ears is a place humans are sexually dimorphic. That dimorphism developing in utero is what a person’s gender is.
Not quite. Gender does exist, but it is social. It is a matter of which social roles society recognises, and who are allowed to inhabit which roles. There have been human societies (few, but some) that accepted as women people with a male body (or vice versa), or that operated with more than two genders. I’d venture that all human societies have had two main social roles appropriate for physical males resp. physical females, but other things can be done in addition. Societies are free to define what categories of people they want (nobles, gentlemen, serfs, dhimmi, …) and to establish the rules that define who is what and how you can possibly transition. What no society has had is an individual right to define you own role and force everybody else to comply.
“Gender does exist, but it is social.” <– No, only what is taught is social. Gender is not taught. Gender is created by internal patterns of neural development which are apparently fixed in their meaning by the time of parturition. Gender is biological and physical.
What you are calling gender is behaviors, and in some spectacularly stupid instances, professions.
You are claiming a man happy to be so who puts on a dress and is convincing at it has become a woman.
You are ridiculous.
Society as you imply it does not exist. Only individuals ever have or can, there is no trace of “hivemind” to humanity. What there may be is witch hunts, burnings at the stake, and mob rule. You want that inflicted on people who are innocently and biologically transgender — similarly innocently and biologically other people have different skin tones skin or eye shapes, and on account of that were once widely reviled and abused in law and policy, and social encounters. Your sort instead will be driven into the shadows and reviled, because you willfully refuse to understand or deal sanely with reality — like your preposterous notion gender is created by society — and your purely stupid bigoted notion that “society” will not or should not cast you out and revile you for your bigotries.
The strange thing is how unlike those who once championed the biological superiority of “white” people, you are here to deny measured biology because you already know you have to make up fake facts about transgender people to give you baseless hatred any figleaf at all.
This is a link to a list of the representative facts you deny.
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-birth-defect-no-more-a-men
You will not approach it by way of any factual rebuttal of me, because you are only the vile child abuser I observe you are.
Well, kudos for giving the references. At this point I ought to read them all, read an equal number with the opposite conclusion, and evaluate. Because this is one of those fields – like sex differences, innate racial differences in IQ, or the effect of lockdown – where evidence is uncertain, but both sides are so partisan they cherrypick their evidence, You cannot trust even the people you agree with, so the fact that there exists a review that points in one direction is not enough. So – admitting I am falling short – here is my answer.
– ‘Social gender’. If being a woman is not about the biology, and is not about the social role and social interactions, what is it you identify as? If it made no difference to his body, his behaviour or his social interactions, what would it mean if say, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Clint Eastwood identified as women? Some purely abstract notion? I would actually accept the argument that it meant that they had female souls. But you soul is known only to God, and he does not answer questions. Anyway, if womanhood is purely a matter of inner essence, what difference does it make if your male body competes against spiritual males on the sports field?
– ‘Male puberty making no difference to sports’. All you need to do is to look at a girls or women’s team to identify the single trans woman in it. Male puberty gives a different bone structure, tendons, internal organs etc. and it can be seen with the naked eye. One hears the argument that all bodies are different and trans women are no better at sport than a biological woman with the same body. Which misses the point that top athletes of either sex are rather far from the average – and that there is a large population of biological males with bodies that are better for sport than just about any biological woman. Once it becomes accepted that you can freely decide which group you want to compete in, ‘women’s’ sport will be dominated by biological men who identify as winners and self-ID as such.
– ‘Transsexuality is biological’ The problem with the arguments presented, just from looking at the titles in your list, is that none of the arguments is either clear-cut or reliable. Genetic associations or imaging brain structures give soft statistical correlations at best. Population-wide genetic associations are exactly the kind of evidence that out-and-out racists try (unsuccessfully) to use to convince people that some races are inherently different and superior/inferior. Analysis of brain scan images does not allow you to discriminate reliably between biological men and women, let alone between rather more nebulous categories like cis and trans. Sure, there may be statistical differences between the sexes, but the distributions overlap way too much to serve as a diagnostic criterion for anything. As for surgery giving better mental health outcomes, mental health is very hard to measure objectively, particularly for a group of highly troubled unusual individuals. And such arguments are anyway suspect from a group of people who notoriously refuse to conduct thorough mental health evaluations on children before deciding to move in with hormones and knife.
If transsexuality was biological, the problem could be solved quite easily. You identify the objective and reliable biological markers, and when someone claims to (possibly) be trans you check if the markers are present. If they are, you get the ID as the opposite gender, if not, you are refused. The very fact that you want self-ID without any objective tests to back it up would seem to be proof that you, yourself, do not believe that transsexuality being biological is in any way an objective fact.
While waiting for my other post to go out of moderation, let me add that you should be careful claiming that “Society as you imply it does not exist. Only individuals ever have or can“. If the only thing that exists is individuals, free to act as they find best, there is nothing that can stop me from deciding for myself that transsexuals (or homosexuals) ‘do not exist’, or to call you by any pronoun I happen to feel like (including ‘it’). The only way you can get recognition is if society agrees to a norm that gives you that recognition, and then imposes that norm on its members.
Did Meade receive any compensation? If this doesn’t cost someone it seems like it is a victory in principle only and the perpetrators of the wrongs do not bear the cost. The costs to the perpetrators is what is most likely to drive change in behavior.
The compensation hearing will probably be in February
Taken together with James Esses’s recent victory over the UK Council for Psychotherapy, it could be that things are looking up.
Agree with the ruling. Freedom of speech, esp outside of work, and so long as not inciting violence in a way that we’d all understand, a bedrock value even if it makes some upset.
What’s less clear from this is could an employee be more specific and critical in the workplace about a fellow employee and their Trans status and avoid that being deemed misconduct? I suspect were that the scenario she’d have lost. I think, but I haven’t read the ruling in detail, what’s being defended here is the right to make general comments outside work about a such an issue. This may get lost on some and a few idiots think it’s open season on any Trans fellow worker in a more specific way.
Entirely separate debate what folks think causes some to be, or feel, Trans. The issue here is what exactly was this Tribunal concluding.
Agree with the judgement. Free speech must be defended. Though most people now seem to have forgotten that hounding people out of their jobs and destroying their reputations did not start with trans activists.
There was a whole spate of this around supposed misogyny (ie disagreement with feminist ideology) run by feminists themselves.
Let’s hope this judgement puts paid to that as well.