And you’d be wrong. By the end of this post I’ll have already gone past the daily 7000 characters that is on pace for that … and it is early yet. And I am not the most long winded or active poster around.
I linked to to the source of those claims. If you have some expert to quote that disputes that article fine.
Of course a feminist who feels that their identity is being appropriated can make the same claim on you. Still you opine freely …
She is trying to be part of the active discussion, the “public consultation”, regarding The Gender Recognition Act of 2004. My understanding is that currently getting a certificate recognizing a change in gender in the U.K. requires some evidence of significant gender dysphoria, of having lived as the desired gender for at least two years, and of intent to continue to do so. There is a push to remove those requirements, to make the process a simple administrative one of a person stating that there gender is [gender] and that statement having full legal status. She is part of a view that is against changing the law in that way, claiming that a “man” does not become “woman” simply by a statement. Yes, that view is informed by her view that one’s “sex” is a biological condition, and that the concept of “gender” is a tool used to oppress women, not a real thing.
Odds are her view will lose in the public debate, and I believe it should. But I do not believe that those with that view should be prohibited from participating in the debate about where the law is going.
In the U.K. not based on discrimination against various classes including those with “protected beliefs.” Hence the point of the case: they could discriminate against her for her belief because it was not of a protected nature. Discrimination against those with her beliefs is okay.
What does or does not drive away posters on this board is a huge hijack and I welcome you to bump the disputation ATMB thread if you want to go there.
You believe that an employee who believes those things without sharing those thoughts or acting on those thoughts in the workplace, but expressing them outside of work, makes other employees unsafe and would fire anyone who expresses those positions outside of work. I assume you’d also fire those who you see as having other hateful beliefs, be it what you consider to be misogyny, bigotry, religious intolerance, and so on.
You might have a hard time staffing your factory in much of America.
I speak as an employer … my employees need to behave according to appropriate rules of conduct at work and are of course prohibited from creating a hostile work environment for anyone. Their views expressed outside of work are their business not mine nor the business of other employees. They can, by my belief system, be completely immoral outside of work; policing their beliefs is not my job.
Doubling back to your The Judgment quote. So Forstater says the use of “he” in reference to Murray was a mistake, as others have made here - does not claim that she would ever intentionally misgender, that she might use the requested gender out of courtesy, but she objects to legal mandate to say something that she does not believe is true. As far as that goes I think it is very fair to state that she cannot do that in a work environment as that would create a hostile environment. And that others in charge of their private spaces are free to forbid her from speaking like that. But dang, making good manners legally enforceable? Criminalizing being an asshole? I am no free speech absolutist but that does cross my line. As a Jew I would be very upset over someone talking about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as if they were a real thing, but I would not outlaw speech that claims them.
Simple answer to that question: no. No one has taken that position.
