Woman can define “woman”: Former employer owes her damages for “gender-critical” belief discrimination

Four long years of abuse and litigation have come to a just end for Maya Forstater this afternoon.

Congratulations to @MForstater, who receives over £100k in compensation from @cgdev, who were found to have discriminated against her due to her gender critical beliefs, which, as her case established, are worthy of respect in a democratic society. #SexMatters https://t.co/7YGjCoDQIe

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 30, 2023

In March of 2019, Forstater, a researcher with a British non-profit, wound up not having her contract renewed because she’d done the unthinkable – she’d tweeted that people could not change their biological sex.

A researcher who lost her job at a charity after tweeting that transgender women cannot change their biological sex has said at an employment tribunal that she “does not harbour any ill-feeling” towards trans people.

Maya Forstater, 45, a tax expert, was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Global Development (CGD), an international thinktank that campaigns against poverty and inequality. Her contract at the organisation, which is based in Washington and London, was not renewed in March this year after a dispute over publicising her views on social media.

She had the unmitigated nerve to speak the unspeakable in public!

…Forstater tweeted that “men cannot change into women”…

…At the central London employment tribunal on Friday, she agreed that the trans community was vulnerable. She added: “I don’t think it’s possible for someone to change their sex … [although] it’s possible to change it on a birth certificate.”

Ooo, she’s a cheeky thing!

For that heinous airing of heretical beliefs, she had to be punished and publicly shunned. Since real stones are out of the question for the moment, her employers and trans advocates chose to fling figurative ones with the same impact on her life and career.

Colleagues at the think-tank filed complaints that they found her tweets during these Twitter tussles “exclusionary or offensive,” which in the fascist state of Britain is some sort of triggering phrase for calling the Woke Police down on you. It’s also an easy out to get you canned from your place of employment. Subsequently, her contract was not renewed and everyone could pat themselves on the back for washing the terfy transphobe out of the building.

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 19, 2019

But she wasn’t going quietly. Forstater brought “tribunal claims” against her former employer and interested parties and, during her appeal, the first judgement (which had gone against her) – by a judge with obvious social justice warrior control issues – was overturned.

…Forstater brought tribunal claims against CGD Europe, the Centre for Global Development and its president Masood Ahmed, alleging direct and indirect discrimination as well as harassment and victimisation on the basis of her so-called ‘gender critical’ beliefs.

At an initial hearing, judge James Jayler ruled that Forstater’s ‘gender critical’ belief that “sex is immutable” did not qualify for protection under the 2010 Equality Act. Her views are “incompatible with the human rights of others” and “not worthy of respect in a democratic society,” the judgment said.

But Forstater appealed and a second tribunal overturned the decision. Mr Justice Choudhury said in his appeal judgment: “Beliefs may well be profoundly offensive and even distressing to many others, but they are beliefs that are and must be tolerated in a pluralist society.” In a decision published on 6 July, judge Andrew Glennie upheld Forstater’s claim of direct discrimination.

The appeals tribunal’s 3 judge panel really went into depth on all the “offensive” tweets and beliefs expressed by Forstater that had so outraged the trans-activist community and woke-ists and found them to be, generally, pretty inoffensive. Some of the “evidence” was downright ridiculous, as the objects of Forstater’s “mockery” had set themselves up for precisely what she wound up saying.

…The tribunal also considered tweets in which Forstater said she was surprised people could say they believed that males could be women, and that they are “tying themselves in knots”.

It said they were “fairly mild examples” of mockery, adding: “Mocking or satirising the opposing view is part of the common currency of debate.”

The three-member panel, led by the employment judge Andrew Glennie, said a description of a Credit Suisse executive, Pips Bunce, who identified as a woman for part of the week, as a “part-time cross dresser” could have been put in “more moderate terms”.

But two of the three panel members said it “did not amount to an objectionable or inappropriate manifestation of Ms Forstater’s belief, given the context of a debate on a matter of public interest; the fact that Pips Bunce had put themself forward in public as a person who is gender fluid and who dresses sometimes as a woman and sometimes as a man”.

From that point forward, it was just a question of letting the hurt dogs howl and waiting on the tribunal to assess and award damages, which is what they did today. The panel bolstered it with additional commentary explaining their decisions which excoriate everyone involved in hounding Forstater out of a job, while publicly and maliciously maligning her.

The Center for Global Development was today ordered to pay £106,404 in compensation to Maya Forstater, after the organisation was found to have engaged in unlawful discrimination in its decision not to offer her an employment contract or to renew her visiting fellowship.

The award includes aggravated damages for oppressive and high-handed conduct in the public statements that CGD president Sir Masood Ahmed and vice president Amanda Glassman made during the course of the case, which the employment tribunal said overstated judicial observations about the Claimant’s belief, and suggested that her belief could be equated to bigotry.

The Tribunal concluded that the discriminatory acts undertaken by CGD in not offering Ms Forstater a contract were significant, as they “showed that the Respondents did not want to be associated with the Claimant. They affected the Claimant’s status within the Respondents’ organisation and in the eyes of the wider professional world.”

The Tribunal criticised CGD’s conduct during the four-year court battle, finding that it had made inflammatory and inaccurate public statements in the context of a “hotly disputed topic” which had contributed to the abuse on social media, and the professional and personal shunning, experienced by Ms Forstater.

One line stands out to me in @MForstater‘ statement: ‘Seeing their mother smeared as a bigot and a potential
harasser across international media is something that my sons should never have had to experience.’
No, it isn’t. It’s a disgrace that her family were put through this.

— Jill Foster (@JournalistJill) June 30, 2023

The tribunal judges took these wokesters to school. And in the U.K. of all places.

Where they have a man playing a housewife in a news blurb about the high cost of household bills…

Would @itvnews get a guy to
black up and talk about black issues? No. So why use a man LARPing as a mother for fetishistic a buzz for this item? #womanface #genderwoo https://t.co/m46eUHZXwW

— D. Hallows MPhil (@DHallowsPodcast) June 29, 2023

…but WOMEN aren’t supposed to be ANGRY NEO-NAZI TERFS about it?

82% of women in the UK have children. That’s at least 21 million women.

ITV chose a man, who believes in gender identity, to represent that 21 million.

Yet women are not allowed to find this insulting? Or more accurately, voice their feelings.

Why not?

— KPSS Pro-Reality 🏳️‍🌈🍒💪🦕 Sex Matters (@MegaSausageHead) June 30, 2023

What a day for sanity.

More please.