Being Gender Critical means having to demean and insult trans people.

As we are about to hear again, 'Gender Critical' views are a legally 'protected' position. But those who have them must also voice them; it's axiomatic.

Another week approaches and with it another court case in which the rights of individuals with cultural capital in society to hate a marginalised group will be aired in public. One side will no doubt reheat arguments about free speech, cancellation, all the rest - and the other will look on from the sidelines, objectified, anxious, feeling that existential threat again. On Monday the Gender Critical Traveling Circus making its way through the British judicial system is back, as Maya Forstater's case for unlawful discrimination returns to the Employment Tribunal to see if the non-renewal of her contract with an NGO was unlawful. She does this, having established in an appeal that her Gender Critical views are a 'protected characteristic' under The Equality Act 2010 (on the basis, pretty much, that such beliefs are not actually Full Nazi). It is therefore down to her ex-clients (note - not employers; she was a contractor) to demonstrate that their relationship with her was not terminated simply because of her GC views but because of other factors. I suspect that Forstater's team will argue that it was, and thus it was unlawful. 

It's a good time to step back. I have no idea what is going to be said in court, but I want to revisit one aspect of the previous ruling that established the legal protection about which GC these days voices shout so loud. Uniquely in memory, the judgment began by establishing a whole series of things that it did NOT mean:

a. This judgment does not mean that the EAT has expressed any view on the merits of either side of the transgender debate and nothing in it should be regarded as so doing.
 
b. This judgment does not mean that those with gender-critical beliefs can ‘misgender’ trans persons with impunity. The Claimant, like everyone else, will continue to be subject to the prohibitions on discrimination and harassment that apply to everyone else. Whether or not conduct in a given situation does amount to harassment or discrimination within the meaning of EqA will be for a tribunal to determine in a given case.

c. This judgment does not mean that trans persons do not have the protections against discrimination and harassment conferred by the EqA. They do. Although the protected characteristic of gender reassignment under s.7, EqA would be likely to apply only to a proportion of trans persons, there are other protected characteristics that could potentially be relied upon in the face of such conduct.

d. This judgment does not mean that employers and service providers will not be able to provide a safe environment for trans persons. Employers would continue to be liable (subject to any defence under s.109(4), EqA) for acts of harassment and discrimination against trans persons committed in the course of employment. 

(Summary, p.2)

Essentially, this means that having GC views does not mean that you are allowed to voice them with impunity at a place of work. Given that pretty much all GC views, no matter how expressed, are likely to feel threatening to a trans colleague, because they state at their heart that the latter doesn't actually exist as they know themselves to be, the ruling feels strange (as was pointed out at the time). Does it mean that it's fine to be a GC at work as long as you never mention it? So being Gender Critical can amount to just what's going on privately in your head then? Did we need a Judge to rule on this - because if it is so, perhaps any point of view if held inwardly alone may in actuality be a protected characteristic. You might believe that the moon is made of camembert and populated by Hobbits, or, more sinisterly, that you'd like to have everyone with curly hair boiled in oil, but if you never say so, never act on these beliefs and consequently no one knows, the issue of you needing to have such beliefs protected in law is of no real relevance to society. Whilst such views are still in your head, one might say that they are actually 'protected' - because they never leave your head and no-one knows you have them. They are protected of course also by the thickness of your skull.

However, can you be a GC and keep it to yourself? Is not an essential part of holding these views the need for you to express them? Doesn't the very position itself demand that you share these views (as an Evangelical Christian might understand that an article of their faith is to evangelise) - otherwise what is the point of holding them? And with that expression comes a threat to the trans person, a denial of them, an attempt to force them to conform to an identity that you, not the trans person, insist upon. Even to have that trans person disappear from society altogether by removing their access to everyday rights or facilities. Does it matter if such speech takes place outside the workspace - the GC person who keeps their lips sealed at work but who goes home to tweet abuse at trans people or lobby to have The Gender Recognition Act repealed? If such activity is made known in the workplace, by accident or otherwise, then these views have entered the workplace and an employer must take account of this fact.

In my experience, and through observation of what happens in practice (online, in almost every British newspaper, in books, on television, or on any available conference platform), Gender Critical people see their philosophy as not simply an academic exercise based on holding a philosophical position, but one in which is embedded an obligation to promote their views. Such views are frequently bitterly hostile and regularly degenerate into abuse online. The venom they employ can be understood by their characterisation of the existence of trans people as a war against them, often deploying fictions about the all-powerful 'trans lobby' or creeping institutional capture by groups like Stonewall or Mermaids, which they present as Goldsteinesque caricatures. The need to attack the other side is fundamental to the GC position. 

My belief is that you cannot hold GC views without also inevitably being committed at some level to degrading the lives of trans people. Any GC who claims otherwise is being disingenuous or lying, as is sometimes made clear when some of the so-called 'reasonable' GC voices of social media rush to join in the online dogpiles and the trolling of a trans person or an ally. There are also, of course, those who willfully refuse to address a trans person using their preferred gender. Who will - as a matter of decision - call a trans woman 'he', amongst them some very prominent figures. 

Being a GC is an evangelical stance. Its evangelism is a core part of it, without which it doesn't actually exist. Privately held GC or TERF opinions are effectively a contradiction in terms.

On the other side of the equation are the trans people on the receiving end of all these views. The equivalent question pertains to trans people too. Does being trans bring with it the embedded requirement to evangelise and to somehow be the 'enemy of women'?

For many GCs, the answer to this question is a clear yes. Indeed it is central to the GC model that it be so - trans women, they assert, are a danger to cisgender women, with many holding to a belief that the very purpose of transition is to enter female spaces simply to sexually assault women - a founding myth on which the GC requirement to publicly fight is grounded. These ideas appear in both sanitized dogwhistles (in Parliament a few months ago Tory Peer Lord Blencathra dropped his facade of 'reasonable concerns' as he concluded a failed attempt to remove trans women's rights to be incarcerated in women's prisons by admonishing his trans supporting opponents for "disliking women"), to terrifying online abuse. The now-deceased TERF activist, Magdalen Berns (credited with first sparking the interest of JK Rowling in all this) claimed a place in the folklore with the tweet below - one of endless examples of similar language from her or many others from which I could have chosen.

At the core of the belief of many GC people is the view that just being a trans woman is an act of misogyny in itself, even of violence against women. 

Further, there are countless absurd examples of trans people being accused of trying to 'recruit' others to their 'perverted ideology' or to 'trans' (used as a verb) children. From what used to be the fringes, there are accusations of attempting to do so to the entire human race - in the service of George Soros and some international (and often Jewish - anti-semitism can be close to the narrative) conspiracy, or Big Pharma. Gay people faced all this decades ago; in some countries they still do. 

This is projection on a galactic scale. Such notions might maybe be filed away as a QAnon-sized toxic fantasy, were these founding principles not so widely repeated (many are rooted in the original Sacred Texts of the GC and TERF movements from writers like Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond and Sheila Jeffreys).

The reality - and it shocks me that even now, in 2022, I must write this - is the absolute reverse. Trans women want to be accepted for who they are.  Most, in my experience, have no position on who anyone else is. It is for others to decide, as it is for us. As for our relationship with womanhood, for those of us who know ourselves to be women, we want nothing more than to be accepted by other women and to be welcomed (something that the majority of cisgender women are prepared to do, despite the endless narrative by GC voices to the contrary). Trans women of course offer no critique of a cis woman's absolute claim to be a woman, nor any attempt to alter the meaning of the word for them - how could we? Claims of hatred of other women, of misogyny, or worse, are amongst the most pernicious and vile smears of trans women and form the bedrock of almost all attacks upon us in the UK.

Vocal bigotry against trans women is a core part of the GC philosophy, intrinsic to its central beliefs. It has to be. It's a shame that in establishing these beliefs as protected in law, Justice Choudhury failed to understand this. 

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