The case of Maya Forstater demonstrates just how far down the insane road to extreme wokeishness our nation has travelled.
Forstater holds, and has expressed, the view that the matter of biological sex is immuntable, that is, no matter what surgery or other measures an individual mau undergo, they can never actually 'change sex'. She is particularly concerned that there is now a vociferous lobby which is demanding ever greater recognition for so-called 'trans-people', nearly all of whom are males who apparently prefer to behave as and be seen as being female. These 'trans-females' expect to be treated as women, allowed to use facilities generally reserved for women and to compete in sports as women, despited having very obvious male attributes. Forstater believes that all of this is wrong, as does her supporter JK Rowling, but when she said so, her employer dismissed her on for expressing views which it found unacceptable. Rowling has also been vilified for providing support.
Forstater then took her case to a tribunal which astonishingly took her employer's side, stating that "her views were not worthy of respect in a democratic society". It went on to say that Forstater was "absolutist" in her view and said she was not entitled to ignore the rights of a transgender person and the "enormous pain that can be caused by misgendering".
What ? In effect the tribunal was saying that the expression of views which are not popular in modern society should not be allowed - where on earth are we living? Communist China ?
The tribunal appears to have failed to notice that biological sex and the apparent gender that a person wishes to exhibit are quite different. Any male can, if he wishes, disport himself as a woman, wearing female attire and using make-up, growing his hair in a female fashion and so on; such things do not and never can make him a woman. To many this must be blindingly obvious though to a shockingly noisy but very tiny minority it is a mark of the most appalling harrassment and discrimination to say so. Equally shocking is that there are now many organisations and even judicial bodies which appear so terrified of offending this, and other, tiny minorities that they have decided to remove the right of the vast majority to voice an opinion on such matters.
Thankfully, a judge in the High Court yesterday determined that the tribunal in Forstater's case ahd been wrong in law and ordered that the case be reheard. Effectively, he ruled that holding and even expressing a view contrary or offensive to that held by some others was not of itself criminal; Forstater had not done anything to directly harm, or even try to harm, anyone.
That such a case ever arose in the first place is frightening but demostrates how far down the road to totalitarianism we have gone. There are now so many forbidden topics, things we cannt say for fear of causing offence to someone who may then take legal action against the 'offender'. We are being monitored in all quarters in case we say something out of turn, usually something that would have passed unnoticed 50 years ago but now brings the full weight of the law crashing down on our heads.
How on earth did we get into such a mess ?
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