I can clearly remember the moment I found out that Maya Forstater, the NGO researcher who lost her job in 2018 because of her gender-critical beliefs, had lost her employment tribunal. This was in December 2019, and it chilled me because I share Forstater’s view about the importance of biological sex. In a verdict that was later overturned, Judge James Tayler ruled that her opinions were “not worthy of respect in a democratic society”, and thus not protected under the Equality Act or the articles of the European convention on human rights concerned with freedom of thought and expression.
It is still not widely recognised how momentous this was. For 18 months, until this decision was reversed on appeal, it was widely assumed to be legal to sack a person if they expressed the belief that biological sex was immutable and distinct from gender identity (the feeling of being male or female – which for transgender people means an experience of mismatch between mind and body). Women like me, who don’t believe everyone has a gender identity distinct from their sex, risked being labelled bigots if we said what we thought.
