Ms Phillimore's history of UK transgenderism's core 'Legal Fiction' is informative. However, it is not 'The History' of deception and coercion, because it omits the role that all the leading medical and psychological professional groups have played in supporting the idea that reported 'feelings in a man's head' of this kind are to be believed. It also omits the corporate influences on those professional groups and on lawmakers.
And Phillimore fails to outline why this legal fiction is 'unsustainable'. History shows that medical and psychological fictions can be sustained for hundreds of years.
It has already been made clear by the Scottish Government that the convicted rapist Bryson will not be placed on remand in a women's prison. Gender-critical campaigners who want to make further gains in less clear-cut cases need to adopt approaches which are less narrowly focused on legalistic reasoning, and take more account of what lawyers call "expert opinion".
Unfortunately, Ms Phillimore appears determined to maintain such a narrow legalistic approach. She is attempting to sue Eventbrite, a US based ticketing company, for pulling out of promoting her recent book launch. The launch went ahead, with some inconvenience but apparently with no significant reduction in the number of attendees. Eventbrite's last reported revenues were a quarter of a billion dollars: it has the resources to exhaust even a well-founded claim, in preliminary correspondance and hearings over jurisdiction.
Her funding page (1) fails to mention the Belfast 'gay cake' case, which appears to provide just one defence for Eventbrite. Even if she were to establish that Eventbrite was suable in a UK court, it seems that she would have to prove that Eventbrite's directors do not have a 'protected philosophical belief' which would justify their failure to provide this particular service. The current page appears to acknowledge that Eventbrite's refusal resulted from its 'own moral code', which seems very close to accepting that they do have such a belief. There is hardly any mention of actual evidence which might bear on these legal issues, nor of speakers at the event (such as Graham Linehan) whose behaviour might be more reasonably characterised as 'hateful' towards many trans-identified people, and their supporters. Phillimore recently stated that Linehan 'was absolutely right about everything' (2). The failure to mention Linehan risks rendering the funding page's headline, about 'women' being censored, misleading to many readers.
It appears that lawyers are no less susceptible to 'litigatitis' (3) than non-lawyers.
Ms Phillimore's history of UK transgenderism's core 'Legal Fiction' is informative. However, it is not 'The History' of deception and coercion, because it omits the role that all the leading medical and psychological professional groups have played in supporting the idea that reported 'feelings in a man's head' of this kind are to be believed. It also omits the corporate influences on those professional groups and on lawmakers.
And Phillimore fails to outline why this legal fiction is 'unsustainable'. History shows that medical and psychological fictions can be sustained for hundreds of years.
It has already been made clear by the Scottish Government that the convicted rapist Bryson will not be placed on remand in a women's prison. Gender-critical campaigners who want to make further gains in less clear-cut cases need to adopt approaches which are less narrowly focused on legalistic reasoning, and take more account of what lawyers call "expert opinion".
Unfortunately, Ms Phillimore appears determined to maintain such a narrow legalistic approach. She is attempting to sue Eventbrite, a US based ticketing company, for pulling out of promoting her recent book launch. The launch went ahead, with some inconvenience but apparently with no significant reduction in the number of attendees. Eventbrite's last reported revenues were a quarter of a billion dollars: it has the resources to exhaust even a well-founded claim, in preliminary correspondance and hearings over jurisdiction.
Her funding page (1) fails to mention the Belfast 'gay cake' case, which appears to provide just one defence for Eventbrite. Even if she were to establish that Eventbrite was suable in a UK court, it seems that she would have to prove that Eventbrite's directors do not have a 'protected philosophical belief' which would justify their failure to provide this particular service. The current page appears to acknowledge that Eventbrite's refusal resulted from its 'own moral code', which seems very close to accepting that they do have such a belief. There is hardly any mention of actual evidence which might bear on these legal issues, nor of speakers at the event (such as Graham Linehan) whose behaviour might be more reasonably characterised as 'hateful' towards many trans-identified people, and their supporters. Phillimore recently stated that Linehan 'was absolutely right about everything' (2). The failure to mention Linehan risks rendering the funding page's headline, about 'women' being censored, misleading to many readers.
It appears that lawyers are no less susceptible to 'litigatitis' (3) than non-lawyers.
(1) https://democracythree.org/en-gb/stop-tech-censoring-women?hsLang=en-gb
(2) https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1577527484660285440?s=20&t=pYBNhTz3o7HyzGzAmX7wbg
(3) https://savageminds.substack.com/p/2022