21 Dec 2019 | Index in the Press
People have long speculated that J.K. Rowling, creator of Harry Potter and nothing else of note since, is secretly a transphobe. Until today, the strongest evidence was that she had liked a Twitter post referring to trans women as “men in dresses,” which she later claimed had been an accidental slip of her finger.
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As a purely free speech issue, I believe people should be allowed to say all manner of horrible things without losing their jobs over it and the Index on Censorship sided with Forstater in her court case for a similar reason.
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21 Dec 2019 | Index in the Press
Another explosion in the gender wars went off on December 18th, when an employment tribunal in London ruled that stating “gender-critical” beliefs—for instance, that the words “man” and “woman” properly refer to males and females rather than to anyone who identifies as such—are a legitimate reason to lose one’s job.
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Jodie Ginsberg of Index on Censorship, which campaigns for freedom of expression, said she was “deeply worried about what this judgment means …
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20 Dec 2019 | Index in the Press
JK Rowling is among those who have defended a tax expert who lost a landmark employment law ruling about her views on gender identity.
The Harry Potter author tweeted in support of Maya Forstater, 45, who was dismissed from her job as a researcher for The Center for Global Development (CGD) think tank after she posted a series of “offensive” messages on the topic of gender identity.
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Her case was backed by the Index on Censorship whose chief executive had previously called for a more “public and open debate about the distinction between sex and gender.”
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19 Dec 2019 | Index in the Press
A researcher who lost her job at a thinktank after tweeting that transgender women cannot change their biological sex has lost a test case because her opinions were deemed to be “absolutist”.
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Forstater has been supported by Index on Censorship. Its chief executive, Jodie Ginsberg, has said previously: “From what I have read of [Forstater’s] writing, I cannot see that Maya has done anything wrong other than express an opinion that many feminists share – that there should be a public and open debate about the distinction between sex and gender.”
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