Maya Forstater, the heroine we need right now
By Rob Jessel
She’s done it.Â
After a gruelling battle, Maya has won the most important victory of all, with today’s judgement establishing that a belief in biological sex is protected under the Equality Act.
We’ve had many champagne moments in recent weeks, but this one’s different. It marks the beginning of the end for the most pernicious, pathetic, cowardly yet effective tactic employed by gender ideologists: getting people sacked for saying things that are true.
So pop a cork if that’s your thing, hang out the bunting, tie a suffragette ribbon round the old oak tree. But remember that this judgement means even more for us than it does for Maya.Â
For Maya, this victory is a milestone in her years-long trudge through the legal system to right the wrong of her dismissal from the Center for Global Development. For us — all of us, whether we believe in biology or magic — today’s ruling confirms our rights to freedom of speech and conscience enshrined in Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.Â
Amid the well-earned celebrations and the outpouring of relief, we should also reflect and remember the human cost to Maya and the other women who fight for us all.Â
Maya is one of a handful of unbelievably brave and principled people, almost all of them women, who have taken the burden of our human rights upon their shoulders and carried the fight to the media and through the courts. No one who hasn’t been through it can imagine the constant stress, the harassment, the lies and abuse these women face, not to mention the colossal weight of responsibility and the knowledge of what this means for free speech.
Women like Maya, Marion Millar, Kellie-Jay Keen, Keira Bell, Stella Perrett, Julia Long, Jo Phoenix, Sarah Phillimore, and many, many more are creating history. Brick by brick, they are rebuilding a society where we can once again discuss issues that affect us directly, without fearing for our liberty or livelihoods.
Funnily enough, Maya’s victory has come in a week when I’ve been trying to help a TV news producer develop a story about people who have been bullied at work by Stonewall. Finding them wasn’t a problem: the unholy trinity of Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence and Stonewall have wormed their way into so many organisations, businesses and public sector institutions that examples of bullying are easy to come by.Â
But getting them to speak on camera? Impossible. Not because they’re not brave, or that they lack resilience or fortitude. It’s simply that they have to eat and pay the mortgage.
Maya’s victory is for them, and for everybody who has had to suffer in silence and self-censorship while their woke workplaces embraced a dangerous, illiberal and anti-science cult.
Thank you, Maya, for everything you have done for us.
Maya's a legend, as are you, Glinner! I am so happy for her vindication, and the vindication of gender critical people everywhere. Womenkind cannot thank you both enough for putting your livelihoods on the line. More and more people are becoming brave enough to speak out against the totalitarian madness of the TRA movement. LGB people need to be able to live and love with people of the same biological sex, to whom they are attracted, not who they are told they must be attracted to under threat of doxing, job loss and social paraiahhood. People with gender dysphoria need proper support in their day to day lives, counselling, safe third spaces and understanding, not to be railroaded into irreversible medicalised procedures and forcibly coupled under the alphabet soup with some of the most revolting individuals to walk the planet. And women. Women never have won the war against the thing that holds them back - sex based oppression. It was a work in progress, and Stonewall and their ilk have set it back by decades. With Maya's help and the sterling work of Sex Matters and their ingenious FOI campaign, we are back on track. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
She is one of the bravest women I know - what a result. She still has to fight the next stage though so we can't be complacent.