Reflections on Freedom of Speech

After 6 years in the 'gender wars' the true fault lines have opened up - between those who can tolerate disagreement and those who cannot.

The image is from outside the Teeside Combined Court where I had the pleasure of a week long hearing in February 2024. It’s the most honest representation I have found outside any court of the adversarial family justice system.

The reason I have found my involvement in the ‘gender wars’ so frankly invigorating is that I have spent 25 years as a lawyer dealing with cases of moral ambiguity, where it is rarely a question of ‘winning’ but taking the least worst option. So to find a cause where there was ‘one side’ that was so clearly right was a novel and intoxicating experience. And in the early days, a variety of individuals and organisations all ‘pulled together’ in pursuit of a clear aim; to urgently restore the law that protects freedom of thought, expression and association.

Because this was a battle against forced compulsion with ‘gender identity ideology’, a quasi religious belief that a man could be a woman if he felt like it, and to deny this was bigotry of the most heinous kind. The speech that we wanted to protect was to say ‘a woman is an adult human female’, ‘sex is real and it matters’, ‘women don’t have penises’ and ‘medical transition of children is child abuse’.

And we wanted of course to protect the material reality behind those statements. But without the power to say them, how could we? That’s why freedom of speech is the right upon which all others depend. If you cannot talk about your rights, you cannot demand them and you cannot defend them. Gender identity ideology is the battle; freedom of speech remains the war.

As the legal victories rolled in - Forstater, Miller, Bailey, Fahmy, Meade, Phoenix - and the sense of urgency receded. Not everyone had gone mad, the senior courts at least retained a grip on reality and the law. So inevitably, the bonds that held groups and individuals in a state of emergency, began to break.

And what we have I think is very interesting. Again, it all comes back to freedom of speech and how few people appear to understand its importance and its consequences. The most significant fracture line has opened up between those who take a very ‘hard line’ on whether there can be any public recognition whatsoever of ‘gender identity’. Men who wear dresses in public are inevitably disgusting perverts, making a public show of their fetish and compelling any woman in eyeshot to engage with it, calling a man ‘she’ for any reason whatsoever is to show a ‘lack of respect’ for all women and brands you as in all probability a fucking disgusting pervert yourself.

I have taken a particular stance on the issue of men in dresses and if I would use she/her for a male person and the response I have got from certain quarters is to call me a disappointment, stupid, a government shill, a lover of ‘troons’, a keeper of ‘pet troons’ a ‘pig’, a ‘gaslighting moron’ a ‘fucking bitch’ and ‘scum’. I could go on, but you get the picture. Some speculate that my social media accounts must have been ‘hacked’ or I am ‘too frightened’ to do what is right. I am told by many that these exchanges are not an attempt to ‘compel’ my speech, but reasonable challenge to it.

I disagree. Abusing and insulting people who say things you don’t like is an attempt by the powerless to engage in compulsion. If you gave them any power, you would soon see where these impulses to abuse and insult lead them. It is made clear to me that I will be ostracised and despised if I don’t ‘toe the line’.

I could wang on for pages and pages about why I make the choices I do, to attempt to justify/and explain but few would bother to read it. And its irrelevant. It’s my freedom to believe and to speak as I wish. I don’t owe anyone any explanation - but if you ask nicely I might be prepared to discuss it with you. I agree for example that in media reports of crime, it is never right to attempt to confuse the reader that a male criminal is a female criminal. Nor am I happy with primary school children being asked to participate in affirming a person’s gender identity over their sex. If you disagree with me, that’s absolutely fine. I do not expect anyone to agree with me, or toe any line that I draw.

But the fault lines are at least now clear. This is not primarily now a battle between those who elevate ‘gender identity’ above sex and those who don’t, but more now a struggle between those who cannot tolerate or permit any deviance from their own position, and those who understand the fundamental importance of article 10 ECHR. Some of those who find disagreement or challenge personally painful are men who think their ‘gender identity’ is more important than anything else and some of those are women who think their disgust for such men is more important than anything else. I have equal impatience with both camps.

This is of course depressing, but I don’t want it to distract from how far we have come to re-establish article 10 as the foundation of our democracy. I went to a very interesting talk recently about Simone de Beauvoir at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. The famous opening line in The Second Sex has given wings to much of the tedious waffle about ‘gender identity’ - one is not born, but becomes a woman.

At the end of the talk, someone asked a question from the floor - would de Beavoir have considered trans identifying men as ‘superior women’, given that they were free of the bodily functions such as menstruation and gestation that de Beavoir found so alienating. There was an interesting shift in the atmosphere of the room and visible nerves from the speaker. This topic still retains the power to cause discomfort. But the question was asked and (sort of) answered- Simone de Beauvoir would have seen transwoman as transwomen. There was no genocide. No one’s existence was erased. I do not think this could have happened even a year ago.

So I will remain optimistic. The landscape has shifted. That we owe this in large part to the group of women who are now keen to shut people up who don’t agree with them, is an irony not lost on me. I give grateful thanks for their service but I hope they run out of steam sooner rather than later and before they do irreparable damage to the cause they claim to fight for.

Freedom of speech is the hill on which I will die, so come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough. And if you think it’s a sensible use of your time.