Maya Forstater

I get the feeling Hugo originally thought he could set us all right with a few wise, manly tweets. He’s not actually a bad person so he’s finding it hard to reconcile his self image with the responses. Hopefully he’ll go away and reflect rather than turn into Jo Maugham Mark II!

You're quite wrong. My original post was about freedom of speech in law and justice. I didn't want to get into the substantive question, which played no part in the argument.

For you. This is similar to a white male saying he does not want to get involved in the substantive argument against racism to a room of black people, that he is only interested whether racists have freedom of speech (or even, blacks). You can expect the reaction.

It’s also Just. Not. True. Several tweets were dedicated to the immorality and unpleasantness of what women were saying, before the ‘defend to the death your right to say it’ bit. What we’re saying isn’t nasty! It’s essential!! Independently of our rights to free speech!!!

But, again, that was not the argument. Indeed if there was nothing offensive about the stickers my argument goes through a fortiori. Those stickering should have the freedom to do so and the police are mistaken.

Again. By your argument the Oxford dictionary is offensive. Biological facts are not offensive. Gravity is not offensive. 2+3=5 is not offensive. Adult woman female is not offensive. And the context is not oh poor trans. The context is millions of women die because of biology.

This is where we started. No, context matters. Saying "you're fat." may be (a) true and (b) inoffensive in most contexts. That doesn't mean it is inoffensive in all contexts, meaning not being a matter of dictionaries.

I appreciate the argument, but in this context saying "I reject that you get to redefine what I am" isnt quite the same as saying "you eat too much pie".