Allison Bailey knows who her friends aren’t

Cheering news. An employment tribunal has ruled that barrister Allison Bailey was discriminated against by senior colleagues at her chambers over her gender critical views, i.e. the sex of a person is immutable: women cannot become men and vice-versa.

These views are what the silent majority would refer to as ‘common sense’. Cross-dress, have surgery, take hormones all you like but you cannot scientifically change the sex you were born into: female or male. Some people are genuinely convinced they were born with the wrong body and they take various steps to ‘rectify’ this. Assuming they’ve had the necessary advice and support, then they should be allowed to live peaceable lives as they wish and not be discriminated against. Live and let live is what I say. 

This mantra is a two-way street.  Women-born-women should likewise not be discriminated against; they should be able to feel safe and to progress in their chosen field (e.g. sport), unhindered by the physical advantages conferred by Mother Nature on men. Indeed, Allison had actively put the rights and safety of women ahead of men who want to live as women. The so-called inclusion charity, Stonewall, complained to her chambers about this and they upheld the complaint. But the tribunal ruled that the complaints process was victimisation against Allison because of her beliefs around sex and gender.

A day or so later, it was announced that the first-do-no-harm-deniers Gender Identity Development Service, part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, is to be closed. Our kids and young adults will now be safer from predatory ideologues who get their kicks out of brainwashing, poisoning and maiming the vulnerable.

There’s loads more I could write about this topic and the tribunal, but that’s not really the point of this blog.

Some of Allison’s work colleagues turned on her, insulted her and claimed the moral high ground over her, because she held what they claimed to be immoral views, even though these views are shared by squillions of others. These views outweighed, in their eyes, her excellent legal work and her other positive qualities including concern for the LGB community, especially vulnerable women.

I wonder how many cups of coffee or glasses of wine she’d shared with these former colleagues. How many laughs they’d had. The camaraderie. The companionship. The collective comfort-blanket.

Gone.

From an equal if not a better, to a low-life to be disregarded with sneering contempt, Allison’s ‘crime’ was to believe something different from her metropolitan liberal elite circle. Said circle had claimed not just the moral high-ground, but the moral only-ground. Believe or be Damned, could be their motto.

I expect Allison had considered some of them to be her friends. One of my first blogs was about friendship that included a simplified table of what friendship should be, in no particular order (slightly amended from the original):

Friendship Characteristics:	A Friendship Should Be:	A Friendship Should Not Be:
Honesty	Relaxed	Fickle
Altruism	Confident	Convenient
Loyalty	Comforting	An emotional roller-coaster
Forgiveness	Non-Judgmental	A walk on egg-shells
Acceptance	Easy (most of the time)	Suspicious
Compassion	Respectful	Defensive
Support
Trust
Understanding
Tolerance
Indulgence

It must have been devastating for Allison to go from hero to zero overnight, to have her cherished beliefs and values dismissed as inferior if not distasteful because she wanted to support vulnerable sections of society in what she thought was the best way possible but others thought 'better'.

That’s hard.

But she’s come up smelling of roses, and her detractors have shown themselves to have the morals of a sewer rat for ditching her in her hour of need. Fortunately, Allison had many true friends to whom she could turn, including J K Rowling and all the other brave, wonderful ladies who have also seen themselves ostracised from their respective societies, societies that have shown themselves to be full of stupidity, bigotry and cruelty: literature and the arts, academia, education, etc.

I suppose this is what Brexit-voting, Mail-reading, Boris-supporting, Maggie-idolisers have to put up with when their left-of-centre ‘friends’ decide they’re no better than something they scraped off the sole of their shoe. Brexit-voting, Mail-reading, Boris-supporting, Maggie-idolisers are not to be tolerated by the kind, compassionate, halo-polishing, morally superior, fact-flawless, viewpoint-dominating choir boys who slap you back onto their shoes and grind you into the concrete.

Funny how those who claim to be the warm-hearted, open-minded freedom-fighters in society are more likely to be callous, intolerant and tyrannical on a personal level.

Which is why I’ve adopted the following as my aphorism of the moment: I’ve always enjoyed the company of the fallible more than that of the judgemental.