Views my own

That’s a well-understood formula often used on Twitter handles, LinkedIn profiles etc. Everyone knows what it’s shorthand for: it means I’m not speaking for anyone else here – whatever I say, I’m saying it in my personal capacity. Very often it’s stating the obvious. 

But it’s a shorthand people often overlook – or tactically misunderstand – when the writer expresses views they dislike. So this short essay is intended to put it beyond any possible doubt whose views I state when I write or speak. 

First, a bit of background. Anyone who writes or speaks publicly from a “gender-critical” position runs the risk of attracting odium directed not only at her personally, but also at any organisation with which she is in any way publicly associated: if she’s employed, her employer; if she’s an author, her publisher;  if she’s a journalist, any newspaper she writes for; her charity or dance company if she’s founded one; the film franchise sprung from her books if she happens to be a world-famous billionaire children’s author. They’ll all get flak, and come under pressure either to silence her, or else to sever their ties with her.  

I’m starting to encounter some of this myself. I’m a barrister in independent practice, and I’m a member of a set of chambers. I’ve also been writing and speaking with a growing platform (largely thanks to my membership of the Legal Feminist collective) on sex and gender for the last couple of years. My chambers has received some flak, from various directions, because of my gender-critical stance. I’m not at liberty to go into any detail, but the range of possibilities isn’t hard to spot: threats to withdraw work either from me or from my chambers as a whole; threats of complaints to my professional body; complaints that my views make my workplace “unsafe” for actual or potential trans-identifying or gay colleagues. Suffice it to say that the attempts to bring pressure to bear on me through my chambers have taken at least some of these possible forms.

This kind of behaviour is bullying. The aim is to silence gender-critical voices by making it too personally costly to speak up. For every gender-critical woman (it’s mostly women) who suffers career damage as a result of speaking up, there will be dozens more observing her fate and deciding it’s not worth it. 

So – in my case at least – let’s get three things very clear: 

1. It’s not going to work: I’m not going to shut up. 
   
2. I speak for myself. I do not speak for my chambers on these subjects, or on any other.
   
3. My chambers can’t be held responsible for failing to shut me up, because there is no basis on which it could legitimately claim to be entitled to do so.

Nothing I have said or written on these subjects could reasonably be interpreted by anyone approaching the matter in good faith as homophobic or transphobic. But whatever interpretation anyone – approaching the matter in good faith or not, at their option – wishes to put on my speaking or writing, my words are to be attributed to me alone. 

A set of chambers might wish to form and express a collective view on subjects like changes to the rules about rights of audience, Legal Aid rates, even perhaps proposed changes to  judicial review. But it has no view – and has no business even attempting to form a view – on subjects of general political contention. Brexit? No comment. Immigration? No comment. Euthanasia? No comment. Tory, Labour, Lib-Dem or Green? No comment. Reform of the GRA? No comment. Single-sex spaces? No comment.

Moreover, I am not an employee. My chambers has no power to direct me to be quiet on this subject. And it’s bound by the Equality Act not – even if it wanted to – to discriminate against me because of my views, because they are a protected belief under the Equality Act. 

So when I express my personal views on questions about sex and gender, unless the contrary clearly and deliberately appears, they are my views, and mine alone. If I speak for an organisation – and on these subjects, it will never be my chambers, but it may occasionally be either Legal Feminist or Sex Matters – I will make that expressly clear. But the default position is that I speak for myself, and no-one else. 

Views my own.