Maya Forstater, Gender-Critical Hero, ‘Bullied’ by Police

Thanks to Maya Forstater, British citizens can be openly skeptical of transgenderism without losing their jobs. In 2019, Forstater was let go from her job as a researcher at an international development think tank after engaging in a civil debate about transgender ideology on social media. Forstater initially lost her legal challenge for unfair dismissal, which prompted J. K. Rowling to intervene with her now infamous tweet:

Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill

Forstater won the case on appeal, setting an important precedent for free speech.

Now Forstater, who works as the chief executive officer for the campaign group Sex Matters, has revealed that she has been investigated by the Metropolitan Police for nearly a year over a post she wrote about a trans-identifying doctor.

After the male doctor began identifying as female, he wrote about patients allowing him to conduct “more intimate examinations that they did not let me do when I was a male GP.” (GP stands for “general practitioner,” which is the British equivalent of a primary-care doctor.)

In response, Forstater wrote on X that this doctor “enjoys intimately examining female patients without their consent,” linking to her blog post which reviews evidence that the doctor deliberately withholds his sex when examining female patients. This, the police informed her, warranted an investigation into “malicious communication,” an offense that is punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment.

Forstater told the Times of London:

I think the investigation shouldn’t have even got as far as questioning me. My tweet isn’t even something that would get deleted by Twitter, let alone for it to be a crime. Being threatened with arrest and then having a police investigation hanging over my head for almost a year now has been very stressful.

Forstater once helped clarify that people could not lose their jobs by upsetting trans activists. If she decides to sue the police, she could help clarify that neither can people lose their liberties for criticizing transgenderism.

If only such things didn’t need clarifying.