How Europe Lost the Plot on Women’s Rights

The UK is not only a member it is a founding member, in 1949, and Winston Churchill was one of its greatest proponents. It's not the same as the European Union.

I'm showing my ignorance but what is the Council of Europe, and is the UK a member?

The EU is not the same as the Council of Europe.

But both have drifted or perhaps outgrown their reasons for existing in the first place. We need to critically assess any organisation that imposes the falsehood that men can become women. There's something wrong with any organisation that imposes that on the public.

No, it is another thread about the dignity and the reality of the female sex..otherwise known as women and girls.

Thanks, TheKeatingFive, I'm glad my take on what happened here makes sense to you too. Reading back over Dáil records of debates and committees from the mid-2020s, where every single party fell for TENI's 'expertise on the subject' is shocking.

Don't get me started on the swing away from out-dated Catholicism and how it co-relates to the swing towards so much money being spent on blingy First Communions😡

Or Angels. Don't get me started on angels, whatever you do..
The similarity between TENI and Mermaids both setting themselves up as medical experts is an interesting one.

One result of the 'we have too many experts' anti-science trend is that Some Bloke on the Internet can criticise somebody like Hilary Cass for being underqualified, so legislation and medical practice should be based on the wisdom of Some Bloke on the Internet instead. And that's more or less what actually happened here!

Totally agree with all of this, particularly the Irish lens (I'm also Irish).

A considerable proportion of people here are caught up in the pendulum swing away from the Catholic church and there's a huge amount of uncritical thinking that concludes that ideas going in the opposite direction of the church must be positive.

The lens of unthinking / low level misogyny / high level, targeted misogyny all coming together makes complete sense also.

There's a big issue here, not just in Ireland, where people are mistaking activism for expertise. The likes of Teni have zero expertise in anything as far as I can see. Yet they are pontificating upon and being listened to on medical matters. Much like Mermaids. This is very problematic, but there's so little public scrutiny they are getting away with it.

I have warm feelings towards the EU and its earlier versions - in a very short period of time it 'knitted up the ravelled sleeve' of a continent that had been tearing itself apart for centuries, and created a space where former enemies could reset and relaunch their relationships. I will always admire the European movement for that.

I also appreciate the advances in women's rights that membership of the European community jump-started in conservative societies like Ireland. We'd have been facing decades of case-by-case chipping away at the patriarchal legacy, were it not for European law.

And that also gave an impetus to repealing anti-homosexual laws.

So far, so I❤Brussels. Then along came the trans rights juggernaut..

I know not everyone goes along with this, but I think a lot of supporters of trans rights just got swept along with a general atmosphere of bonhomie - that certainly happened in Ireland, where the 'aren't-we-wonderfully-modern-and-liberal-now' mood following the emphatic victory in the Marriage Equality referendum cleared the path for 'let's do the same for those poor downtrodden transgender people, I hear they're the most marginalised in society, we can't have that here, now can we?'.

That quite possibly was the case with other captured organisations - a thoughtless acceptance of trans rights as the 'obvious' next step in liberalisation, and anyway it only affects a tiny number of marginalised men who dress as women and even go so far as to have surgery..

Two things were lurking: one is misogyny, and it's obvious that taking rights away from women appeals to the sexist men who didn't like that European law had forced them to give us so many rights in the first place.
The second was a concerted, well-organised campaign by TRAs to step in and exploit the well-meaning but ill-informed rush towards liberalisation.

This was the campaign plan:
Dentons-Report.pdf
and it worked very effectively to push policies through on the wave of good-will towards liberalisation.

In Ireland, a group called TENI Transgender Equality Network Ireland, managed to present itself as the expert body on all things trans, and was deferred to not only by politicians but also by the medical establishment as the source of reliable knowledge on trans issues. So legal and medical regulations were formed on the basis of what TENI said, not on the basis of objective/neutral/scientifically sound advice.

Some politicians etc. are beginning to realise that they were 'sold a pup' and are backtracking; but others are digging their heels in on trans issues, possibly because they can't admit they got things so very wrong.

So I agree, JeremiahBullfrog - not much active hostility towards women, but enough ill-informed euphoria about being tolerant towards sexual minorities that negative consequences for women's rights were passively overlooked.

Plus some very active hostility towards women, which has gained a lot of momentum recently - concurrent with the trans rights movement, but what exactly the links are, I don't know.

I think what you meant to say was:

Oh it's another women's rights thread. I should have guessed. [eyeroll at those tedious women always banging on about their rights]

@jellyfishperiwinkle can you look at what @KnottyAuty and others have done with regards to NHS Scotland policies on single sex protections and still say sex based rights aren't being eroded? Due to some determined women on here they have discovered that all NHS Scotland hospitals do not follow the law when it comes to provisions for single sex facilities. See knottyauty's post on 2nd April at 9.21am for the details.

Women are right to be concerned. Especially women like me living in Scotland! And it looks as though it's happening in England too, although they've not finished their research yet.

That reminded of a line from The Lion in Winter that's always stuck with me

It's not the power I feel deprived of; it's the mention I miss. There's no affection for me here; you wouldn't think I'd want that, would you?

I don't think many European politicians are actively hostile toward women - they aren't secretly setting out to gradually remove women from the workplace etc. However many of them are indifferent toward women, at the same time as being deeply invested in the trans movement: a combination which, as we can see, leads to certain rights women have being eroded.

You might say that. I couldn't possibly comment.

“a pre operative sexually disinhibited transsexual"

In other words, a man who likes to expose himself?

It's another thread about women's rights, on the Feminism board.

Its not just europe its US and Australia and NZ too. The whole thing is completely bonkers.

There is no reason to change language - The 2003 council recommendation on balanced participation in politics is a clear example: it explicitly referred to “women and men,” as well as “both or either sexes.” to gender, unless the intent was to remove sex as a class. Organisation are now pretending that sex is impossible to establish, yet gender is?

At this point, im having to go with conspiracy or institutions falling for 'protected status' of certain individuals and losing all sense of reason.

I dont know which is worse.

You shouldn't have needed to guess. You're on the sex and gender forum which was created especially for discussion of this issue.

I’ve been doing an audit of NHS policies with a group on here and it looks like there are no protected single sex spaces in the whole of NHS Scotland. We’ve move on to look at the English Trusts now and early results are similar. Males can self ID into any space even though some policies acknowledge “a pre operative sexually disinhibited transsexual may upset other patients”. If you object to that sort of thing then you might be asked to leave and declined treatment - I’m not making it up it’s in the policies.

I’m now deeply paranoid because if it says single sex policy on the front of a document that’s what I expect - but apparently it doesn’t mean that any more. I don’t like the stealth. It makes me lose trust. I prefer things to be straight and honest even if I don’t like or agree with it.

Bear in mind that single sex wards were initiated due to sex attacks happening on women while in hospital. About half of all sexual assaults are on wards. Google the 2022 Kent case where the NHS told police investigating a ward rape that there was no men on the ward and did not mention there was a self ID trans woman. It was raised in the House of Lords but no one seems to care - imagine being that woman where the NHS took the trans woman’s side. Scary.

These public policies have removed all women’s rights to single sex spaces in the NHS without any proper debate or discussion. It’s completely contrary to the open honest dealings that the NHS should uphold. If that is what everyone wants to happen then fine but I for one prefer not to undress in front of males after encountering too many male pervs in my life. Im glad lots of younger women have had a better time but that also means they don’t know how bad it might get if things go back to some males taking liberties

This obvious truth shouldn’t even need to be stated! But it does, precisely because those in power are captured by the male-supremacist dogma of transgenderism.

Oh, it's another person who doesn't seem to want to admit that trans rights are being taken to an extreme where they impact women's rights. 🙄

Faux-naivete is such a dated look.

Oh it's another trans thread. I should have guessed. 🙄

One of the main problems with the EU is that it is rooted in idealism, not in pragmatism.

Confusion and mis-application of equalities legislation does mean that increasingly women and girls are being compromised in pursuit of 'trans rights'. The european Left ( like its American counterpart) has moved on and now embraces gender ideology - which at heart - is profoundly anti - female dignity and female rights.

If you cannot recognise what makes someone female, then you cannot protect any sex based rights that exist.

One good illustration is that if a woman identifies as a man, she loses her rights to maternity protections.

The Scottish Government claim this is the case.

If anyone who calls themself 'non binary' can access women's services, spaces, protections and shortlists then those things are no longer for women but are for anyone who wants them.

If 'gender', as an internal feeling, overrides sex, we have no sex based rights.