Swiss man going to jail for saying that there’s only 2 genders?

No it was changed under pressure from US Medical Insurance Companies, as it would allow medical bills to be run up for surgery to be offered as a literal cure.

Dont forget this is about gender dysphoria. This isn't about some trendy latest fad of "indentifying".

Gender dysphoria is a dillusion ie that somehow your sexed body is wrong.

So they carried out a neat trick in words by saying the dysphoira isn't a mental illness, but it can cause mental distress.

That's a bit like saying I have a broken leg, but my bones aren't really broken I just have a problem because i cant walk or stand properly.

If there wasn't a cause there wouldn't be an effect.

Gender dysphoria is classified as a medical diagnosis to address the distress a person feels when their gender identity does not match their sex assigned at birth. While identifying as transgender is not a disorder, gender dysphoria is the psychological discomfort associated with the incongruence and is included in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 and the World Health Organization's ICD-11 under the "sexual health" chapter, not mental health disorders. This classification helps ensure access to necessary healthcare and treatment for those who experience significant distress or impairment in their daily lives.

(ie saying we want to take your money to affirm that what you believe is real - an organised scam)

You know that being trans was classed as a mental illness by the World Health Organisation until 2019?

And according to Google it was changed to reduce stigma and because 'better understanding' whatever that means.

Personally there is no doubt in my mind that it is a mental illness just like any other body dysmorphia.

That's sad to know.

I suppose this means there could well have been otheer cases and have not been reported.

I live in Switzerland. Sadly this case does not surprise me. I know of a family with a trans man teen. They were told it they did not affirm the teen would be taken from them and placed with social services. The teen had a mastectomy. No change to stop it. Despite this teen having previous mental health issues before the gender dysphoria manifested.
The country side is conservative. The cities very much not.
And absolutely no sign of this case in the 20minuten which is the national free newspaper.

It’s crazy.

It’s also alarming that some people try to justify it. Even if he said something not true that doesn’t warrant jail. There’s a disturbing change in the culture. When I was younger the attitude amongst the left was that I might hate what you say but I’ll defend your right to say it. Now it’s so common to hear that you should be locked up if you offend people. The right isn’t innocent either although the only freedom of speech movements tend to come from them. It’s worrying.

Emanuel Brünisholz, a man I can respect.

I was 18 when I tattooed the Amnesty International insignia on my arm.

I am now 45, writing a letter to the Swiss because a man is going to prison for saying that men and women have different skeletons- @amnesty should be leading this charge not a comedian from the UK
@Glinner

https://x.com/JamieWhistle/status/1995656966459588720

via Glinner:

I’ve received a statement from Emanuel Brünisholz, who starts a
ten-day prison sentence in Switzerland tomorrow for saying that men and women have different skeletons. You can write to the Swiss Federal Dept of Justice and police at [email protected] to protest this disgraceful situation.
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/statement-from-emanuel-brunisholz

In 2022, I wrote on Facebook that a human skeleton can only be male or female. I pointed out that if, two centuries from now, someone were to unearth the remains of today’s LGBTQI people, they would find nothing but male or female skeletons. To imagine that one would find anything other than male or female struck me as a fantasy divorced from reason, so I described it as a a mentally ill idea.

For that remark I was fined 500 Swiss francs. I refused to pay, and so, on the 2nd of December 2025, I will serve ten days in prison. It is worth noting that, legally speaking, this prison sentence is not a punishment for refusing to pay the fine. Instead, the prison sentence is an alternative way to be punished for the Facebook post itself. I have chosen to trade a monetary fine for time behind bars.

I am fully prepared to go to prison, if that is what it takes to expose the absurdity and authoritarianism of the trans ideology that has now taken root in Switzerland. I intend to face it with good humour; I will not let myself be bent or broken by those who hope to silence me through pressure or intimidation. That, after all, is their aim: to wear me down until I fall quiet. I have no intention of doing so.

The LGBTQ+ movement behaves like a zealous sect. They try to brand me a homophobe to shut me up. I am nothing of the sort. I repair wind instruments for a living, and I come from a left-wing, tolerant household. What troubles me is watching the activists in that movement exploit ordinary LGB people for political ends that strike me as dangerous nonense. These tactics have begun to cast a long shadow over Switzerland and Europe alike, as a kind of woke dictatorship.

My thanks go to Graham Linehan, who understands this battle all too well. In times like these, solidarity among reasonable people who are willing to speak freely and plainly is essential.

- Emanuel Brünisholz

I'm so sorry you're going through this.

Agree with this.

Yes, there is a broad spectrum within the 'trans umbrella' and some are very aware they only have a preference for aspects of presentation generally associated with feminine or masculine gender, and are clear they can't change sex, don't expect to be accommodated as if they are the opposite sex, etc. Obviously, others do think they should be treated as if they have, to all intents and purposes, changed sex, and this is largely where most of the problems lie. Some of the 'trans' population very clearly do have mental health problems, as do many of the population at large (including me).

It really shouldn't be seen as pejorative to frame this as a potential mental health issue. I really would question the attitudes of anybody who thinks it is insulting to do this, as it bespeaks a prejudiced attitude towards mental health difficulties and conditions that I had hoped we were moving away from, as a society.

And it definitely should not be a criminal offence to express such a view. This would be highly dystopian. We're allowed to discuss such matters, and speculate as to how they arise. They affect us, after all.

My starting position is less academic. My son won't talk to me, apparently because I have had difficulty in using his new name and in particular his preferred pronouns. Separating oneself from ones family because of a different understanding of words seems, to say the least, extreme. We have different political and religious views (I have consistently been more left wing!) which have not come between us, but this is different. I have no explanation other than these two options:

• it's a neo-religion with fundamentalist control mechanisms
• it's mental illness that invests far too much importance in sex/gender

I don't think these are mutually exclusive. But when my son started talking about taking oestrogen (before he all but cut himself off from DW, DD and me), I came to the conclusion that his thinking is not in a healthy state.

That’s fine if it’s how you’d like to frame it but someone saying another view really shouldn’t be criminalised or jailed.

It’s like something out of 1984 and WrongSpeak.

Transgender people are not, all and by definition, denying reality. There are plenty of transgender people who acknowledge the reality of biological sex but feel that they identify with the opposite "gender identity" to their sex.

Now I don't really understand gender identity but it seems to be something a huge number of people (most people?) believe in, and not just trans people. I'd rather accept that psychology is not a very exact science and many people have a different framework for some of it than I do, than label anyone who sees things differently from me mentally ill.

Given that we all know many people who suffer or have suffered from a mental illness, why is it considered offensive to say that a group of people who are denying reality are mentally ill? I include myself in the group of people who have been mentally ill. Mental illness is such a broad classification that I think I would doubt any claim that a particular person has always been entirely free from it – just as no-one is free from physical illness (show me someone who never has a cold).

No it shouldn’t end in criminal prosecution and jail time.

I don't know about criminal because I don't know about the law in Switzerland. But describing transgenderism as a "mental illness" is certainly offensive, and I wouldn't have a problem with it being illegal hate speech if it was.

I'm GC by the way, and opened the thread expecting to fully agree with it as affirming the reality of two genders (where gender means biological sex) shouldn't be against the law. But the thread title clearly avoided mentioning the actual offence which was probably why he was prosecuted.

He said that there are only two genders AND that transgenderism is a mental illness (because there are only two genders and this cannot be changed therefore an issue of the mind*).

Nothing misleading there.

*Gender meaning sex

What do you think he said that is criminal, nevermind something that remotely necessitates a jail term?

An absolutely fucking outrageous assault on free speech, civil liberties and the rights of women. All to favour men.

If ever the time was ripe for an ‘I’m Spartacus’ moment, I’d say this was it in Switzerland. If there was a movement to encourage others to post the same, and it gathered momentum, what would the authorities do? They won’t have jail space for hundreds of thousands.

So it wasn't actually for saying there are only two genders, it was for describing transgenderism as a mental illness.

Why lie in the thread title, rather than describing what actually happened?

In Switzerland, a metaphorical trans skeleton's rights trump living breathing humans rights to freedom of thought & expression.

This is the trans Eutopia some of our resident TRAs envisage for us. How dystopian.

Just so bad.

it can be up to EUR 10,000 where i am, i think?

This article in Spiked lays out how definitions have been pretzel by the Swizz judges to get this man jailed

Why is it a crime to say skeletons can’t be trans? - spiked https://share.google/76fB6iccEDY8tSt5s archive link

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/20/why-is-it-a-crime-to-say-skeletons-cant-be-trans/

I think it would be difficult to even talk about this case in Switzerland without potentially breaking the law.

Ludicrous. And naff all to do with LGB or sexual orientation. I am so grateful to all of the UK’s fine fighting Terven who have saved us from this.