ECHR as the next battleground for the rights of women and children

[Ingenieur]

I have started this thread to avoid derailing a previous one.

Original thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4852476-tougher-transgender-guidance-for-schools-is-unlawful-sunak-told?page=1

It was suggested there that the ECHR would be an impediment to rescinding or fundamentally changing the GRA or the gender reassignment parts of the Equality Act. This is on the basis that membership of the European Convention on Human Rights would not permit the unwinding of existing rights, even if it does not force member nations to comply.

I know most of us do not practise law, and even fewer are international or constitutional lawyers, but I'd like to understand more of the nuance surrounding this aspect of our fight.

As a starter for 10, is this even true? Is leaving the ECHR the only solition to unwinding these laws?

Also, looking at the ECHR summary of the Goodwin case, it states the following:

Since there [we]re no significant factors of public interest to weigh against the interest of this individual applicant in obtaining legal recognition of her gender re-assignment, the Court reache[d] the conclusion that the notion of fair balance inherent in the Convention now tilt[ed] decisively in favour of the applicant.

It is astonishing that a case which overturned a number of previous ECHR Article 8 and Article 12 cases was judged on the basis of public interest, and that no public interest was noted.

Seems like a bit of a mess.

Yes, often people on the spectrum have little awareness or feel for the 'tone' of conversations, or for the realty of other people's thoughts and feelings. I had already detected that as a possibility some time ago.The problem is the pedantic nature of your posts, and the elaborate use of adverbs such as 'merely' can come across as supercilous and patronising.

Obviously the adversarial intent is also an issue if people feel you are not taking into account anyone else's position ( such as the wife of a man who has now decided he is a woman, and is pursuing that 'goal' in utterly self centred and obsessive manner).

Obsessiveness and pre-occupation, is , of course, another autistic trait.

Private life and information in the context of Article 8 rights isn't an exact correlation to information being kept private. It's starting point is information about a private individual (private information) within their own lives (private life). That information itself doesn't have any guaranteed right to always be kept private from the state (and from there that privacy recognised in law), and in some cases disclosure of that information to the state or other falls within the margin of appreciation of the state. But the state has to show that there's good reason for it to be publicly able to show or allow others to view information about a private individual

Birth certificates are a good example of this. They are recognised as publicly held records owned by the state and have use as historical documents. It falls within the states margin of appreciation to make them publicly available and it does so to everyone. Anyone can receive a certified copy of anybody's birth certificate as long as you know the relevant details about that person

Contrast that with adoption records. Adoption is considered a highly private matter, one requiring some of the highest level of confidentiality to avoid distress to a person who was adopted having that status disclosed against their will. For the lifetime of the person who was adopted the adoption records remain sealed except for specific individuals who may request access to them, and even then must reach certain criteria before being allowed to have access to them

And then to go a step further on, contrast that with medical records. Medical records (depending on your point of view) either share the highest level of confidentiality every person enjoys, or is the second highest level behind the confidentiality of privileged information. In both cases there has to be an extremely good reason for the confidentiality of that information to be breached and for the public or the state to be able to access it. The last time I can think of a forced breach of medical information happening was in the drawing up of the shielding lists during Covid because it was considered justified because of the national emergency happening (forced in this case meaning that individuals weren't asked for permission for the state to access their medical records)

In all three cases the information held is information about a private individual in aspects of their private life; a matter of private information and private life. But the right to privacy is different in each case based on how sensitive that information is and the distress (or other fall out) of it being publicly revealed could cause. Under Article 8 the default is always that privacy of information must always be respected by the state unless it itself has good reason not to keep that information private. And it has to be a reason applicable to the state itself, not private individuals or entities

There’s another thread running atm about an adult male in girl teen changing rooms

There must be a way in law to rectify where we have got to

I agree @SunnyEgg but I guess that doesn't relate to the GRA. No-one asks for GRCs in changing rooms. Clarification that you're allowed to turn obvious men away from women's changing rooms without it being considered discrimination is more what's needed.

As for distress about one's sex being publicly revealed. Just walking outside reveals your sex for 99% of even trans people... I don't know why we go to such effort to pretend it's private and unknowable.

As an aside to the topic of the thread, flipped around the concept of both obsessiveness and pre-occupation is an NT concept that doesn't conform to ND experience

What an NT person may consider to be obsessiveness is within (not all) ND people merely interest, and likewise with pre-occupation although that also is for ND people a matter of having to consider a way to provide information to an NT person in a way that the NT person may understand (as an example, the reason my explanations are so long and appear to contain redundant words is because I'm attempting to explain a concept that I understand as an internal framework of fragments of memory of events, fragments of memories of emotions, and an overall construct combining that with mental imagery, all of which contains within it not a single word)

More formal language within sentence structure helps me avoid many of the problems I have with homophones (the greater the number of syllables in a word, the less likelihood it has a homophone I'll easily confuse it with) and the more formal a sentence is structured the more likely it is I will spot a homophone mistake I've made in it because the word doesn't fit the formality of the rest of the writing

The use of adverbs on my part is something necessary for me, both for the two latter points above. I've used the term 'merely' again in the first of those paragraphs (the second paragraph overall). It wasn't specifically deliberate (and 'specifically' used here as a term to show that whilst I used the term in the sentence as a natural consequence of how I write, when I realised it was there I made the conscious decision to keep it in. And then, having written the rest of this post came back to this point to explain why I used the term 'wasn't specifically'), but it's there to show an understandable comparison. My experience of NT people is that when they say 'obsessive' it carries with it the expectation that the thing the ND person is interested in requires a huge investment of time and energy to pursue. From the POV of an ND person this isn't true. We expend a huge amount of time and effort attempting to fit into an NT-centric world. Following our interests lies on the other end of that spectrum, requiring little effort on our part from our perspective, and so the word 'merely' shows the relevant comparison between the expectation of the effort required to follow an interest (seen as an obsession) and the reality of the effort required to follow an interest

Obsessiveness and pre-occupation, is , of course, another autistic trait.

This has obviously served the movement well in terms of relentlessly wittling away by leveraging microscopic legal arbitration opportunities to shut doors.

I like Robert Wintermute's simplicity and clarity in the escalation steps he described. As he points out these principles have no legal force. It's the agenda.

In November 2017, the second version of the Yogyakarta Principles incorporated the fourth transgender demand. Principle 31 claims that under existing international human rights law, every country in the world has an obligation to end the registration of the sex of the person in identity documents such as birth certificates. Until this is done, the third transgender demand, self-identification, must be adopted. No eligibility criteria such as a psychological medical diagnosis or minimum age shall be a prerequisite to change one’s legal sex.
^www.genderdissent.com/post/the-man-who-suddenly-heard-women-and-renounced-the-yogyarta-principles^

Yes there could be other ways to stop it

Plus protecting dc more from indoctrination

Maybe we can get single sex spaces back another way, perhaps the change to EqA definition would do it

I'm attempting to explain a concept that I understand as an internal framework of fragments of memory of events, fragments of memories of emotions, and an overall construct combining that with mental imagery, all of which contains within it not a single word)

Yeah, that is normal. That's just thinking about things, we all do it like that.

Following our interests lies on the other end of that spectrum, requiring little effort on our part from our perspective, and so the word 'merely' shows the relevant comparison between the expectation of the effort required to follow an interest (seen as an obsession) and the reality of the effort required to follow an interest

We aren't using obsession about effort, we are using obsession about the narrowness of the impact of the goals that is permitted.

NI is a classic example of that.

It's the article of faith handed down in this thread as seemingly the only permitted impact for consideration. There are probably a third of the posts here repeating it.

Obviously you will counter that with a list of other factors but the relentless repetition is a form of communication in itself, which forms a picture of obsession.

This board may give an impression of obsession but it's actually thousands of people reaching similar conclusions.

There's a difference.

One of Goodwin's claims related to transsexuals having the right to hide their sex from their employer. I assume this is why section 22 was inserted into the GRA regarding information obtained in an official capacity about a GRC holder.

But is it actually the case that if someone applies for a job reserved for a woman (under the EA exemption) that a male GRC holder could apply and show their modified birth certificate and the employer has no right to know that this person was born male? If this is the case it raises all sorts of safeguarding issues.

You haven't caused me distress. Your opinion is not that important to me. But I will admit to finding some of your posts quite irritating, and some did seem to be written with the aim of causing offence - not just to me, but to anyone else reading who isn't a lawyer.

I think I've read all your replies to me and I haven't noticed any apologies from you.

There was some kind of passive-aggressive “sorry for thinking you had a brain” post a while back! I assume that’s what they’re talking about, but I haven’t checked the deletions. It’s hilarious that they’re trying to dress it up as “I’m ND, I don’t realise when I’m being insanely rude” because obviously they are fully aware it was rude enough to get deleted.

This is not an apology.

Neither is this.

The logic seems to have gone:

1. Transsexuals face discrimination in [housing, employment...]
2. This is on the basis of being trans
3. If employers didn't know they were trans, they wouldn't be able to discriminate against them
4. The only way for employers to know if they are trans is via their birth certificates
5. Therefore let's let trans people change their birth certificates

If you did want to prevent housing/employment discrimination for trans people just make that illegal. Oh wait, it already is.

(My only concern with this is that in an age where gender identity is essentially a political subculture, it becomes a bit hard to untangle rejecting someone for an incompatible personality vs their gender identity. If someone identifies as "snarkgender" and you cited that as a reason to not hire them for a customer service job, does that count as discrimination on gender reassignment? I don't know...)

I'm sure that poster intended to be rude. Surely nobody could be so lacking in their understanding of normal human interactions as to think that those posts were anything but offensive.

And hilarious that they accused me of not being able to follow a 'plain English, simple argument' when they had replied to question requiring a yes or no answer with a long screed which didn't even answer the question.

@OldCrone @Hepwo Many thanks for the links.
@LowKeyLockee Many thanks for your clinical demolition of the idea that it would be possible to remove sex from birth certificates while preserving the concept of sex in law.

I can now see that the idea wouldn't solve anything but would introduce new problems. I have abandoned it.

I briefly considered whether a case could be brought to the courts that an individual's right to privacy, dignity and safety in a single sex space is denied to them by the GRA and the Haldane ruling. However, this path would ultimately fail because the European Court would rule that the Article 8 right to privacy would outweigh the individual's 'minor inconvenience'.

So what next. We could play the waiting game. The decisions from the European Court reflect received wisdom. This is currently that gender ideology is preeminent and overrules any other view. Received wisdom will return to reality over time and future ECHR decisions will reflect this. The problem with this is that it is impossible to estimate how long we will have to wait and how much shit can we tolerate in the meantime.

All this has led me to conclude, reluctantly, that the UK should leave the Council of Europe. I say reluctantly because I really don't want to be a member of a club that has Belarus and Russia as its other members. I know that Planet and Lockee will post to catastrohise the impact of this on the GFA and NI so I thought that I would get my rebuttal in first.

The GFA is a treaty between UK and ROI. There are no other parties. While the ECHR is referenced in the GFA on a number of occasions, there is no obligation for either party to be a member of the ECHR. This means that UK could leave the Council of Europe and remain a party to the GFA.

Of course, ROI could withdraw from the GFA but would they, really? Apart from collapse of the GFA leading to the EU imposing a hard border between NI and ROI, would they want to be seen as the baddies?

I accept that ROI would be unhappy about NI residents losing access to the ECourtHR but a workaround would be found. A simple solution would be a grand court of final appeal with 2 judges: one from UK selected from a list by ROI and the other from ROI selected from a list by UK.

The bottom line is that the desire to retain the GFA will drive both parties to find a way to keep it alive.

All this has led me to conclude, reluctantly, that the UK should leave the Council of Europe. I say reluctantly because I really don't want to be a member of a club that has Belarus and Russia as its other members.

Don’t forget though you’ll be joining other countries such as NZ, Aus and others that score highly on human rights and freedoms from outside the ECHR

How that metric is arrived I haven’t read into, but I hope it is one that recognises the rights of women not just men

All this has led me to conclude, reluctantly, that the UK should leave the Council of Europe. I say reluctantly because I really don't want to be a member of a club that has Belarus and Russia as its other members.

Not being a member of a club (Council of Europe) is not the same thing as being a member of a club. Three quarters of the countries in the world are not in that club.

We have an emerging divergence of values in common with the vast majority of 195 countries in the world on the 3rd demand of non medical self identification and the fourth demand of no sex at birth certification.

Only 20 countries have implemented the 3rd. Only a fraction of Council of Europe countries have.

Why are we uniquely in an knot?

We aren't. The assumption that following this escalation of demands is an inevitable one way only direction is false.

As is the assumption that no legal sex will follow for every country inevitably.

The UK research council funded project reached the conclusion that decertification was not desired here.

Women's rights are also human rights and it's a matter of record that they were not adequately considered in the 2nd demand of changing legal sex. Our protection is supposedly the Equality Act which has been stolen from women.

We want that back.

I briefly considered whether a case could be brought to the courts that an individual's right to privacy, dignity and safety in a single sex space is denied to them by the GRA and the Haldane ruling. However, this path would ultimately fail because the European Court would rule that the Article 8 right to privacy would outweigh the individual's 'minor inconvenience'.

This isn't a 'minor inconvenience' it's women's article 8 rights, not to mention article 3 rights when it takes place somewhere like a prison.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/article-8-respect-your-private-and-family-life

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/article-3-freedom-torture-and-inhuman-or-degrading-treatment

You wouldn't know it to listen to some people but we all have the same human rights, simply because we are human.

I'd be open to leaving the ECHR if necessary, if pushed, if they refused to acknowledge reality after being explicitly pressed and confronted with it.

I posted before that I don't really philosophically believe in natural human rights, but there was a reason the ECHR was brought in and it would be a stronger and more useful and trusted institution if it focused on a core set of agreed rights and didn't try to force through social change "from the bench".

In some ways I respect the long game of Republicans in the US, doing whatever it takes to get the right judges into the Supreme Court and using the power of the institution in service of their goals, instead of trying to bring it down (equivalent of "leaving the ECHR").

Institutions are powerful... Why let them be captured by ideological opponents to let them wield that power?

How could the judges stop the UK anyway?

With Rwanda they managed to stop a plane taking off, but what are they going to do, start issuing birth certificates from Strasbourg?

Thanks for that link, and the other links to the videos. He's quite clear that all these demands by the trans lobby affect the human rights of other members of society. We all know this, of course, but it's good to have this confirmed by an expert in human rights law.

But where do we go now? The first step is to stop the escalation (to things like self-ID and removal of recording of sex on birth certificates. But has he said anything about what we can do to repeal the GRA and remove this 'right' that some people have obtained to falsify their birth certificates?

Instead of changing the person’s legal sex, the guide could have simply sought to protect people from harm triggered by the difference between their legal sex and their appearance on the basis of their presentation. This would remove much of the current conflict, as it would affirm trans people’s birth sex as their legal sex, while ensuring their protection from discrimination based on gender non-conforming appearance or behaviour. Birth sex is less important now, with same-sex marriage and equal state pension ages. But in my view birth sex is not an irrelevant detail and should not be automatically ‘trumped’ by gender identity in single-sex situations…

This is what could have come out of the 2002 Goodwin ruling, and would have given transsexuals the protection they needed, but instead we got the almighty mess that is the GRA.

He's a part of LGB alliance who have been stymied until recently by the legal attack by Jolyon Maugham and are now only just getting back to work.

We could ask him.

This is a great way to put it

Instead of changing the person’s legal sex, the guide could have simply sought to protect people from harm triggered by the difference between their legal sex and their appearance on the basis of their presentation.

And underpins what has been pissing me off and frustrating me all this time. This goes back to feminism we studied before this took hold. Sex is fixed, gender is whatever but you legally don’t change sex.

What a massive error people have made.

It needs to be reverted to this.