Article by Robert Wintemute (who changed his mind on the Yogyakarta Principles)

[Kucinghitam]

Archived from the Telegraph.

https://archive.ph/bDDET

"I am a human rights lawyer and professor at King’s College London. Until 2018, I supported all the demands of the transgender-rights movement. But since then, I have changed my mind.

Why? Because I finally understood that some demands conflict with the rights of women and are therefore unreasonable..."

I had a quick look and don't think there's a thread about this yet.

Thank you for this!
Been waiting to hear when his book is out.

Heard a fantastic podcast interview with him a few years ago about his particular 'journey' (will try to find it)

He also has a beautiful voice, which makes it even more listenable.

Wish he was interviewed more often on this.
Maybe he will be now there is a book

Pretty sure it's this one (Feminist Current):

open.spotify.com/episode/2LaDJkJeXbWptjNgoO9lLJ?si=0_EC6dFCSZqfA6e0sCX5XQ

"The claims of transsexual persons, as they were then known, seemed different to me. I did not understand them, so I was reluctant to comment on them."

"Two years later, when the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 went well beyond that ruling, by not requiring any surgery or other medical treatment (a person with a beard and male genitals could become legally female), it struck me as very generous but I did not question it."

"As such, when I joined a group of experts in Indonesia to draft the 2007 Yogyakarta Principles, widely cited as “best practice” on sexual orientation and gender identity, I did not question the proposals of the transgender experts"

He comes across to me as an absolute wet weekend. It seems that for almost two decades he didn't question anything just went along with whatever the trans activists demanded.

I appreciate people who admit they were wrong. It takes courage. Especially so publicly.

It did not occur to me, as a man, to put myself in the shoes of a woman, encountering a “legal woman” with male genitals in a women-only space.

This is an honest admission that many men are guilty of. Like that researcher/activist who changed her views on ‘sex work’, it is helpful to have people publicly state their damascene moments of insight. It’s just a shame that institutions and ‘intelligent’ people refuse to engage in discussions.

Thank you Kucinghitam, I had not realised that he had a book coming out. Meaning that he will be doing the rounds with many interviews which will be very interesting indeed.

I liked that article, it gave me hope. If he can admit to his misjudgement then maybe many others can.

I agree. He admits that he didn't think about women at all, that he was bound up in his bubble of "this is the Bundle Of Good Beliefs for Good Person" and buoyed along by fluffy Righteous emotions. He now sees that he was wrong to forget about all but one sacred caste.

Better to admit he was wrong than to keep his head in the sand, doggedly reciting the mantras.

It's good that he finally engaged his brain and realised how damaging and unreasonable the transactivists' demands were, but why did it take him so long?

He implies in these quotes that he thought that something wasn't quite right about their demands, but didn't have the curiosity to dig deeper into what it was that caused his uncertainty. He decided despite his misgivings to go along with something that he admits he didn't understand. But there was nothing preventing him from doing his own research and gaining a better understanding.

He's not alone in this, of course. Many otherwise intelligent people have decide to disengage their brains on this particular topic and go along with activists' demands without question. It's always good when they do start thinking and admit their error, but why do so many apparently intelligent, and often influential people not actually bother to think about this issue, and instead just repeat off-the-peg mantras? Most of them wouldn't behave like this on any other issue.

@OldCrone I think it was that fear of being seen to be unkind or distrustful. Again, it was taking for granted that trust built by previous reputable movements and making people assume they could apply it to this one.

I really appreciate thinking people who can admit they were wrong and try to analyse why because we don’t have many of them in public life and it models a kind of reassuring behaviour which is very rare. And definitely not many of those people then go on to make this kind of massive contribution that Wintemute has by being active on the record and writing and speaking about these hugely important issues even where the more he talks the more it doesn’t make himself look perfect. I applaud him for that.

The real brave people were the ones who fought for women's rights and protection when it was dangerous to do so, when they didn't have the ruling of the SC in their back pocket.

I honestly don't get how intelligent, articulate people 'didn't think' about the impact on women. I just don't buy it, sorry. They were repeatedly told but imo didn't care to listen.

It's not brave to just bend with whichever way the wind is blowing, be that the whole 'twaw' stance or the more recent 'oops, maybe not' one!

And it's interesting that he's come to this conclusion now he's been on the receiving end of some the treatment that GC women have received.

Even if women's rights were not considered in the meeting, it was clear from the outset that they affected the rights of gay people to be same sex attracted, and I don't get how a human rights lawyer could not see the issue:

''The Principles merge lesbian and gay rights with the right to protection and expression of “gender identity”. They provide a foundation for the view that “gender identity” — based on the feelings of an individual — trumps biological sex.''
thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2021/the-trans-rights-that-trump-all/

"I assumed that whatever the transgender community demanded must be reasonable."

A.baffling attitude from anyone. But especially a lawyer. Surely if the study of case law teaches you anything, it's that the world is absolutely jam packed with people demanding things that aren't in the least reasonable.

I really think that the Bundle of Good Beliefs marking you out as a Member of the Righteous Tribe thing is an immensely powerful human instinct. People say they believe (or even really believe) all manner of patently absurd or even actively dangerous things, if that is what the tribe decrees is required for membership. We've evolved to do this over millions of years as social primates; hominids cast out of the troupe would not have survived to pass on their genes.

As any number of court cases around the world have shown, being cast out of the Righteous Tribe now, in the 2020s, can destroy your livelihood, your career, your social network. It's not fatal anymore, but it's a hell of a punishment (and looking at the placards of Righteous protest, some of them seem to wish it could be fatal).

It's too absurd to be believed.

How are we to trust 'experts' ever again who are given the task of creating policies for the rest of us to live by? That these intelligent people created such nonsense and at the time it didn't enter into their heads the implications for women?

Another factor that I think has been pretty strong for a lot of men has been that they have immediately - and very easily - related to how difficult it is for men to admit “weakness” around other men and how harsh male hierarchies are when it comes to insufficiently manly men. So when faced with a bunch of transwomen, men will be juggling the following emotions:

-Acute discomfort at being in the presence of such GNC men, mixed with shame over being uncomfortable
-Pity over how victimised by other men many transwomen will be/have been over being GNC
-More shame potentially, remembering being personally involved in the past (childhood onwards) with bullying unmanly peers
-Horror and discomfort at the idea that transwomen might actually welcome castration in their quest to be “more feminine”
-THEN a desire to be a Good Person. (There are a LOT of conservative-leaning men who have been drawn into this thinking too - remember Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner was far from “woke” politically, and his transition & Woman of the Year award was a big political moment at the start of this latest wave of activism.)

Stopping to consider being a good person to women comes a long way back in the list, and explains a lot about why some men are so wrapped up in suppressing their own shame about transwomen they project their OWN feelings onto women who are just standing up for their hard won, basic rights.

It's interesting. He says it did cross his mind that there might be problems for women, but immediately dismissed the question as he trusted transgender people to know best. He didn't feel he had the right to query them because he's not transgender.

I'm bewildered by all these influential people blindly trusting a group of minority-interest activists to impose cataclysmic changes on society, and agree it must come from a self-preserving instinct to uphold the 'Good Beliefs'. Another part of it, though, is the pernicious idea that you aren't qualified to hold an opinion on experiences you haven't shared. We see it all the time on here: none of your business; lived experience trumps theory, etc.

I'm kind of hoping we might work our way back to prioritising the collective good of society when building policy, appointing experts to analyse the costs & benefits to all after seeking genuinely representative input. That is still how things are supposed to work. The trans onslaught seems to have been emblematic of a strong shift towards giving preference to the loudest special interest group, especially if that group's perceived as 'other' by the experts.

Sex work's another good example, actually. You don't have to be involved in the trade to figure out the implications for vulnerable young people or to consider the effects of liberalisation on the wider community. So why allow pimps and punters, whose bias is clear, to influence your expert analysis?

Anyway, good for him: better late than never. I hope he gets plenty of air time and uses it to talk sense. May others follow his example.

To add to the instinctive adherence to the tribe thing, it probably doesn't involve conscious thought at all. Straight from the ancestral monkey-brain.

And yet the majority of the tribe, the public, never really seemed to be on board with the whole twaw pov - this was imposed from above by craven politicians chasing votes from a very noisy minority and was a quick and easy 'win' for companies to look 'caring'. They offloaded their responsibilities to the likes of Stonewall and women, as a class, were given no thought or consideration at all.
Joe Public (if asked) was likely to say that no one can change sex and it's wrong for biological males to be competing in women's sports or have access to women's prisons, refuges etc. But no one really did ask Joe Public - as usual the opinionated actors and wishy washy politicians assumed they knew what the public thought and once again, were wrong!

Yes, I think this does explain a lot of the very baffling behaviour we’ve seen from men who are supposed to be ‘the grown ups’.

Along with as noted by PPs, quite how neatly trans ideology fits into the sexist space in many people’s brains that says ‘of course! All women are a bit like this and all men are a bit like that’

I do find it fairly astonishing that he contributed to the drafting of the Yogyakarta principles but didn’t read them in their entirety until years later. He’s a human rights lawyer and academic. Pretty sure reading complicated stuff about your specialist subject makes up a sizeable chunk of the job description

I do find it fairly astonishing that he contributed to the drafting of the Yogyakarta principles but didn’t read them in their entirety until years later.

He says in the article that he was involved with drafting the first Yogyakarta principles (in 2007), but not the later ones (2017).

Ahh, thank you (and sorry mr wintermute!)