Nonbinary citizen to take gender recognition legal challenge to the European Court of Human Rights

[IwantToRetire]

The Gender Recognition Panel, responsible for assessing applications under the GRA, determined that Ryan had met the criteria required, but refused to issue Ryan with a GRC stating their gender was nonbinary. Since then, they have fought their case through a judicial review, challenged the decision in the Court of Appeal in January this year, and applied for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court in April, just two months later.

Permission to appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected in July on the grounds that the application did not raise an arguable point of law.

Now, Ryan and their legal team are looking to file an application to the ECtHR invoking the right to gender recognition under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for private and family life. This article has been applied to similar cases where other applicants brought a case for legal recognition of their gender.

If the ECtHR finds a violation of the law, it would then file to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which reviews the execution of the Court’s judgments. This could include ensuring that Ryan achieves legal recognition of their gender in the UK by way of a GRC.

Ryan and their legal team claim that a successful outcome could set a precedent in Europe for legal gender recognition for nonbinary individuals.

https://www.leighday.co.uk/news/news/2025-news/nonbinary-citizen-to-take-gender-recognition-legal-challenge-to-the-european-court-of-human-rights/

(I think there may have been threads about this person before!)

Out of curiosity, I checked my children's "red books" issued by the NHS, c.a. 2005 and 2015, and they report the sex of the child.

I strongly disagree. I think this still an argument that can be won. Gender is an incoherent concept whose only utility is to obfuscate and manipulate discourse. It's meaningful and reasonable to state that you don't believe in gender, i.e. gender is a synonym for sex and nothing more, and what's more, that is a believe that has explicit standing in law.

Why does one side have to “win” why not go for a “win-win” solution?

Not believing in Gender Identity is a perfectly valid position, just like not believing in Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism etc.

We protect faith based beliefs despite there being many non-believers, why not do the same for those who hold Gender Identity Beliefs?

A hardline position could backfire.

Hopefully we are moving towards that Harassed with a space for non-believers but the Gender Ideologues really don’t want it.

Gender as equivalent to sex is absolutely an American thing. It had made uneven linguistic inroads in the UK, as you might expect, before the Queer takeover (Gender Studies in many universities was simply another label for Women’s Studies when it first started. I very much doubt women’s issues would even get a look-in now). But pre-GI most people in the UK would say sex rather than gender.

Isn't this person American? Not a British citizen and has already lost a court case here, so this seems like a further complete waste of time.

I wonder if he’s entirely self funding or if someone is helping him. Tilting at windmills to these degree must be expensive.

All genders are imaginary, that is literally what it means to be "gender critical". Not that any of you seem to know that before self-identifying.

"...the right to respect for private and family life"

There not much private about this life, when he's kicking up a fussy in the public square and taken governments to court (and not his own government either), it can hardly be called private.

And how does not being legally recognised as a made up thing stop him for having a private and family life.

🤯🙄😂

Exactly, being "feminine" or "masculine" isn't legally recognised, is it

No! Like all good feminists we here are against ECHR and are rooting for wife-beaters-united Reform! 😮💨

That's a fair point. My strong disagreement is with:

I am not someone who believes you can turn the clock back.

I don't believe that the differentiation of gender from sex is progress, so I don't see 'not believing in gender' as 'turning back the clock.' In general I think concept of gender identity is harmful.

But you're quite right that being strident or rigid about it risks being off-putting to people who would otherwise be allies. If I came across as rude or dismissive of your position, I didn't mean to. I was only trying to communicate that some of us (myself) have seriously investigated the idea of gender and rejected it. Presumably you've also investigated it, but found it be a useful framework.

Picked up an 80 year old how to draw hands boom in a second hand book shop and it had a whole chapter on sex differences between hands. And used the term sex.

fairly certain police look at hands too when viewing csa images as can tell the sex and often identify the individual from their hands.

sex matters

because the charts are different depending on sex of the child. Boys have a very different line to girls.

after about 12-14 asthma peak flow charts are completely different depending on your sex.

No I think gender identity is a load of bollocks. But I respect people’s right to have a belief.

What I am is someone who can step out of a situation and appreciate both sides of an argument and look for the compromise.

What I meant by not turning the clock back is the GRA and gender reassignment pc. are law you might be able to revise them but I can’t see them being abolished.

Added - you were not being disrespectful you were debating the issue by respectfully stating your position.

I find it very odd that people demand government recognition of their chosen gender - no one wants a government certificate of their sexual orientation, or religion or political beliefs or disability - can you imagine if someone proposed a special certificate for gay people or Catholics??!

Because gender is held over us, the unbelieving majority, as a weapon and a threat, by its own cadre of high priests.

IwantToRetire ·
The Butlerian View: Why Recognizing Non-Binary Matters
1. Gender Is Not What One Is, But What One Does
In Butler’s view, gender is not a stable identity anchored in biology — it is a socially regulated performance, reiterated through acts, language, clothing, and roles. The male/female binary is a regulatory fiction, maintained by social norms that seek coherence between sex, gender, and desire.
To be non-binary, then, is not to exist “outside” gender — it is to expose that gender was never a natural binary to begin with.
Legal recognition of non-binary identities interrupts the illusion that male and female are exhaustive, natural categories. It forces the law — and society — to confront gender as a constructed field of possibilities, not a biological destiny.

I find this, with a few tweaks, makes quite a lot of sense!

Gender is not a stable identity anchored in biology - 100% agree, I was born biologically female and never accepted the 'girly' things I was expected to like, or 'perform' - an experience shared by many of us on this thread.

The male/female binary is a regulatory fiction, maintained by social norms that seek coherence between sex, gender, and desire.
Now this is where I disagree, not with the claim in general, but with the use of the words 'male/female'.
This is a sneaky shift in the use of words, because up to this point the binary has been a socially-constructed one between stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, but now it has suddenly become 'The male/female binary ' - male and female= terms used to describe biological sex.

So if the sentence read:

The masculine/feminine stereotype binary is a regulatory fiction, maintained by social norms that seek coherence between sex, gender, and desire.
I'd have no problem agreeing with it, in fact it would be a pretty good definition of GCness.

Legal recognition of non-binary identities interrupts the illusion that male and female are exhaustive, natural categories.
This is continuing the drift from gender as a social construction and performance, to the biological categories 'male' and 'female', so it has lost the plot and is making claims about legal recognition of NBism that are based on this sneaky shift in the use of language.

I'm happy to accept
gender as a constructed field of possibilities, not a biological destiny.
Butler [or the ChatGPT interpretation of Butler] has strayed back onside.
It's the lack of clarity in the use of the words 'male/female' 'masculine/feminine'
sex as biological fact and gender as social performance that er... queers the pitch😏

Butler has been around the academic block for decades, she must be aware of the importance of having a clear definition of terms in academic work; so her slick mixing up of male/female i.e. biological sex and masculine/feminine i.e. gender performance seems to be deliberate.
And very useful to gender theorists and TRAs....

I accept at the moment there is a real imbalance. Although this is slowly being addressed in the courts.

That is why I am proposing we respect each other’s views and legislate so neither side can use their position as a weapon or a threat.

I don’t want to live in a society where people lose their jobs or are vilified because they are gender critical.

I also don’t want to live in a society where people lose their jobs or are vilified because they believe in gender identity or are trans or non-binary.

A compromise should be achievable.

Yes, that’s right, because “gender” is entirely a social construct based on sex stereotypes. Your point?

Yes - you described it much better than I did.

Gender as a word was totally unknown to me, and I first heard it used in relation to other languages. And found it very strange.

And isn't it used in botany?

We already have legislation. When “both sides” accept that and abide by it, then we can talk.

OP isn’t wrong actually

I still don’t understand what the flip non binary is.

Remember how the UK lost the ECHR case about votes for prisoners ? As a result, guess how many prisoners have since voted ?

None.

People forget that, as it rather runs counter to the "We have to leave the ECHR" right wing bollocks that is currently popular with people who know no better.

It's a shock to many really really stupid people, but not only is the UK parliament supreme. It always has been. Or even more distressingly, there has never been any quantum of time when it has not been supreme since 1688.

@SerendipityJane I think you are correct about the ECHR, they have no enforcement powers.

However, when we were members of the EU there were problems with the Supreme Court (Lords as it was), having to set aside Parliamentary will, or interpret Acts of Parliament, to bend to the EU Court, (a different Court to the ECHR)

As a law student I recall the Factortame case in which Lord Denning was most unhappy about his own judgement.

(May have spelt that wrong).

This was the main reason i voted to leave the EU, it was because our democratic processes were being interfered with, by unelected, appointed Commissioners, who wrote EU law. That often were not in our nations interests.

I do not take the same view regarding the ECHR, as they have developed and afforded protections for women.

So Mx non-binary should pursue his case but i doubt it will get anywhere. Over 80% of claims are rejected, before they are heared.

Well I agree with you on the latter 😂