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

[Femanomanom]

I mean, there must be more to this story, right?

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/swiss-man-faces-jail-for-stating-only-biological-sex-exists/

“A Swiss wind instrument repairman is set to spend ten days behind bars after refusing to pay a fine imposed for what authorities deemed an “offensive” Facebook comment about biological sex.
Emanuel Brünisholz, from Burgdorf in the canton of Bern, was convicted under Switzerland’s anti-discrimination laws after responding to a December 2022 post by Swiss National Council member Andreas Glarner.
In his reply, he wrote: “If you dig up LGBTQI people after 200 years, you’ll only find men and women based on their skeletons. Everything else is a mental illness promoted through the curriculum.”
The comment, which stressed the immutability of biological sex, triggered complaints from activists who accused him of incitement to hatred under Article 261bis of the Swiss Criminal Code. The provision, originally passed to prevent racial and religious hate speech, was broadened in 2020 to cover “sexual identities.”
Brünisholz was questioned by police in August 2023, and later found guilty of “publicly belittling” LGBT(QI) people. He was fined 500 Swiss francs (around €535), convertible into a ten-day prison term if unpaid. After he appealed, a regional court not only upheld the conviction but added a further 600-franc fee.”

Thought they were meant to be 'neutral' the Swiss?

The lunatics really have taken over the asylum.

Reduxx's report on it:

https://reduxx.info/swiss-man-opts-for-jail-time-instead-of-fine-after-being-charged-over-transphobic-social-media-post/

This sort of case isn't that uncommon - quite a few countries have managed to get laws on to the books that are designed to be abused by nutjobs, and Reduxx links to similar reports at the end.

As he quite accurately stated in that piece:

Later, when asked, “What do you think of the LGBTQI community?” he responded: “Nothing, absolutely nothing. It’s an extremist bunch. They want to silence me.”

A startling reminder of where we could have ended up if we'd not fought back against this insidious nonsense.

Saying "Men can't be women" publicly belittles the group of LGBT(Q)I people based on their sexual orientation and in a way that violates human dignity (correct: saying this merits a jail term)

Saying "Men can be women" publicly belittles the group of female people based on their sex and in a way that violates human dignity (incorrect: saying this merits public accolade)

Underlining direct quote from Swiss authorities.

Laid out like this, you really see the absurdity and offensiveness of which way round this is. And also that draconian enforcement is the only way they can win this fight.

The irony of him being from Bergdorf...

Whilst I wouldn’t write stuff like that to start with I do wonder in the same situation whether I would be stubborn enough to just keep getting myself locked up. I can imagine me just opting out of real life and making it the hill I died on as a point of principle.

I wonder if you can be jailed for "publicly belittling" any other group?

I bet not.

Frightening.

Agreed. There is no chance I’d pay this fine, not at all.

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.

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.

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

Just so bad.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.