Treatment of trans people may breach EHCR, ministers told

[impossibletoday]

https://www.thetimes.com/article/aaadf715-70a9-4d2b-9aa0-e03d6813ff21?shareToken=ca3c7b78d61975b92fe55d4e60c7f7b5

It should be ensured that steps taken towards implementing the Supreme Court judgment avoid a situation where a person’s legal gender recognition is voided of practical meaning...

How can it have practical meaning, when there are no practical differences between eg TW and men?

He's not wrong that the GRC is pointless, but the answer isn't to declare Haldane and FWS both wrong, as he implies.

Being trans has legal significance in protection from discrimination, but it's not discrimination to force someone to respect sex boundaries when sex matters. I'm quite happy for them to conceal their sex the rest of the time (and even when sex does matter, provided they obey the law anyway). (I do realise that could come across as creepy to some, but criminalising successful public cross-sex impersonation might be going too far: and we all know they're not that successful anyway, not least because they always tell you)

Anyhow, TLDR It's like banging your head against a brick wall.

Which part of the ECHR do they believe it is breaching?

The part that is actually written in black and white and which the UK actually signed up to in 1953?

Or the part that is only there if you squint very hard and read between the lines, according to a small number of unelected human rights experts in 2002?

If it's the latter, they can go swivel.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to Mr O'Flaherty that women are also humans with human rights, does it?

It's literally all about the men in dresses.

Just a reminder that, in terms of toilets, there have been real life consequences to changing single sex provision. Single sex toilet designs are safer and healthier.

There absolutely are people that get harmed making designs mixed sex. It discriminates against the most vulnerable medically (including some unseen disabilities), elderly, children, women and those of certain religious beliefs.

O’Flaherty wrote: “It should be ensured that steps taken towards implementing the Supreme Court judgment avoid a situation where a person’s legal gender recognition is voided of practical meaning, to the extent that it leaves trans people in an unacceptable ‘intermediate zone’.”
He added: “It is also to be recalled that not all trans people wish to obtain legal gender recognition, and in reality simply live according to their gender identity. This does not in any way diminish their right to be treated with dignity, to be protected from discrimination, and to be able to participate in all areas of everyday life.”

So trans people want their GRC to be ‘meaningful’ but also don’t want to have to get a GRC if they don’t fancy it but also want the same ‘rights’ as the meaningful GRC?

Do any other people deserve rights according to this human rights guy??

O’Flaherty also expressed concern about the potential for organisations to require trans people to habitually “out” themselves publicly when accessing services or facilities. “Forced or non-consensual disclosure of private data falls within the sphere of private life under Article 8 of the convention,” he wrote.

There is no ‘forcible outing’ of 99.99999% of trans people - their faces do that for them.

That guy is a complete morning none of his claims stand up to scrutiny

Michael O'Flaherty was a key figure in drafting the Yogyakarta Principles, so likely rather bias!

Where did you see this? I've heard rumours that McCloud has been talking to the CoE about 'reopening' Goodwin.

Ah.

It also brings to mind the old joke about how you know if someone is vegan. Transwomen activists very much don’t want to keep their special status quiet.

Although every bit of this reads like gibberish, I particularly take issue with the part about the unacceptable intermediate zone, which is more or less the definition of non-binary and ‘queering’ everything.

So it turns out we need definitions for those who reject definitions, I guess for their dignity or something? I think he needs to turn around and make these arguments to the queer/trans lobby. Can someone take a pic of his face when they respond?

This must be the part of the process of the snake eating its tail that we all find hard to visualise.

It was kind of a joke but i suspect it to be true because it is the exact same words that RMW has used repeatedly.

If he had limited his criticisms to saying that people with a GRC should have some rights (in some specified circumstances) to be regarded in terms of their acquired gender, I would have had some sympathy for his view: An acceptable compromise in this area would be a properly rigorous process for getting a GRC (including hormones, surgery and a robust diagnosis of gender dysphoria) and then certain rights to access some opposite-sex spaces. I do think that the SC ruling has put this small number of fully transitioned certificated people in a difficult position.

But then he flew off into absurdity by saying that trans people shouldn't have to get a certificate to "comply with " the Equality Act. Quite apart from the fact that trans people don't have to "comply with the Act" in any case, what on earth would be the point of certification if people are already whatever sex they say they are on the basis of their own say-so?

RMW wants mixed sex toilets for those in the process of transitioning but women’s toilets for those men who have transitioned to women. RMW doesn’t understand that makes all toilets mixed sex which means they all have to follow the less safe, less hygienic designs. However, throwing a spanner in the works is RMW’s admittance that mixed sex toilets are ghettos (presumably referring to the less hygienic and less safe elements?) which contradicts everything RMW has said.

If men who are furious about lack of access to non consenting women really want to go to the ECHR, then for the first time there is going to have to be a full, serious, proper look at the rights and equalities of women. Which Europe to this point has taken seriously. Also the rights and equalities of homosexual people.

Basically the entire discussion the SC had.

And then it would have to be considered how those established legal rights work with the supposed, wangled, possible bits of rights of these men to get into women's spaces and use/abuse women. Because any man wishing to make undressing for him a condition of her employment or access to resources or services, or to be able to force intimate touch on her in ways that other men are not permitted in order to gratify his gender needs using her body is abusing women. However lovely he thinks he is, and however much he can reason and explain all day about his feeings and what is happening inside his head justifies it.

Are women and homosexuals equal? Or not? And the answer to that may well not end up being the one that the gender activists want, and will then impact across Europe in a way that UK SCJ hasn't. So I'm pretty much ok with bringing it on really.

Frankly the end of this will have to be that the GRA has to go, they are not going to allow any live and let live that will allow it to continue.

@FortheloveofPetethePlumber

Well quite. If Goodwin is replayed, unlike last time, the women and LGB and religious minorities will be in the room. I can't believe the TRAs have the hubris to overlook that.

He didn't come out and actually say that but that is exactly the vibe I got from reading the article. Women and what they need just doesn't register on his radar at all.

The Times article gives the impression that his wild utterances amount to a Council of Europe official position. Does anyone know if this is the case, in any meaningful way? Does the Council simply appoint people to sound off about the issues and then leave them to it? Or have they actually signed off on this, so that the critique is theirs rather than just his, and may have policy outcomes?

If a man is really convinced he passes so badly that he will 'out' himself by entering a mixed sex gender neutral space and look entirely different to any woman choosing to use a mixed sex space then how was using the women's single sex space any different in experience? Other than the lack of experience of non consenting women and power over them, and the existence of a woman's resource he couldn't own and commandeer/a form of womanhood unconquered by him?

Which would be a 'him' problem.

It is surely up to all the women who declare they love taking their clothes off with men and peeing/showering with them, and all the men who have so gleefully told women it's fine, to rush into the mixed sex spaces shouting love, glitter, support and mixed sex heaven. And surely then men with TQ identities can do the same. The point is, that there are facilities for all, access for all, and consent all round.

If that's going to be untangled in court it will come down to plain talk about misogyny, views that are distinctly male supremacist and about lack of value or respect for women and their equality or right to refuse to be a male resource, the right of women not to be involved in men's personal experiences including sexual ones, AGP is going to be discussed in very great depth, and the plain fact that men are not women regardless of what pieces of paper they are own and what meds/surgery have been used, and that women have rights too .

It won't be a pleasant conversation. It won't be able to be a sensitive one. It's going to make Naomi and Ben's work in court this far look sweet and mild by comparison.

Sonia Sodha has a bit to say on this, including that he is a political appointee and this is just his opinion rather than legal commentary from the COE x.com/soniasodha/status/1978029050640601115?s=46&t=uiUWcQSeLaKa50QCwhRAqw

This issue really has shown that society as a whole cannot be forced into a situation of being emotionally manipulated into accepting something that is not material reality.

As the population becomes more and more aware that they are expected to act as if one group's desired material reality is everyone's material reality, support continues to crumble away. If this needs to be tested in court, it needs to be tested in court.

We have seen that every time it is tested in court, support ebbs away.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/gender-recognition-bill-is-in-violation-of-international-human-rights-law-1.2097289

Look what he wrote in 2015. No need for any changes (so goodness knows where the outing comes from), changing gender whenever etc etc.

Bring it on.

RMW has to be told that RMW can't have everything RMW wants.

White chooses not to understand. White had many many women on FWR tell White directly that any male person entering a space makes it no longer a mixed sex space.

I sometimes think that if White is watching Naomi Cunningham in action, it must be like a replay of those old FWR threads in live action.