Treatment of trans people may breach EHCR, ministers told

[impossibletoday]

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

What area of everyday life can't they participate in on the same level that a disabled person (also protected by the same act) can? And let's remember that a disabled person also doesn't have a choice about 'outing' themselves and when they lose their right to genuine same sex care they lose dignity too.

Akua Reindorf is so right when she said that some people need to remember that other people have rights too.

Shabana Mahmood is a longstanding supporter of Labour Women's Declaration and was taking pics with them at the Labour conference.

This nonsense actually strengthens her hand and pushes more people into peaking territory.

I completely agree with Shabana Mahmood's comments and am glad she has taken a strong line in response to Mr O'Flaherty's overstepping. He needs to stay in his goddamn lane.

I've never understood this concept that thinks you can have "rights" for certain groups without defining who is entitled to those rights.

I have an Irish passport, as does my daughter. We don't identify as Irish or regard ourselves as Irish, we have the passports because we have the necessary paperwork, according to Irish law.

Surely according to O Flaherty's logic, anyone who says they "feel Irish" should be able to get a passport?

Possibly because you're not a man. Neither am I. Neither, I would dare to say, are the majority of readers and posters here, although I realised on another thread that you couldn't be sure because people were posting while very carefully avoiding admitting that they were men.

Why, I wonder do female to male transgender people not seem to have the same desire for power and so-called recognition? Could it perhaps be that they are not men so they've learned to tread softly and not draw attention to themselves because they know what happens to women who ask for what they're legally entitled to, and it isn't pretty?

A spokesman for Stonewall, the LGBT charity, said it remained “concerned that unless the EHRC’s draft code is seriously revised, the starting point will be one of exclusion which could create legal risk for businesses across the UK”.

Of course it's exclusion. Excluding men from women's spaces. Dur.

These people use words like exclusion and inclusion like they're a magic key.

They say 'inclusion', as tho it translates as 'a pot of gold for every person', something never to be questioned, always desirable, and an instant end to any debate.

Announcing in sepulchral tones that the starting point could be one of exclusion doesn't work, Stonewall.

Yes, we're excluding our arses off.

Suck it up.

How much do you want to bet that Mr O'Flaherty smirks at Americans who claim to be Irish because some ancestor from five generations ago came over on the boat from Donegal?

This is all very well and good.

But if you were a failing Labour government who are panicking that you won't get elected and the opposition is saying we should leave the ECHR because it's harming us and your reaction is to then decide to support male access to females you are signing your own P45 and make it inevitable that we will leave.

The fact this is not entering into the thought process of many is a total lack of awareness of how this looks to the general public.

Isn't that what Shabana Mahmood is getting at though?

Basically, "Stop meddling in our affairs because the voices calling for the UK to leave the ECHR are already loud enough."

Michael Foran:

https://knowingius.org/p/is-an-echr-showdown-on-womens-rights?r=aqef1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Thanks! I was just coming on to post this impressively detailed and robust response to Michael O’Flattery. IANAL so going to reread and try to understand all the fine detail now that I’ve had a couple of coffees!

O'Flaherty is basically a high-flying lobbyist. I don't know the ins and outs of the Council of Europe but I would assume he was elected by Parliamentary officials (whom he had lobbied) not the public.He has been at this a long time and words like "checking" and "hard drive" come to mind. It's possible he could have figured in that How Did We Get Here thread if it had not been re-routed by Mr Howse.

Does O'Flaherty know what a 'zero sum game' is? Or do I have it wrong? I understand it to mean one player wins at the expense of another player. The win/loss cancel out so overall it's zero change to the game, although not to the players. It's another way of saying rights aren't like pie. In this instance though it's exactly what it is. If tw are allowed to use women's single sex facilities then women lose those facilities. Vice versa for tm and men. I'd like to see his working for this not being the case.

Incidentally what does the 't' stand for in ECtHR? I believe that stands for European Court of Human Rights. So what's the 't' for? I'm tempted to think 'trans'

Incidentally what does the 't' stand for in ECtHR? I believe that stands for European Court of Human Rights. So what's the 't' for?

Ct for 'Court'?

It's to distinguish the European Court of Human Rights from the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Labour government is not going to listen to this individual, as Shabana Mahmood has made clear.

She's just been made Home Secretary, she's not going off piste here. Whatever she says is what the government is going to do.

They don't think it's a zero sum game because they've redefined "woman".

"Women" don't lose by recognising more "women" into "women's" rights because they are all "women".

The people who lose are us, the ones who were already called women when when woman simply meant biologically female human.

I know you know this but it's important to highlight it. They are able to make the false claims they do because they have debased the language. They have been able to take our rights and protections, our voice and our history because first they took away our ability to say "no, you are not us, this was never your history and your voice is not the same as ours"

IMO it's important that when we challemge them to use language that ties our identity as female bodied people back to that history of sex-specific oppression, because it ties the fact we have women-only supports to the reason we have women only supports in a way that everyone knows it is true and, being rooted in a fact of the past, they can never appropriate that historyno matter what words they claim.

Is a showdown inevitable?

One way or another, yes.

They are able to make the false claims they do because they have debased the language. They have been able to take our rights and protections, our voice and our history because first they took away our ability to say "no, you are not us, this was never your history and your voice is not the same as ours"

Yes, this cannot be emphasised enough. We've been ridiculed on here countless times for our concerns about the loss or modification of language.

Witness what has happened with "LGBT". There is rarely any LGB history any more. But LGB history is not T history. People are now described as "being LGBT". What does that even mean?

"Woman" is not a catch-all term and we will fight any attempt to redefine it.

The idea that Trans-Must-Have-All-The-Rights makes sense if women don't exist.

Try the thought experiment of making women completely invisible, inaudible, just totally and utterly Not There. A bit like the elves in Hogwarts. They live in the wainscotting and do the housework, but Real People(tm) don't have to notice them.

In that world, denying trans people, well, anything really is just stupid or mean spirited. "Nobody" is hurt by it.

That's the world the tiny minds live in who can't see what we're wittering on about.

Mary Leng had the perfect poem expressing it:

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

I thought I might be somebody!
They tell me I was wrong.
For no one was harmed in the race we ran;
I was no one all along.

That's why I want to see his working, why I called him a zealot. He hasn't just come out and said twaw, although that must be his stance. He's probably self aware enough to recognise how that would go down now. His 'Protect the Dolls' shirt is probably in the post, charged on his expenses.

The Supreme Court judgement was never going to be the end of it. TRAs won't accept any compromise, and they see the European Court as the means to reassert their demands. It sounds as if someone like Doctor Upton will be the martyr to the cause that will bring a case.

So I think this is going to rumble through the courts for quite a few more years. But hopefully self ID is completely off the table now. It will be interesting to see whether countries who have gone down that route will reverse anyway of their policies.

Sorry if anyone's already said this, but I think there may be some ulterior motive by the Times here, as they've run other opinion pieces saying the UK should leave the ECHR. So the article may be intended to show the ECHR [edited typo] as completely nuts. Which, if this is their official view, they are.

Bravo! Can I also add that we need to challenge their definitions too, please? 'Be kind' means 'put other peoples needs above your own' comes to mind. I'm noticing this one a lot at the moment. Even Rachel Reeves is telling us how good doing this will make us feel... We need to ask how they define women, and how they 'know' they are one as well. The more we pin it down, the dafter they sound, as Naomi Cunningham so often proves. In fact, I would say 'be more Naomi' makes a great motto for a woman.

Thanks, @WrinklesShminkles , that's interesting. It is also slightly reassuring, in that if this is the Times motivation then they have an interest in talking up the possibility that the Council and/or the ECHR itself might constrain the UK from returning to the legal recognition of sex and its equality implications.