Ban on Trans People Using Female Lavatories “Risks Breaching ECHR Rules”, Says Council of Europe
Implementing the Supreme Court’s gender ruling by banning transgender ‘women’ from female lavatories risks breaching the European Convention on Human Rights, the Council of Europe has warned. The Telegraph has the story.
In a letter to MPs, Michael O’Flaherty, the Human Rights Commissioner at the council, said that implementing the ban “could lead to widespread exclusion of trans people from many public spaces”.
“This, in turn, may severely infringe on their ability to participate fully and equally in society,” he added.
In April, the Supreme Court ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” referred to biological sex, not acquired gender.
The decision, which was welcomed by campaigners such as J.K. Rowling, meant that certain services, such as lavatories, hospital wards and refuges, could be restricted to biological women only.
The intervention by the Council of Europe, which oversees the ECHR, raises the prospect that European judges could challenge the Supreme Court’s ruling.
In his letter to the two committee Chairmen on human rights and women and equalities, he said that that the ruling could compromise trans people’s privacy.
Explaining that gender identity was protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, he said any policy requiring transgender women to “habitually ‘out’ themselves” when trying to access segregated services risked breaking Article 8, which guarantees the right to a private life.
“Beyond privacy concerns, being forced to disclose sex assigned at birth may also significantly increase people’s vulnerability to harassment, abuse and even violence,” he said.
He said steps had to be taken to ensure that legal gender recognition was not “voided of practical meaning, leaving transgender people in an unacceptable ‘intermediate zone'”.
Mr O’Flaherty also warned of “narratives which build on prejudice against trans people and portray upholding their human rights as a de facto threat to the rights of others.”
Worth reading in full.
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Men who identify as female while still possessing their male genitalia have willingly put themselves into an “intermediate zone”, as O’Flaherty puts it. Perhaps they should be allowed to use disabled facilities, which are generally unisex. Otherwise, if they really want to be treated like women, then they need to go through a sex change op.
O’Flaherty seems to think it’s possible to balance the rights of both biological women and men-who-think-they’re-women. He’s a fantasist. Does he think that the right of a male nurse to enter a female changing area at will carries as much weight as the right of the four female nurses in that space to get changed without a man present?
I wonder if these “Inclusive Space” signs are also put on the men’s changing room doors…Seems to me the pressure is always on the women to cave to the demands of a tiny minority of men and their paraphilias. Because autogynephiles tend to usually be ‘intact’ straight men and we are expected to accommodate their fantasies and erotic fetishes. Let these delusional buggers go and get changed in the broom cupboard if they’re going to throw a wobbler when you tell them to go to the gents where they belong! Why should every single woman play second fiddle to the narcissistic demands of deranged perverts who wish to cosplay us for the thrill of being affirmed, as if being an actual woman is nothing more than a mere concept or a thought?
https://x.com/CConcern/status/1978022729321210088
This whole situation does seem one-sided to me too. I’ve not been aware of any women dressed as men entering the gents’ when I’ve been in there (although, admittedly, I probably don’t frequent the “right” venues for that). Is it that women are more comfortable with their gender?
I’ll tell you something I’ve observed about the women ( FtM trans peeps ) and I’m surely not alone in this. Women that ‘trans’ to ‘men’ are always lesbians. But when they trans they’re still same sex-attracted, basically they’re still lesbians. Only now they’re lesbians that have had a double mastectomy, taken testosterone so they’re hirsute and have a deeper voice. Most keep their fandango and don’t go through the brutal procedure of getting a phallus made from flesh harvested from their own limbs. Hell, some even go on to give birth. But they’re still lesbians, often in relationships with other FtM trans people, that have mutilated themselves past the point of no return. Why on earth not just stay as a legit woman and embrace the fact you’re gay? But it’s females that feel the need to self-mutilate to this degree. So I think men and women ‘trans’ themselves for very different reasons. With men it’s more of a sexual, fetish thing. For females I think it’s the manifestation of some past, unresolved trauma a lot of the time. Perhaps they feel safer masquerading as male. Because I’m yet to see a single FtM person in a relationship with… Read more »
I’m sure I’ve read of instances whereby some misguided men say not only are they a woman – but a lesbian to boot!
Is that a case of having cake and eating it, too?
You may well have shared the gents with a woman but probably didn’t notice. FtM trans people seem to be unobtrusive souls who just want to live their unconventional lives in peace.
Why am I and others being made to lie, in order to save the feelings of someone who is subject to magical thinking and beliefs, why are my feelings with regards to not lying not respected.
Am I supposed to tell and agree with someone who proclaims themselves to be a cat
Where does the lying end
Now you’ve mentioned it, perhaps there should be cat litter trays in toilets, too, for those afflicted by feline aspirations.
Totally agree. If they haven’t undergone a chopmadicophamy operation, they should stick to the chaps’ loos. It’s not rocket science.
Another darn good reason to get rid of the echr!
If they want to be women or claim they feel they are why would they want the extra meat around their groin. Just take it away.
There is no such thing as a sex change op
I’d like to know how many trans men there are out there who potentially want to use women’s lavatories. What order of magnitude of this problem are we talking about?
It’s a valid question.
Given that transsexuals, transvestites have been around for a very long time, and previously it has never been an issue, the answer to your question is probably “practically none” – just a gobby, narcissistic few who think it’s all about “me, me, me” and want to make a fuss.
You might be right and it’s that somehow a few of them have become more vociferous about this.
However, most of the people I hear banging on about this aren’t trans people at all. Most of the people who seem to go on and on about this – at least that I see – are just regular people supposedly championing the cause of trans people.
But like with every instance of this kind, I just think they’re the usual busybodies that if they weren’t trying to shove Trans stuff down our throats, it would be something else.
That’s what I see, anyway.
A better question might be how many predatory men are trying to use women’s facilities so they can abuse women.
Around 260,000 people identify as trans according to the ONS.
That’s 1 out of every 250 people.
I don’t believe it, at least not by my understanding of what a trans person is. If they’re including everyone that has at some point in their life have had some confused ideas aboit sex and gender, then maybe.
But based on my interaction in the world, 1 out of every 250? No chance.
Trollocks!
It all gets funnier by the day.
It is only the deluded people who think trans rights outrank women’s rights.
Biological women have a right to expect privacy in female toilets from biological men who believe they are women. End of. The sooner we leave the ECHR the better. Its interpretations of law defy common sense.
They actually defy this law itself and leaving the ECHR is only a stop-gap measure. Without some procedure to stop public instutions being hijacked by partisan politicians who seek to abuse whatever power the targetted institution might have to further their partisan causes, the problem with simply reappear in a different costume a short while later.
Define supreme. Actually parliament is supreme to the UK supreme court, they just don’t accept it.
I cannot stand the expression “sex assigned at birth”. It implies that some human has decided on a whim whether a newborn is male or female. It totally ignores the scientific fact that gender is determined when the egg is fertilised.
Blame John Money. It was the trendy new idea on the block when I studied social psychology in 1973. It was so trendy it just got accepted without a shred of evidence.
Interesting use of the word “widespread”. How many people are actually affected by this?
”widespread” in the sense of affecting pretty much everyone who identifies as transgender. cf ”both of them” in common parlance.
According to the ONS the trans population amounts to about 260,000 people. I doubt the numbers affected amount to 2,000 souls.
Stand by your beds for judicial review and a reverse ferret.
Society isn’t just about “Rights” it’s about behaviour, manners, custom, consideration for others.
All men are excluded by convention and custom from women’s lavatories and changing areas – this is rooted in modesty, and to prevent unwanted sexual attention. So-called “trans people “ whatever that is, are no more excluded than any other people from public spaces.
Wearing a frock a playing “let’s pretend” does not confer on any individual special “Rights” to anything.
“… “narratives which build on prejudice against trans people and portray upholding their human rights as a de facto threat to the rights of others.”
The Rights of others – 99.99% – are de facto being trampled and superseded by “Rights” awarded to confected victim groups.
It has to stop.
It’s odd isn’t it, that it always appears to be men who decide what women are, almost as if they think of a woman as just bag of skin.
its misogyny plain and simple
Now you’ve gone and reminded me of Silence of the Lambs. “It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.”😬
Emma Watson isn’t a man.
This is what happens when a mental illness is left untreated, and the underlying causes wilfully ignored. So long as this postmodernistic pseudo-scientific nonsense is continually allowed to go unchallenged within academia, things will only get worse.
Article 8 of the ECHR is still about the right of people that their private communication isn’t routinely observed by the state. It has zero relevance of rights of men or women in public places where privacy by definition doesn’t exist.
The claim that sex would be assigned at birth is a lie. It’s recorded at birth if wasn’t already known before.
It’s also seriously weird to claim that privacy rights of men are violated when they’re forced to use a lavatory also used by other men while women have such men avoidance rights.
I often wonder why the past tense of to gaslight (someone) is always gaslighted and not gaslit. Anyway, that’s the name for this and I resist it, because it’s against my human rights.
Yes, I’ve wondered the same, as my natural inclination is to say “gaslit”, which is apparently wrong, but sounds better than “gaslighted”.
I’ve also wondered why the plural of ‘hoof’ is ‘hooves’, but the same doesn’t apply to ‘roof’. 🤔
What a fount of useful information emerges in these comments. Who would ever guess? 😊
Yes, well, I’m partial to a tangent. 🙂
It looks like you can use “rooves” but it’s uncommon and a bit archaic. I see there was a petition in 2019 about making “rooves” the official plural of roof.
Talk about incentivising leaving the ECHR.
We don’t need advice from an Irishman if the ECHR.
Tell the Council of Europe to F O.
It’s this ridiculous word ‘trans’ that is the problem. There should be no right for transvestites to use the women’s toilets. When it comes to post-op transexuals that’s a different thing (and yes, I know you can’t change sex but hopefully it gives a clearer picture of my meaning than ‘trans’ alone).
That’s actually not a different thing. According to the official ideology, male and female are genders certain people have voluntarily and freely chosen to be theirs at a certain point in time (they may change their mind about this as many times as they want) and while they have chosen to be of a gender ‘male’ or a gender ‘female’ they are to be treated exactly like all other people who have chosen this particular gender for themselves at a certain time. That is, official ideology demands that all people must disregard the sex of all other people at all times to avoid “discriminating” against those who have chosed to identify as some gender which differs from what “wrong-headed” others might consider their sex to be.
Bluntly put, assuming you’re a heterosexual men and you happen to find out that your internet date is a bearded person who is two heads taller than you and 50 kg heavier, you’re guilty of anti-trans-discrimination if you immediately tell him that you weren’t looking for a gay sex encounter. Whether or not just refusing to have sex with this ‘woman’ would violate ‘her’ human rights remains an open question for now.
Weirdly enough, trans “women” are also invariably “lesbians”.
Yeah, I know, who’da thunk it…?
Why are post op whatnots a different thing? They are men.
They’re not a different thing because gender identity is a pure idea without any associated physical characteristics and adherents of this theory actually go to the
point of denying that physical sex characteristics exist at all, at least insofar they relate to the terms man and woman. Some people are “birthing” while others are not but nobody has a right to regard them as women because they’re “birthing” or to regard them as men because they cannot.
The “trans people human right” is the supposed right to deny all other people their sex.
“Habitually ‘out’ themselves”??
Riiight. Because you’d never be able to tell otherwise, would you…? 🤦♂️
Tell the communist EUSSR ECHR to get stuffed.
The ECHR is not an EU institution.
I see it’s referred to as a ‘rule’ not a law. At the last count, courts are there to uphold law, not make rules. JRM is correct that the ECHR has strayed into policy-making, so is reaching beyond its remit/purpose. That’s why we have to leave it, so that law-making is properly within our own parliament.
British courts are affected by the exact same phenomenon, as numerous past decisions have shown, eg, the one where it was decided that operators of coal mines are to be considered legally responsible for hypothetical CO₂-emissions caused by someone who bought their product burning it in future despite that someone is already legally responsible for the exact same CO₂-emissions.
The underlying problem is flawed recruiting procedures which enable people with a “Can we get away with this?” mentality to get into positions where they can get away with everything. Article 8 of the ECHR was meant to protect people’s privacy in their own homes and in private communications with other people. Both are supposed to remain free from routine state observation. There’s no privacy in public and hence, nobody can have a ‘human right’ to privacy in public.
To protect female-only spaces, we could shift from gender-specific to genital-specific designations. This approach focuses on biological reality rather than self-identified gender, ensuring clarity and fairness while respecting the purpose of these spaces.
Shifting people who believe that they have a gender out of existing sex-seggregated spaces is going to be much easier. They can build their own facilities instead of annexing those of others.
Tell the Council of Europe to take a running jump.