The Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, Dr Michael O’Flaherty, has written to the Women and Equalities Select Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights to raise concerns about the implementation of the Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers
There is another point here. His intervention and arguments, echoed by others, proceed on the assumption that women's rights and needs should be completely disregarded and that only the rights of trans people should be considered. In effect, he is saying that women should have no Article 8 rights - that their privacy, dignity and safety do not matter at all if this would require any limitation on trans demands.
Yes, and on the same logic, he is also basically advocating for the elimination of sex as a protected characteristic in UK law, so bang goes the protections in the equality act, the school regs, and the work regs, with presumably the occasional exclusion for psychopaths in women’s’ prisons.
Yes - it would in effect eliminate all the anti-discrimination against women provisions in English law. It would put women in the position they were in pre-1973 when the first Equal Pay Act was passed.
One further point: at its heart it is saying that a woman's consent - to a man watching her undress or being present in any other intimate situation - is irrelevant. Where does this end? If a woman's consent is irrelevant in a changing room, why should it matter when it comes to sex if that is what a man demands?
This is about abolishing boundaries - not just the legal and scientific boundaries around what a woman is - but boundaries of consent. It effectively makes it impossible to have any sort of legal or physical protections for a group while at the same time making it easier for that group to be oppressed on the basis of the physical and legal characteristic this ideology seeks to deny.
And once you have done that for women, why stop there? See the EU proposal to allow children to change gender at any age ie no matter how young. If they can do this, what else can they consent to?
I agree that this is fundamentally an issue involving consent of females to biological males in their spaces - and all that that means in terms of privacy, safety and dignity.
It is not a human right or in the domestic legal sphere even for females to have separate toilets, changing rooms, etc., but our human dignity, privacy and safety demand that we require them. It is almost beyond belief that anyone could even entertain such a possibility.
Frankly, I don't care where these 'transwomen' go. They chose this path, we did not. What did they think: that they could browbeat us into accepting that their chosen path should mean the loss of all our human rights?
It is for them to compromise, not us. I do not wish to see anyone deprived of their human rights but the only thing that human rights places no limit on is torture, as far as I am aware. They just will not stop trying to push the boundaries. On and on. It is both designed to be exhausting and deliberately provocative to the point of aggression against females who do not comply with their wishes.
If all this were the other way round, we would be told in no uncertain terms where to go, no court would support our outrageous claims and no public body would become immersed in our 'cause'. Just why these men get so much support is anyone's guess. I know what mine is.
Yes, this is the dark tunnel that awaits further down the track. It will include the right for men to have therapeutic sex, to have therapeutic social proximity (eg prisons), to access eggs and surrogates, to practice sex by deception, and sex work will be legitimised against unemployment benefit. It’s male rights via female duties. The opening salvos are all there. Europe/WEF policy makers especially, are excited by ‘rights’ but bored by ‘burden’.
The margin of appreciation depends on "the diversity of practices followed and the situations obtaining in the Contracting States".
The EU appears to be working towards encouraging greater rights for trans-identifying people in the EU which over time can create facts on the ground in the EU which are then taken by the ECtHR to reduce the margin of appreciation.
I don't think O'Flaherty expects his pseudo-legal arguments against the European state most obviously rowing back on the overreach of trans rights to do anything in the UK other than keep space for political dissent on trans issues in the UK. What I suspect he wants it to do is to encourage people in the EU Institutions and in the EU more widely to keep working towards expanding trans rights in EU law and to discredit and discourage EU states from following the UK approach.
Whether he had regard to the likely result in the UK that the standing of our membership of the Convention can be put under additional scrutiny I think is unlikely: it is probably beyond his comprehension. A shame.
Yes, I believe you may be right. Surely there is an investigative journalist somewhere, who is both courageous and ethical, who will start to ask the real questions about WHY? This is the crux of the whole thing: WHY?
This is an excellent and legally factual account, sir. Both a pleasure and an academic lesson in law. It is to be wished most heartily that more people - particularly politicians - would take the trouble to understand the underlying issues instead of merely expecting females to cave in on every demand from the 'trans' lobby.
Thank you for this.
There is another point here. His intervention and arguments, echoed by others, proceed on the assumption that women's rights and needs should be completely disregarded and that only the rights of trans people should be considered. In effect, he is saying that women should have no Article 8 rights - that their privacy, dignity and safety do not matter at all if this would require any limitation on trans demands.
Yes, and on the same logic, he is also basically advocating for the elimination of sex as a protected characteristic in UK law, so bang goes the protections in the equality act, the school regs, and the work regs, with presumably the occasional exclusion for psychopaths in women’s’ prisons.
Yes - it would in effect eliminate all the anti-discrimination against women provisions in English law. It would put women in the position they were in pre-1973 when the first Equal Pay Act was passed.
One further point: at its heart it is saying that a woman's consent - to a man watching her undress or being present in any other intimate situation - is irrelevant. Where does this end? If a woman's consent is irrelevant in a changing room, why should it matter when it comes to sex if that is what a man demands?
This is about abolishing boundaries - not just the legal and scientific boundaries around what a woman is - but boundaries of consent. It effectively makes it impossible to have any sort of legal or physical protections for a group while at the same time making it easier for that group to be oppressed on the basis of the physical and legal characteristic this ideology seeks to deny.
And once you have done that for women, why stop there? See the EU proposal to allow children to change gender at any age ie no matter how young. If they can do this, what else can they consent to?
I agree that this is fundamentally an issue involving consent of females to biological males in their spaces - and all that that means in terms of privacy, safety and dignity.
It is not a human right or in the domestic legal sphere even for females to have separate toilets, changing rooms, etc., but our human dignity, privacy and safety demand that we require them. It is almost beyond belief that anyone could even entertain such a possibility.
Frankly, I don't care where these 'transwomen' go. They chose this path, we did not. What did they think: that they could browbeat us into accepting that their chosen path should mean the loss of all our human rights?
It is for them to compromise, not us. I do not wish to see anyone deprived of their human rights but the only thing that human rights places no limit on is torture, as far as I am aware. They just will not stop trying to push the boundaries. On and on. It is both designed to be exhausting and deliberately provocative to the point of aggression against females who do not comply with their wishes.
If all this were the other way round, we would be told in no uncertain terms where to go, no court would support our outrageous claims and no public body would become immersed in our 'cause'. Just why these men get so much support is anyone's guess. I know what mine is.
Yes, this is the dark tunnel that awaits further down the track. It will include the right for men to have therapeutic sex, to have therapeutic social proximity (eg prisons), to access eggs and surrogates, to practice sex by deception, and sex work will be legitimised against unemployment benefit. It’s male rights via female duties. The opening salvos are all there. Europe/WEF policy makers especially, are excited by ‘rights’ but bored by ‘burden’.
The margin of appreciation depends on "the diversity of practices followed and the situations obtaining in the Contracting States".
The EU appears to be working towards encouraging greater rights for trans-identifying people in the EU which over time can create facts on the ground in the EU which are then taken by the ECtHR to reduce the margin of appreciation.
I don't think O'Flaherty expects his pseudo-legal arguments against the European state most obviously rowing back on the overreach of trans rights to do anything in the UK other than keep space for political dissent on trans issues in the UK. What I suspect he wants it to do is to encourage people in the EU Institutions and in the EU more widely to keep working towards expanding trans rights in EU law and to discredit and discourage EU states from following the UK approach.
Whether he had regard to the likely result in the UK that the standing of our membership of the Convention can be put under additional scrutiny I think is unlikely: it is probably beyond his comprehension. A shame.
Yes, I believe you may be right. Surely there is an investigative journalist somewhere, who is both courageous and ethical, who will start to ask the real questions about WHY? This is the crux of the whole thing: WHY?
This is an excellent and legally factual account, sir. Both a pleasure and an academic lesson in law. It is to be wished most heartily that more people - particularly politicians - would take the trouble to understand the underlying issues instead of merely expecting females to cave in on every demand from the 'trans' lobby.
Excellent, as ever, Michael.
Should point out, though, that his name is O'Flaherty, not O'Flattery :-)
Still reading but see a type: “Those critical of the Supreme Court judgment will use this letter to attach” should be “attack”
I hate when “typo” is autocorrected to “type”! ;-)
Thank you for this, I read about this yesterday and thought O’Flattery was incorrect but it’s good to understand this from a legal point of view