The Strasbourg-based human rights organization has recently been advancing a fresh reason: the transmission of sex identity philosophy, despite the Council of Europe’s claim that it is focused on human rights, politics, and the rule of law. Alarm bells should ring out globally following a report from the Council’s Commissioner for Human Rights earlier this month. Human Rights and Gender Identity and Expression don’t care. The important advisories are alarming, for instance:
Respect the identification of transgender school-age children and students in all educational settings, regardless of their legal gender or sex, including by allowing them to use their own names and pronouns, wear what they like, and participate in sports and other pursuits according to their gender identity and expression.
The zealotry doesn’t stop with children. The inspector believes that transgender participation in activities should be the foundation of national plans that address gender identity. However, we are told that everyone should be allowed to use ‘sanitation facilities’ according to their ‘gender identity’. The madness extends, of course, to prisons, where ‘unless they disagree, transgender people if, in theory, be detained in accordance with their gender identity’.
Who else might be contacted about where they would like to be accommodated after serving a prison term? These are unique guidelines for unique individuals. The 122-page issue paper portrays trans people as a status symbol and minimizes the possibility that an excess of our rights has an impact on the rights of different groups. The director, who was in the UK in 2022, claimed that “she is of the view that claims that portray the security of transgender individuals as being incompatible with children’s rights and acquired advantages should be firmly rejected.”
Europe deserves far more than gender identity theory.
Of course, there is a fight, even over the meaning of the word ‘girl’. But, on that note, the inspector has bought into the philosophy hook, line, and sinker. When she said, “Ensuring that transgender people receive the same protection as all other people extends the reach of these privileges and does not decrease them for cisgender people,” she relegated people to a category.
But who exactly is this director, and why should the English government pay attention to her piece of paper? Dunja Mijatović was elected Commissioner for Human Rights in 2018 by the Council of Europe political council. She had previously worked for the Communications Regulatory Agency in her native Bosnia and Herzegovina before moving to the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) for the independence of the internet. Her job for the Council of Europe covered the issues facing people, children, and vulnerable groups, particularly those affected by conflict and movement, as well as the human rights effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Her candidate is amazing.
She appears to have a total blind spot about two fundamental issues that are brought on by this unfounded notion that human beings have some soul-like gender identity that triumphs over biological sex, but at the same time. Firstly, if women cannot defend the boundaries of their sex class, then some men will take advantage. Second, social media influencers who propagate the absurd notion that young people can choose to become men or women, or perhaps something else, are too easily prey to young children.
There is a sense that we in the UK have seen through the lies thanks to campaigning organizations and brave politicians. Our society is beginning to protest the dangers while still upholding the legal rights of trans people from harassment and discrimination, like I do.
While the UK has left the European Union, we are, however, still members of the Council of Europe. Issue papers, not to mention resolutions of PACE (the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) impact us directly. In a House of Commons debate in 2016, Maria Miller MP cited an earlier Council of Europe resolution to justify the demands her women and equalities committee was making on the government. This was another Mijatovi recommendation.
More recently, in 2022, PACE put the UK on the naughty step along with Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Turkey when it passed a resolution that protested ‘hate against LGBTI people in Europe’. The accompanying report gave the reason: ‘In the United Kingdom, anti-trans rhetoric, arguing that sex is immutable and gender identities not valid, has also been gaining baseless and concerning credibility’.
Although the truth may hurt, it cannot be denied.
The fact that sex is immutable and gender identity is merely an unprovable and unfalsifiable idea would presumably be considered hateful. Although the truth may hurt, it cannot be denied.
The grand project is ongoing. The committee report of PACE, “Freedom of expression and assembly of LGBTI people in Europe,” will be debated in Strasbourg on April 16. It calls on the member states to support the organization of LGBTI rights and diversity awareness campaigns. Meanwhile, of course, there is war in Europe, and ongoing threats to our way of life.
The UK can ignore Council of Europe resolutions, but it raises the question of why we continue to be a part of an organization that seems to have a sour outlook on things. It’s not just the membership fee – the UK contribution this year to the Council of Europe budget comes in at €45,475,779 (£38,986,157) – but the credibility that our presence gives to these issue papers, reports, and resolutions.
There is a possibility of change within the organization. The term of office for Mijatovi as commissioner of human rights is coming to an end. Her successor is Michael O’Flaherty, an Irish human rights lawyer, who takes up the reins on April 1. O’Flaherty once held the positions of chair and co-director of the University of Nottingham’s Human Rights Law Center, so it seems like he has a good understanding of the UK.
Maybe O’Flaherty can learn from the return to reality that we have seen in the UK and knock some sense into the corridors of Strasbourg. Europe deserves far more than gender identity theory. But if he is unwilling, or unable, to make a difference, then maybe the Council of Europe is another European institution that we should walk away from.
