Betrayal on a European Scale
The Council of Europe sees women standing up for their rights in the UK as 'virulent bigotry'. What are the potential consequences and what can we do?
In January 2022 Fair Cop and the Women’s Rights Network published ‘Transphobia as a Security Concern” where we set out our criticisms of two reports that attempted to argue ‘transphobia’ was inextricably linked to violent ‘Far Right’ ideologies - without providing any definition of ‘transphobia’ or indeed of ‘trans’.
We commented at para 60 that we planned also to examine a second report made by Fourat Ben Chikha of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in September 2021, entitled ‘Combating Rising Hate against LGBTI people in Europe’ as this too appeared to demonstrate the same unacknowledged and unexamined flaws of the first two reports; a conflation of UK gender critical views with ‘far right extremism’ and a distinct lack of curiosity about UK jurisprudence.
That analysis has now become urgent. On 25th January 2022 PACE adopted a resolution based on this report, strongly condemning “the extensive and often virulent attacks on the rights of LGBTI people for several years” notably in Hungary, Poland, the Russian Federation, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The parliamentarians
deplored anti-gender narratives, which reduce the fight for the equality and rights of LGBTI people to what some conservative movements deliberately mis-characterise as “gender ideology” or “LGBTI ideology”.
This is very concerning. To see the UK in a list of countries containing Russia and Turkey, accused of ‘virulent’ attacks on the ‘rights’ of any group is nonsensical. I am not aware of any ‘virulent attacks’ on the rights of ‘LGBTI’ in the UK. (I assume the ‘I’ stands for ‘intersex’ and note with curiosity the failure to include the ‘Q’ and the ‘+’ which often appear in this acronym).
What there has been is a variety of legal challenges to unlawful and irrational decisions, laws and policies, which have been largely successful - see for example Harry Miller’s victory against the College of Policing and Maya Forstater’s victory in the EAT. These legal actions were taken to challenge what appeared to be the elevation of just one part of that acronym - the ‘T’ - above all other considerations and certainly above the rights of women to single sex spaces and the ability to talk about this.
It is astonishing to see the Council of Europe condemn the UK for upholding and protecting women’s rights and the rule of law - by reference to the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, itself drafted by British lawyers.
The language used is troubling, equating women to some kind of infestation that men ‘have a problem with’.
The impact of this irrational condemnation is likely to be extremely serious. We can already see this playing out in the UK by the frankly bizarre and unhinged responses to recent statements by the EHRC about changes to the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland and conversion therapy. The EHRC is already being labelled a transphobic ‘hate group’ for its calm and rational assertions about the rule of law, the need for proper definition of terms and respectful debate.
This is a threat to our democracy, the rule of law and the safety and dignity of women and girls. We have allowed a situation to arise where one group believes itself above challenge, above criticism and above the law. It is bad enough to see this played out on the domestic stage. When the Council of Europe is enthusiastically pouring petrol on these flames, then the danger intensifies. Despite the recent Court of Appeal decision ruling that the Hate Crimes Guidance was unlawful and that the police must be mindful of the importance of Article 10 ECHR, on Sunday 23rd a disabled woman was arrested and detained for over 10 hours by Newport police for her ‘transphobic’ stickers. The police searched her home and seized a book edited by academic Heather Brunskell-Evans.
What can we do?
Fair Cop and the WRN will produce a more detailed challenge to the PACE September report. We will aim to finish this by the end of February 2022. We will seek an audience with the Council of Europe to explain our findings. We will ask for explanation as to why the rights of women and girls are dismissed in such derogatory and inflammatory terms.
What would be very helpful, if you share our concerns about this direction of travel, is to write directly to your MP and ask for confirmation or denial of whether your support for the sex based rights of women and girls makes you a ‘virulent bigot’.
Please let me, Fair Cop or the WRN know your response.
I thought things were crazy a few years ago. I never, in my most lurid nightmares, thought they would get quite this mad. We need to act.