EU law for women morphs into gender-based law for everyone
EU law for women morphs into gender-based law for everyone
"The term ‘victim’ should refer to all persons, regardless of their sex or gender."
The European Parliament in Brussels is currently finalising the details of a law that is supposed to protect women from violence, but is turning out to be a law that protects *all people* from violence. That’s great because violence is bad. But why are they pretending it’s about women? Especially since there already exists a whole victims’ rights law that covers everything?
This one is a “directive” which means it sets out (mandatory) standards for all 27 EU countries. But while the meaning of “gender” is defined in the text (a set of stereotypes, basically) the meaning of “sex” is not. In some places, the text seems to use the two terms interchangeably, as the EU Commission (who thinks up the laws) is increasingly wont to do.
Why bother, you absolute handmaidens
It defines violence against women as a type of gender-based violence, basically turning it into an LGBTQIA+ law. It states: "The term ‘victim’ should refer to all persons, regardless of their sex or gender." Everything in the law applies to male-identifying, female-identifying and even non-binary-identifying people (whatever that means) except seemingly in two cases: rape, and FGM.
Presumably due to the influence of the lavishly-funded transgender activist group TGEU, the draft text carves out special mention for “intersecting” LGBTQIA+ oppressions. But when a victim’s characteristics - being a transwoman (a male) - intersects with its diametric opposite - being female - how is it resolved?
Protect women, but also women who are in fact men, and also women who claim to be men. And also men who don’t even bother to act out the insulting cultural stereotypes of women, and who claim some other protected identity. And also just protect all people, in fact.
Single-sex services should be based on biology
The real worrying part is that there is no provision for single-sex counselling or crisis services. The draft was updated in December to stipulate shelters, but not crisis services, should have single-sex options. But of course, nowhere is “sex” defined as having a biological meaning. This is pretty fundamental: in Ireland, for example, a gender recognition certificate is in effect a change of legal sex.
Bizarrely, the first draft of the law granted access to single-sex shelters only to female refugees, leaving European women adrift. However the rapporteurs responsible for guiding the draft bill through the parliamentary process seem to be trying to fix this up, issuing an updated report on 13 December. The names of the rapporteurs (who have extra influence on the final text) are Frances Fitzgerald, an MEP from a centre-right (but ideologically captured) party called Fine Gael, and a Swedish socialist called Evin Incir.
“The most vulnerable to gender-based violence”
TGEU’s feedback (hidden deep in their website) says of transgender women in particular: “if adopted in its current form, the opportunity to enshrine protection for some of the most marginalised people in EU law will be missed… Those who are most vulnerable to gender-based violence should be in the focus,” which suggests that they don’t think women should be the focus of the violence against women law.
Notably, the rights of women as a sex class have not even been picked up by the European Women’s Lobby, who also submitted feedback. In fact, the EWL go so hard on the intersectionality jargon that it’s probably their influence that caused men-identifying-as-women’s feelings to have priority over the safety and well-being of women (mere speculation).
And that’s the state of the law before the myriad other intersectionality advocacy groups get their feedback in.
Across the Channel, meanwhile, the UK advocacy group Sex Matters has gone directly to the root of the problem: they are currently campaigning for the Equality Act to be updated to make the protected characteristic “sex” mean “biological sex”.
Quiet, woman!
A cyber bullying section of the law, ostensibly about preventing online pile-ons of women, says that “insulting” online speech should be penalised - and covers all “genders”. It also equates hate speech with violence. Gender-critical people will be familiar with the danger lurking there.
Self-declared feminist MEPs in Brussels do exactly zero to protect women from the erasure of our sex. This year they went on and on and on about their corporate gender quota law, which they deceptively called a “Women on Boards” directive, but they did nothing about men being legally allowed to call themselves women and take advantage of such initiatives, thereby skewing statistics beyond comprehension.
Nor are they saying anything about some countries’ efforts to introduce a third sex, thereby ensuring the “underrepresented sex” (as it’s called in the directive) will always be non-binary or genderfluid or X or whatever. That’s actually just hilarious. Imagine if 40% of corporate boards had to be made up of enby TikTok theatre weirdos by law. And what would stop anyone just calling themselves X for career opportunities? Isn’t it just so silly it makes you want to scream into a pillow?
The meanings of fundamental concepts are being changed under our noses, and self-declared feminists are boasting about token “lean-in” laws for 229 million EU women, most of whom presumably don’t give a fuck about being a slavish corporate have-it-all career barbie.
Lesbians with an asterisk
It’s coming from all directions. This is what a lesbian lobby group, the European Lesbian* Conference, said about the draft law. (They put the asterisk* in their name because they want you to know that they think men can be lesbians). The second sentence of their feedback, written by a “lesbian woman” with an Adam’s apple the size of a moored yacht, said: “In order to tackle completely this phenomena and in line with the intersectionality approach chosen by the Commission in its Gender Equality Strategy, it is particularly important to take into consideration the specific positions of non-heterosexual women, be they cisgender, trans or intersex.”
None of those things are objectionable. Everyone should be safe from violence, whoever perpetuates it. But the fake feminist charade, cosplayed by men, is very annoying.
The committees will meet again on 12 January, and then the MEPs will produce the new version with feedback taken into account. There is a group of women in Brussels working on amendments to law in which they are demanding that sex be defined biologically, women should have options for female-only counselling services, and that legislators stop messing with our right to say men can’t be women. They also want the Commission to gather data according to biological sex and not just gender identity, or the whole thing will be a waste of time. They are also asking for crime data on the sex and gender identity of victims and perpetrators be recorded, too.
As an aside, there is nothing in the draft law to prevent men from changing their official sex after being accused of domestic violence, like this guy did in Spain, meaning he avoided the more severe gender-based violence charge. It also meant that his wife could not benefit from special conditions such laws offer to battered women, including being able to bar him from her home.
Happy New Year!