#NoDebate is over in Europe
Resistance to self-ID in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Finland have exposed the limits of transactivists’ strategy
If you’ve ever wondered how gender self-ID swept through so many EU countries without the majority of the population ever hearing about it, there are some clues in a publication colloquially known as the Dentons document.
Many people in the anglosphere are already familiar with the 2019 lobbying manual, which is officially called “Only adults? Good practices in legal gender recognition for youth”. It’s a best-practices guide for transgender activists on how to astro-turf your way to self-ID, listing all the ways small countries such as Ireland, Malta and Luxembourg managed to introduce such a bizarre practice into their societies with almost no resistance.
The bizarre practice in question: allowing people (including children, in some cases) to walk into their town hall and sign a bit of paper that declares them to be the opposite sex. And if you are thinking “Nah. First they have to see a psychiatrist, have evidence of gender dysphoria, have undergone sex reassignment, or have some experience living as the opposite sex,” or any other precondition, reader you are wrong.
Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing
The Denton’s manual encourages transgender activists to keep quiet about their campaigning efforts: “Avoid excessive press coverage and exposure" they advise. “Target youth politicians" and bring up the issue “at every meeting of any sort - even ones which were not directly relevant, to ensure the issue was at the forefront of everyone’s minds."
In other words, bypass the pickets of braying, dried-up old nazi bitches worried about children, and go straight to the ministerial rountables and expert consultations. The guide also advocates for campaigners to wrap self-ID legislation in something actually popular, like gay marriage.
Hiding the horrible truth
Crucially, though – and this is still a major pillar of rainbow lobbies’ advocacy for self-ID – activists must decouple the idea of hormones and surgeries from the administrative self-ID procedure. Doing this helps to defang the whole thing in the minds of normies, and thus, say Dentons, “minors may be more likely to be able to access the processes,”
People sure do hate the idea of mastectomy-scarred budding lesbians and forever-young castratis, so activists must make sure, I paraphrase, that this image is completely disconnected from the sanitised image of a happy child signing a simple document in an air-conditioned administrative building.
TERFs like me never stop going on about the physical damage being done to children (not that social transition doesn’t also set kids up for a nightmare identity crisis), and one way the activists respond is by messing with the meaning of the word “child”. (Changing definitions is, of course, a familiar trope in the trans astro-turf universe, you will have noticed).
I tried to communicate with the Brussels-based Transgender Europe once about their dreams for kids, and their media contact scoffed at me that children don’t get hormonal treatments. That’s because they’re defining a “child” as anyone pre-pubertal. Once a child is at Tanner Stage 2 of puberty, the phase when hormone blockers are usually given to gender-distressed or pre-gay kids, the rainbow lobbies would like us all to start referring to them as “adolescents”, thank you very much. Ta-da! No children getting treatments, just deeply psychologically-meaningful legal and social identity changes.
Well anyway, these sleights of hand seem to have worked very well in Ireland, Malta, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg and Portugal. But it looks like the strategy might have reached its limits now that larger countries are taking it on.
The Dutch don’t go quietly
There is something paradoxical about the progressive Dutch laissez faire attitude: yeah sure, do what you want, but don’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. Gender identity ideology, which compels others to play along with the fantasies of strangers, runs headfirst into this principle. The Dutch also tend to speak their minds, and have no problem calling out bullshit-merchants when they come across them.
Signs of disquiet started to emerge when gender-neutral language seeped into public life, says social psychologist Alma Van Hees, who also writes a column for @OpiniezMagazine. When the public transport provider switched to “Dear traveller” (replacing “Dames en Heren”), at first most people laughed it off but they didn’t protest, she says. “But nowadays they feel this movement has gone too far, banning the words mother, and changing the meaning of woman.”.
“I think the people here are as tolerant and liberal as they used to be, when it comes to homosexuality, transvestites and transsexuals. But transgenderism is quite another subject; that’s not about tolerance, but prescribes and forces people to change their language and behaviour. It’s all about ‘trans rights are human rights’ but the rights of anybody else are ignored or even worse, denied. More and more people are fed up with these practices and don’t believe their nonsense anymore, is my impression.”
They can’t ignore it any longer
The last reform of the transgender law passed without discussion in 2014. And, according to Alma, for a long time there was simply no debate. “Neither positive nor critical,” she says. “Our mainstream media didn’t touch the subject… but that has changed a little bit recently. They can’t ignore it any longer.” Stories about detransitioners have begun to appear in Dutch media, as well as interviews with gender-critical feminists in Voorzij and columns by critical journalists like Jan Kuitenbrouwer and sociologist Peter Vasterman. “There is more and more debate on Twitter,” says Alma, as well as more retweets of posts by critical politicians.
“You could say that our ‘leftish’ government doesn’t reflect the wishes of the people anymore. The opposition is getting stronger. It is expected that the elections in spring 2023 will change the political landscape.”
A template to start from
To the advantage of the people of the Netherlands and other self-ID latecomers, the topic of gender identity ideology isn’t new anymore. Experts in other countries have been raising the alarm, anecdotal evidence abounds, and British TERFs have been shouting about it on Twitter for about five years. The arguments are already mapped out for Dutch feminists.
Spare a thought, then, for poor Malta and Ireland (2015) and Belgium and Luxembourg (2018), who encountered this stuff when everyone was still labouring under the illusion that self-ID was for a small band of suffering homosexual men. “I was amazed by the knowledge of the self-ID critical politicians in our transgender debate (in September, 2022)” says Alma. “They knew about recent research, and they had good arguments and a lot of questions that were not easy to answer.”
Alas, the debate over the #TransgenderWet has been extended, with the next parliamentary sparring match due to take place on 6 February.
Protecting businesses
The story is a bit different in Germany. By late 2022, the country seemed all set to allow anyone over 14 to change their gender via a simple declaration. Feminists had fought hard, but things had an air of inevitability about them. But then on 6 January, the newspaper Die Zeit quoted the minister of justice copping to something important about the proposed law that seemed to have escaped his attention: it could leave businesses exposed to equal treatment litigation if, say, a sauna refuses to allow a big hairy bloke into the women-only sauna.
Herr Buschmann is a very good Denton’s student. In his measured objections, he paid due reverence to the trans activist line that self-ID kids and mutilated kids have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. But unluckily for him, nobody seems to have yet published a lobbying guide on how to defend the rights of businesses against equal treatment laws.
(Of course, I am sure there are lawyers working on such a guide as we speak.)
“We have noticed that there are concerns related to the legal consequences of gender change… the operator of a women's sauna should also be able to say in the future: I want to take account of the protection of my customers' privacy and therefore tie in with the external appearance of a person. The operators must then not be exposed to the risk of a lawsuit under the General Equal Treatment Act, for example. We have to regulate that properly.”
Secret TERF conference
I contacted some German TERFs to check if he had voiced any other concerns (any at all?) about women and childrens’ safety in this hypothetical sauna. Rona Duwe, a German feminist activist said that indeed, Mr. Buschmann has only commercial interests in mind.
“The liberals are not interested in women’s rights” she told me. “But he gets harassed as a transphobic fascist anyway.” (LOL). The feminist group Lasst Frauen Sprechen (Let Women Speak) echoed that in an article on their website, saying that he “limits his argument to corporate interests and does not address the violation of women’s rights.” The group demanded that the whole #Selbstbestimmungsgesetz be thrown in the bin.
According to Rona, in December 2022 there was a secret conference in Berlin that brought together German gender-critical feminists and radical feminists. The idea was to “strengthen cooperation, build working groups, take action and start a new feminist wave in Germany,” says Rona.
“We had women aged 18 to 85 there including a lot of very experienced lesbian feminists of the second wave. The conference published an open letter to the government. There is a lot of feminist revolution in the air.”
And even though the government’s walkback was only a partial victory for women, transactivists, used to getting everything they want immediately, are furious.
A cache of materials for the Spanish resistance
The same, sadly, cannot be said of the situation in Spain. The #LeyTrans is on its way to the Senate where it will be voted on as a matter of urgency, “as a way of killing any debate,” says Amparo Domingo, a rep from WDI Spain. But the whole thing was so contentious that it caused chaos in the ruling left-wing coalition, and deepened the divorce between the country’s #BeKind feminists and the feminist-feminists. But the latter put up an incredible fight.
Most Spanish people had been oblivious to the plans of the left-wing party, Podemos, who were behind the bill, but feminists had been paying attention. Amparo told me: “When Podemos were handed the Ministry for Equality, feminists started organising.” A collective called Confluencia Movimiento Feminista was created to stop gender identity replacing sex in Spanish law. Other radical feminist groups were created all over Spain, mainly at the local level. Women linked to the socialist party also started organising.
12-year old children
“We created a lot of materials explaining the scope and real meaning of the proposed changes,” says Amparo. “This meant that there were a lot of materials available online, and whenever the government advanced a step forward in their plan, the feminists were proven right. Part of the population ‘woke up’ to the reality of the situation, so more voices were added to the debate and more articles appeared in the press, including interviews with psychiatrists or other medical specialists or statements from professional medical bodies. Feminists have appeared on television programmes, something that would have been unthinkable some time ago, when only the trans narrative was allowed.”
“Their expectations for a nice and easy procedure were based on the success of their strategies in other countries, and also because the first time they introduced the proposals there was practically no resistance at all.” (Podemos had earlier introduced a self-ID bill but it got cancelled for boring procedural reasons - nothing to do with resistance.)
But despite all that, in the end, 188 voted in favour of the trans law, while 150 voted against and 7 abstained. The minister for equality, Irene Montero, said "Thanks to the feminist majority that today closes closets and opens windows of happiness and rights." She is referring to gender non-conforming children as young as 12 years old being able to change their legal sex. Time will not be kind to these women.
“The bill is a blank check for anyone to change their legal sex, including people who are not of sound mind, and whose ability to do contracts of any other sort has been removed, meaning people with severe mental conditions, for instance,” Amparo says. “Also it persecutes psychologists with fines up to €150k for anyone engaging in "conversion therapy" about gender identity. So anyone working with dysphoric children could be ruined for life.”
A first for Finland’s rainbow lobbies
#NoDebate has not really gone down smoothly in Finland, either. The country has one of the continent’s most sensible trans medical regulatory setups for minors (along with Sweden), so kids are at much less risk of permanent damage (though the subreddit r/Transnord does its best to help young people get around the law).
Academic Linda Hart told me that two small gender-critical NGOs were set up in 2021 while the self-ID law was approaching the parliamentary agenda: LHB-liitto (LHB League) and Naisten rintama (Women’s Front). “The #NoDebate gang were taken by surprise that these new gender-critical associations were given a voice in the committees in parliament,” she says. “The established rainbow organisations have not had to face secular and party-politically disengaged pro-LGB criticism in favour of sex-based-rights before this in the public arena.”
“Also, the term “gender critical” has surfaced a couple of times in the mainstream press. When the bill was drafted, there were experts in the room. An amendment on prison placements was revised to take into account the fact that self-ID could be abused by opportunistic males.”
Linda adds that she agrees with activists that it is important to remove the existing sterilisation requirement, not least because it has been required by the European Court of Human Rights. “However, the ECHR does not require self-ID i.e. It is not a recognised human right.”
The Finnish bill is currently being processed by committees in parliament.
Movements are formalising
Resistance is growing on a formal level, too. Apart from Lasst Frauen Sprechen, Confluencia Movimiento Feminista, LHB-liitto and Naisten rintama mentioned above, there is an organisation called WORIADS.eu building a network of gender critical groups, concerned parents and free speech fans at EU level. Meanwhile, two of the most harassed women in France, Marguerite Stern and Dora Moutot, have launched a French movement called Femelliste. Radfem Berlin have monthly demonstrations, and gender-critical voices are slowly emerging in Eastern and Central Europe where to be vocally against gender identity ideology is extra dangerous because it lumps you in with the region’s anti-EU, fundamentalist factions.
If you know of new TERF, gender-critical, gender-abolitionist, or free speech orgs that have popped up in your country, please drop me a line at roisinmichaux@gmail.com
Thank you for all your work - this is amazing.
I didn't know about this "Only Adults?" lobbying; tactical, indeed...
This is real news for real feminists.
I can't believe the work women do, and have to do, to save reality from harmful, world-wide propaganda.
Thanks, Ladies!
So much clarity in this statement:
"“I think the people here are as tolerant and liberal as they used to be, when it comes to homosexuality, transvestites and transsexuals. But transgenderism is quite another subject; that’s not about tolerance, but prescribes and forces people to change their language and behaviour. It’s all about ‘trans rights are human rights’ but the rights of anybody else are ignored or even worse, denied. More and more people are fed up with these practices and don’t believe their nonsense anymore, is my impression.” - Alma Van Hees
Like the women in Germany who have tried to unite GC fems and Radfems, I, too, have something in the works, to help women work together, network, and unite, and most importantly: be as informed of all feminist news and activism as possible.
I'm looking for:
* Harry Potter Fans
* Women who prefer to work behind the scenes
* Women who want to help in any way
* Women who enjoy admin, collating data, writing, and creativity.
* Women who don't know where they fit - but want to!
I am just one woman, myself, but I have my networks.
I don't know how to find the women I'm looking for, is my main obstacle, I guess.
Also, someone who can understand my idea, and help me write it up so that anyone can understand it easily.
I really want to get organised.
Thanks! If anyone questions how insidious this trans movement is , I will send them a copy of your article. I love knowing that I’m not only a Terf but a “feminist’s feminist “!