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I faced a hostile mob and
lost multiple friends when I changed my mind on trans rights (by Robert Wintemute)
As a human rights
lawyer, I never questioned the trans movement. But, after a lightbulb moment, I
publicly changed my position
I am a human rights lawyer and professor at King’s College London. Until 2018, I supported all the demands of the transgender-rights movement. But since then, I have changed my mind.
Why? Because I finally understood that some demands conflict with the rights of women and are therefore unreasonable.
I first encountered transgender rights as a University of Oxford PhD student, researching the human rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals and same-sex couples. The claims of transsexual persons, as they were then known, seemed different to me. I did not understand them, so I was reluctant to comment on them.
And when, in the 2002 Christine Goodwin case
(Goodwin said that she had faced sexual harassment at work following
gender-affirming surgery), the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK
must amend the sex on the birth certificates of “post-operative transsexuals”
to reflect their “new sexual identity”, I thought that this must be progress.
At last, the UK would have to catch up with other European countries.
Two years later, when the Gender Recognition Act of
2004 went well beyond that ruling, by not requiring any surgery or other
medical treatment (a person with a beard and male genitals could become legally
female), it struck me as very generous but I did not question it.
I assumed that whatever the transgender community
demanded must be reasonable.
They knew what they
needed. It did not occur to me, as a man, to put myself in the shoes of a
woman, encountering a “legal woman” with male genitals in a women-only space.
As such, when I joined a group of experts in Indonesia to draft the 2007 Yogyakarta Principles, widely cited as “best practice” on sexual orientation and gender identity, I did not question the proposals of the transgender experts.
Everything changed in 2018. My lightbulb moment
came at a university summer school. I was asked to explain the “spousal veto”
under UK law: a wife must consent, if her husband wishes to change his legal
sex to female and in turn make their opposite-sex marriage into a same-sex
marriage. I said that the husband’s human right to change his legal sex could
be limited to respect “the rights of others” (the wife’s right not to be in a
same-sex marriage against her will).
A transgender student could not understand how I
could compare the husband’s “fundamental human right” with the wife’s right
under “a contract” (their marriage). Feeling frustrated, I said: “Trans rights
don’t trump everything else!”
The transgender student became angry and stormed
out of the classroom. Finally, it dawned on me that some members of the
transgender-rights movement did not seem to understand that women have human rights
too.
Over the next two years, I began to speak with
women about their concerns about some transgender demands.
One woman asked if I had read Principle 31 of the
2017 Yogyakarta Principles (in which I did not participate). I had not done so
and was shocked when I read it.
It boldly claimed that every country in the world
must remove sex from birth certificates and, until then, allow change of legal
sex based on self-identification (without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria).
In 2021, I publicly
changed my position. On April 1 of that year, in an interview published in The Critic,
I criticised Principle 31 and suggested for the first time that allowing change
of legal sex might not be necessary to protect the rights of transgender
people.
Fifteen days later, citing the interview, an LGBT organisation terminated its relationship with me, after more than twenty years.
To an LGBT-rights activist I had known for just as
long, I wrote: “I hope that we can still be friends!” He replied that he wanted
“to take a break for a bit” (now four years and counting).
A month later, I
became a trustee of the charity LGB Alliance (founded in 2019
after Stonewall began to prioritise transgender issues) and went on to speak at
its first annual conference.
In that speech, I focused on the legal changes I had witnessed since 2002 and linked the political tensions surrounding transgender rights to an “abuse of sympathy”, which had in turn led to an “escalation of demands”.
I charted how we
had shifted from change of legal sex after surgery, to change of legal sex
without medical treatment but with safeguards (a diagnosis of gender dysphoria
and a two-year waiting period), to change of legal sex based on self-identification (with
no safeguards) and finally to removing sex from birth certificates (meaning
that there is no legal sex to change).
These were ideas I carried forwards to a staff research seminar at King’s in November of 2021 – albeit not without controversy. The Dean of the School of Law rejected calls to cancel the event and showed his support for freedom of expression by attending. Three security guards were posted outside the room (a first in my thirty years at the university), but no protesters appeared.
Two years later, in January 2023, I was scheduled to give the same talk at Montréal’s McGill University Faculty of Law (where I had studied).
But this time I faced a hostile mob of between
100-200 students.
They chanted “shame on you” and “F**k your system.
F**k your hate. Trans rights aren’t up for debate”. At one point, I thought
that they were going to smash the glass door to the seminar room. Instead, they
forced it open, stopped me from speaking, and threw flour on me.
All of which has
informed my book, Transgender Rights vs Women’s Rights, in which I
reach conclusions that will shock many supporters of the transgender-rights
movement.
In writing it, I realised that I had been wrong to assume, for many years, that anything the movement proposed must be reasonable. The escalation of demands I belatedly noticed made me go back to the start and ask myself: was change of legal sex ever justifiable? I concluded that it was not, and that Sweden made a mistake in 1972 when it became the first country in Europe to allow the practice. That mistake has of course been replicated by many other European nations since.
Countries that have yet to follow suit (nearly 60
per cent of the 193 United Nations member states) are right to hold out.
There is no human right to documents that are
biologically false. An individual’s birth sex never changes, regardless of any
medical treatment they receive.
But transgender people had in 1972, and have today,
a human right to legal protection against all forms of violence, harassment or
discrimination.
That was the judgment Sweden should have reached in
1972, and everyone else since.
Taking a stand has not been without cost. Since I
“came out” as “gender-critical” four years ago, a number of friends have
stopped speaking to me, and this year I was dropped from a university’s summer
programme.
But I am proud to have made this journey, and of
finally speaking out for the rights of women.
Robert Wintemute is
Professor of Human Rights Law at King’s College London and the author of
Transgender Rights vs Women’s Rights: From Conflicts to Co-existence, published
by Polity Books on May 30
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/a72ef1f095c4ac3c
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/a72ef1f095c4ac3c
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The British state is crushing free speech
Rather than instructing police officers to act as
glorified social media moderators, we should free their time to work on serious
crimes
When US
vice-president JD Vance criticised the “infringements on free speech” that are rapidly
coming to define the UK’s international reputation, few were more offended than
Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister – who in his previous role as Director of
Public Prosecutions oversaw the unsuccessful prosecution of the Twitter joke
trial – insisted that Britain was “very proud” of its “free speech”.
He would have done better to caveat his statement
with “politically approved”. A string of cases have shown that free speech in
Britain is under severe threat from an overbearing state, with little apparent
appetite in Westminster to rein it in. The most recent entry in a long and
dispiriting series has seen a retired special constable wrongly arrested and
jailed for a social media post condemning anti-Semitism.
Shocking body-worn footage shows officers searching
the home of Julian Foulkes, 71, pointing to “Brexity” material on his shelves,
prior to his being held in a police cell for eight hours then released with a
caution.
This latest
incident – as with the hounding of Telegraph columnist Allison
Pearson, the investigation of Labour MP Ian Austin for calling Hamas
“Islamist” and the police visiting writer Julie Bindel without explaining which
tweet had triggered their visit – follows a familiar and worrying pattern. In
each case, the initial legal wrong has to date been redressed; the chilling
effect of the investigations remains.
The thought that a loosely worded comment could
result in massive legal bills, the shame of arrest, a stint in jail and
potentially a criminal sentence is understandably exerting an unwelcome force
on public discourse, limiting necessary criticism and discussion.
Some in Westminster may see this as a feature
rather than a bug. Over time, the meaning of “policing by consent” has shifted
from the support of a singular British community, to the buy-in of multiple
communities with conflicting interests and opinions. And as the set of
overlapping interests has narrowed, so too the model of policing has shifted to
managing and suppressing “community tensions” rather than protecting and
upholding the rights and liberties of the individual.
This is a poor model. Rather than instructing police officers to act as glorified social media moderators, we should free their time to work on serious crimes, and free the public to engage in frank conversation without the creeping fear of an early morning knock on the door. As things stand, Britain’s dismal record on free speech deserves every criticism Mr Vance had to offer. If we dislike this, we should work to fix our laws rather than object to being shown a mirror.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/2835ca32bd2c9b7d
Retired police officer arrested over ‘thought crime’ tweet
Pensioner held
after Palestinian march post on social media, with ‘Brexity’ books in his home
scrutinised
A retired special
constable was arrested and detained over a social media post warning about the
threat of anti-Semitism in Britain, The Telegraph
can reveal.
Julian Foulkes,
from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from Kent
Police – the force he had served for a decade – after challenging a supporter
of pro-Palestinian marches on X.
Police body-worn
camera footage captured officers scrutinising the 71-year-old’s collection of
books by authors such as Douglas Murray, a Telegraph contributor, and issues of The
Spectator, pointing to what they described as “very Brexity things”.
They were also shown raising concerns about a
shopping list containing bleach, tin foil and gloves drawn up by Mr Foulkes’s
wife, a hairdresser.
“Free speech is clearly under attack,” said Mr
Foulkes. “Nobody is really safe… the public needs to see what’s happening, and
be shocked.”
His case is the
latest in a string of heavy-handed police responses to lawful expression. Last
year, The Telegraph revealed that its columnist Allison Pearson was
questioned at home by two officers over an X post following pro-Palestinian
protests.
Mr Foulkes’s house was searched, with officers
seizing his electronic devices and removing them to a waiting police van.
Officers also rifled through his most personal belongings. Fifteen years ago,
his daughter Francesca was killed by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run while on
holiday in Ibiza.
On the footage, one officer can be heard saying,
“Ah. That’s sad,” as she examined newspaper clippings Mr Foulkes had kept about
the police investigation and the funeral.
After his home was searched, the retired special
constable was locked in a police cell for eight hours and interrogated on
suspicion of malicious communications. Fearing that further escalation could
impact his ability to visit his surviving daughter, who lives in Australia, he
accepted a caution despite having committed no offence.
The incident took
place in November 2023. This week, Kent
Police admitted the caution was a mistake and deleted it from
Mr Foulkes’s record.
In March, officers
from Hertfordshire Constabulary arrested and detained the parents of a
nine-year-old girl after they had complained about her school in a WhatsApp
group, before concluding that no further action was required.
Ian Austin, a
Labour MP, has also been investigated for calling Hamas “Islamist”, while Julie
Bindel, the feminist writer, was visited by police after a transgender man
reported her gender-critical tweets as an alleged “hate crime”.
On Saturday, a Kent Police spokesman told The
Telegraph the force had “concluded that the caution against Mr Foulkes was not
appropriate in the circumstances and should not have been issued”.
The spokesman said “Kent Police expunged the
caution from the man’s record and was pleased to facilitate this correction”,
adding that a further review of the matter would now be carried out “to
identify any learning opportunities”.
Mr Foulkes warned about what he sees as an
escalating attack on freedom of expression, saying: “I saw Starmer in the White
House telling Trump we’ve had it in the UK for a very long time, and I thought,
‘Yeah, right.’ We can see what’s really going on.
“I never saw anything like this when I was in the
force. But this woke mind virus infecting everything has definitely infected
the police.”
His ordeal began in
October 2023, the month in which Hamas terrorists carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
In London, pro-Palestinian marches swept the
capital, with cases of anti-Semitic chants and placards.
They were described as “hate marches” by Suella
Braverman, then the home secretary, and Mr Foulkes was told by Jewish friends
that they no longer felt safe travelling into London.
On Oct 30, he was
concerned to see reports of an anti-Semitic mob storming an airport in Dagestan, Russia,
hunting for Jewish arrivals.
The next morning, he logged on to X and saw a post
from an account called Mr Ethical, which featured a Palestinian flag. It read:
“Dear @SuellaBraverman – as someone who was on one of the ‘hate marches’, if
you call me an antisemite I will sue you.”
He said he had never interacted with the account
before, but replied to warn that pro-Palestinian protests could escalate and to
support Mrs Braverman’s stance.
At 8.44am, he responded: “One step away from
storming Heathrow looking for Jewish arrivals…”
In hindsight, he said, the tweet would have been
clearer had it begun with the words: “What next? You are…”
But he said that even without the extra wording, it
should have been clear to anyone reading it in context that his post was a
warning about where anti-Semitic hate could lead.
However, on Nov 1, without Mr Foulkes’s knowledge,
the Metropolitan Police Intelligence Command referred his post to Kent Police,
citing “concerns around online content”.
On Sunday night, Mrs Braverman said: “We live in
dangerous times when the police investigate speaking the truth.
“This outrageous
and sorry episode shows not only that freedom of speech is under attack in the
UK, but that it’s in crisis. Law-abiding people should not be investigated for
non-existent thought crimes.
“The Met and Kent Police must investigate how this
took place and formally apologise to Mr Foulkes. Both forces must be held
accountable for their actions which were a shameful waste of time, money and
resources.”
The X post had not been reported by the public, and
why a specialist Met unit – usually focused on terrorism and extremism –
flagged such an innocuous tweet remains unclear. At the time, it had been
viewed just 26 times.
The next day, police arrived at Mr Foulkes’s home.
He opened the door to find six uniformed officers, equipped with batons and
pepper spray.
He said: “One at the front said, ‘are you Julian
Foulkes?’ I said yes and she replied, ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of an
offence under the Malicious Communications Act.’ I was totally shocked –
flabbergasted.
“Ten years, I gave them. Every year we were drilled
on officer safety, told any use of force had to be justified. And they put me
in cuffs on my own doorstep.”
One officer recognised Mr Foulkes from his time at
Medway police station and told colleagues the handcuffs were not necessary.
They were removed, but his ordeal had just begun.
For over an hour, he watched as former colleagues
carried out a Section 32 search of his home, combing through the loft, the
garage, and even his wife’s underwear drawer.
Officers showed particular interest in his
bookshelves. One called for backup to help her inspect several titles. “Very
Brexity things,” she can be heard saying on the body-worn camera footage.
Picking up a Eurosceptic book on Britain’s entry to
the Common Market in the 1970s, she asked, “What the hell is this?” and passed
it over to another officer, adding: “Very odd.”
One leafed through
an edition of The War on the West, by Murray, while another
looked through The Demise of the Free State by David Green, another Telegraph
contributor.
“That’s about the level of extremist I am… a few
Douglas Murray books and some on Brexit,” said Mr Foulkes.
In the kitchen, officers pored over cookbooks and
scrutinised his wife’s shopping list. One remarks on the footage: “Bleach,
foil, gloves… Bit of an odd list, isn’t it?” It takes several minutes before
they realise that she is a hairdresser, and not stockpiling bomb-making
materials.
Mr Foulkes was then driven to Medway police
station, booked in, fingerprinted, photographed and had his DNA taken. “I asked
what I’d done,” he said. “The officer said it was for a post of ‘an extremism
nature’ – that’s all I was told.”
He was held in a cell for eight hours before he was
interviewed at 9pm. He said it was only in the interview, when he was finally
shown a screenshot of the allegedly offensive X post from Oct 31 that he
grasped how surreal the situation had become.
“Kent Police decided to interpret my post as
anti-Jewish,” he said. “But it was the exact opposite. If they’d looked at the
full thread, they’d have understood. It would have taken two minutes. I told
them there was more to it, but they didn’t pause the interview to check.”
He denied five times that he intended to cause
distress or alarm, “but that was just ignored”. He was bailed and told to
return on Feb 1 last year.
He had feared neighbours would see officers seizing
his computers, iPad and phones and assume the worst, saying: “I was terrified
they’d think I was a paedophile.”
Above all, he feared anything that might stop him
from visiting his daughter in Australia. “My life wouldn’t be worth living if I
couldn’t see her,” he said. “At the time, I believed a caution wouldn’t affect
travel, but a conviction definitely would.”
At his lowest point, on Nov 7 – just days after
being bailed – Mr Foulkes was told to return to Medway police station on Nov 10
so a caution could be issued.
“I didn’t agree, but I felt I had no choice,” he
said. “In hindsight, it would never have gone to court. The CPS wouldn’t touch
it with no evidence. But I wasn’t thinking logically at the time.”
By early last year, the injustice was weighing
heavily. “It was always on my mind. I knew it was wrong on every level,” he
said. “I knew if I didn’t act, I’d forever wonder – what if you’d challenged
this?”
By last summer, he had found a new solicitor,
Matthew Elkins of Legisia Legal Services, and began to challenge the caution,
with news of its deletion confirmed on Tuesday last week.
While this was a relief, he said the fallout has
been devastating. “It’s cost me money I can’t afford. I’m a pensioner – not one
of these millionaire retirees you read about,” he said. “This was a disaster.”
The emotional damage, however, weighs the heaviest.
“It’s like PTSD,” he said. “You push it to the back of your mind, but it comes
back and you relive it.
“It was just so wrong – and especially painful
because I’d spent 10 years working with these people for no remuneration. I did
it because I believed in it and enjoyed it. I left with a certificate from the
chief constable, thanking me for my service. Now, all those memories feel
trashed.”
Mr Elkins, said:
“Julian’s case highlights a need for the police to take stock, and to
make freedom of expression their starting
point – our freedoms won’t be taken from us suddenly, but by the quiet and
gradual criminalisation of our conscience.
“The police face an
almost impossible task monitoring social media, and they won’t enjoy
being labelled the thought police, but when someone like Julian is dragged from
his home the cap appears to fit.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “This incident occurred
under the previous government.
“The Home Secretary
has made clear that she believes all police forces should be focused on the
central priorities of the Government’s Safer Streets Mission, including rebuilding
neighbourhood policing, reducing anti-social behaviour, and making progress
towards the unprecedented ambition to halve knife crime and violence against
women and girls within a decade.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5bd827cff16c92dd
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