International instruments and actions - Conference October 16, 2021 Town Hall 6 – Lyon
Michèle Vianès, President of Regards de Femmes
This article by François Rastier exposes a real situation. Informing about the methods of trans-activists, who meticulously apply the strategy of the Yogyakarta principles, is essential. For several years, Women's Looks denounces the infiltration of trans-activists into the legislative arsenal, in France as in a large part of the countries of the UNECE region. At first quietly, then once they have obtained their first legislative advances, in a vociferous and threatening manner.
This is the text of a speech made two years ago at a conference we organized on women's struggles against obscurantism.
Women's Looks, an NGO with the UN Economic and Social Council, sent the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child a supplementary report to the French report, co-signed by the Little Mermaid Observatory. As soon as it is published on the UN website, we will share it. I would like to clarify: Despite threats from groups presenting themselves as "antifa", but refusing, through verbal or physical violence, the expression of any opinion contrary to their ideology, I just wanted to clarify that Caroline Eliacheff spoke in Lyon, in a place known only to those registered for the meeting, under police protection in riot gear.
1-The Yogyakarta Principles
The Yogyakarta Principles (2006) are the result of an initiative by LGBTQI+ groups to reproduce, for the benefit of homosexual and transgender people, international human rights documents. They selected influential people at the international level and legal experts to draft a specific normative framework, signed only by the drafters. While these “principles” were never discussed between States or negotiated at the level of international institutions, this group of people then acted so that these terms were introduced into international Conventions, Constitutions or national laws in order to be considered legal. These activists play on the legitimacy of access to rights for homosexual or transgender people and on the compassionate victimhood. People who are concerned about their maneuvers are considered homophobic and transphobic, verbally and physically attacked and pilloried.
We are alerted both by our Anglo-Saxon partners, by the maneuvers of transactivist masculinists noted during international meetings on the threat they pose to women's rights and by lesbian women's associations in France who suffer their violence: submitting or suffering intimidation, denunciations to institutions to exclude them from meetings and subsidies, physical violence. Their strategy: Replace the word "sex" with the word "gender" or use the expressions "gender equality", "gender-based violence" instead of "gender equality" or "violence against women and girls". This is not neutral.
After the word "Man" was imposed, now the word "gender" is imposed to dissolve the word woman in supposedly inclusive appellations. Considering the words "gender" and "sex" as interchangeable, when the former concerns a social construction of the latter, would result in considering sex as a sociological given and not a fact. Once the amalgamation between "sex" and "gender" is acquired, the expression "gender identity" is then introduced, amalgamated with sexual orientation, mixing legitimate rights concerning sexual orientation with this nebulous concept.
Women's rights that were obtained on the basis of biological sex are now in danger because of the introduction of the term "gender identity" into international documents. The very essence of the transactivist movement is to use the language of women's rights, to seize upon the advances in women's rights, to replace the word woman by obscure terms to promote gender identity and thus make the word "woman" invisible to actually exclude women. With the argument gender identity, it is enough for a man to declare himself woman to claim rights women's. Also today the strategic step of these activists consists in considering as discriminatory the conditions imposed by the States to change sex legally.
They activate the other blade of the transactivist pincers: thus the legal authorization to change sex is obtained in many countries according to a normative framework based on psychological, clothing, duration, age, mental health, etc. criteria. The Yogyakarta principles include in gender identity "expressions of gender such as clothing, manner of speaking and gestures" (2007). Article 31 requires States to:
« cease recording a person's sex and gender on identity documents such as birth certificates, identity cards, passports and driving licenses, as well as as an element of their legal personality ».
The indication of gender in civil status is not only no longer relevant, but it becomes discriminatory (see judgment in Quebec).
2-The Yogyakarta principles in the legislative arsenal in France
The "Yogjakarta principles" are present in France, they are indeed there. While they are unknown in France and have never been the subject of debate. How could this have been possible in France? In our judicial system, inspired by Roman law, it is the laws that define judicial decisions. Case law rarely has the force of law, unlike the British system, soft law.
How can French laws that aim for equality between women and men, a constitutional principle, confirm that the word of a man would be superior to that of women since it is enough for a man to declare himself a woman for him to be believed and for his presence to be imposed in specific closed places, reserved for women, toilets, dormitories, prisons? Above all: how have these masculinist behaviors been able to impose themselves in the laws thanks to the transactivist ideology?
Like all ideologies, it will claim victim compassion, by playing on the legitimacy of access to rights for homosexual or transsexual people by an aggressive minority, as in the secular café affair, which will attack anyone who does not share their belief.
Once the confusion in language between sexual orientation and gender identity has been established, the legislative blade is sharpened.
First action: to include, to drown in a list of 23 discriminations “gender identity”, without anyone legally defining this concept.
Then comes the law of 18 November 2016 of modernization of justice. Any adult or emancipated minor who demonstrates by a sufficient collection of facts that the mention relating to their sex in civil status documents does not correspond to that in which they appear and in which they are known may obtain a modification.
Article 61-5 The main facts, which can be proven by any means, may be: "1° That she presents herself publicly as belonging to the claimed sex; "2° That she is known under the claimed sex by her family, friends or professional circle; "3° That she has obtained the change of her first name so that it corresponds to the claimed sex;
"Art. 61-6.-The application is submitted to the high court. "The applicant states his free and informed consent to the modification of the mention relating to his sex in the civil status documents and produces all evidence in support of his application. “The fact of not having undergone medical treatment, surgery or sterilization cannot be grounds for refusing to grant the request.
"The court finds that the applicant meets the conditions set out in Article 61-5 and orders the modification of the mention relating to sex and, where applicable, first names, in the civil status documents.
Then, a few deputies only have to systematically vote, by amendments, the introduction of "gender identity" in the list of discriminations.
3- Their infiltration into laws passed in 2021
3.1- Sport
In March 2021, in the law " Democratizing sport in France”, an amendment in article 100-1 of the sports code to replace the words "gender" with the words "gender identity". In the summary statement, the signatory parliamentarians note that " discrimination against women is legally understood through the notion of sex "Their amendment" aims to offer the same guarantees of protection to transgender people in access to sporting practice as those already offered to women. What was obtained? The enumeration of discriminations in the following order: sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc.
Two months later, the French Rugby Federation endorsed the inclusion of transgender people, even those in transition, that is, those who still have their male sexual organs, in competitions. And this, even though World Rugby, a few months ago, had decided to restrict their access to the highest level, in the name of "safety and fairness".
Linda Blade, author of "Antisportif: Transactivism and Obscurantism Attacking Women's Sport" will present to us what she calls "The 5 Absurdities", I would even say the 5 Aberrations, which are spreading in sport.
3.2 – Prison
Still in recent news, a transgender prisoner obtained his transfer from the men's section to the women's section of the Toulouse remand center, by court order. While he is in "transition" and therefore has his male sexual organs, a decision by the Toulouse judicial court confirmed his change of sex in civil status, on April 9. This transfer was a first. Until now, only transsexuals who had undergone vaginoplasty could be incarcerated with women.
The prison guards reacted through their union. The media reported on it, informed by a pro-prostitution association which denounced the attacks on the prisoner's dignity: he could not wear a dress!
The transgender was transferred to Fleury Merogis. But the transactivists did not stop there. On the occasion of the vote on the law on the confidence in the judicial institution, May 11, 2021, they passed two amendments that aim to take gender equality into consideration. This will allow transgender people "in transition" to access women's prisons!
3.3 Conversion therapies
A bill voted unanimously in the National Assembly on Tuesday, October 5, 2021 rightly denounces conversion therapies (which are already banned in France) » Ban on practices aimed at changing sexual orientation or gender identity in the health system ». But the law does not prohibit affirmative transition therapies. on minors, girls and boys.
In the explanatory memorandum it is specified that it is necessary:
« clearly distinguish these therapies from those aimed at supporting and assisting people with questions about their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
They are experimented on young children, believing to be born in the "wrong sex" (sic) who undergo hormone treatments to block puberty, or surgical ablations, irreversible, on ideological bases. It should not be forgotten that affirmative transition therapies enrich clinics and doctors who thus build up a lifelong patient base, due to the need for perpetual treatments and the pain caused by the treatments undergone.
3.4-Proposed resolution
I would like to quote to conclude a motion for a resolution, tabled in the Assembly on 21th January 2021 emanating from the same activists and the deputies they have made aware: It invites the Government to take up the recommendations of the Transgender Rights Defender in order to completeter the National Action Plan for Equality, Against Hatred and Anti-LGBT+ Discrimination
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Undoubtedly, most of the 39 parliamentarians from different parties saw only the legitimate access of homosexual or transsexual people to universal human rights. The resolution is based first on the Constitution but then on the Yogyakarta Principles, in particular its Article 3.
We can read there:
- Implementation of government measures, without resorting to the law (paradox of legislators who vote for a law so as not to appeal to the law).
- In the paragraph “School inclusion”: access for minors and young adults to the toilets, changing rooms and dormitories of their choice.
- In the paragraph “deprivation of liberty”: persons incarcerated in the establishments or districts of their choice, without waiting for the change of identity to occur.
- Measures to be the subject of a working group and debate: the removal of the mention of sex in civil status (Article 31 of the Yogyakarta Principles) and the extension of medically assisted procreation to transgender people, that is, the authorization of surrogacy.
In conclusion, VIGILANCE, VIGILANCE, VIGILANCE
Children are also allowed to self-determine their sexual identity. The Ministry of Education has just issued a circular asking teachers to respect students' self-determination of their gender. Fortunately, it also specifies that parental consent is required. Activists organize training sessions and meetings with local, national and international leaders to disseminate their ideology. In 2010, a guide presented the different forms of successful community activism to influence governments and educate populations: "How to use PJs" http://arc-international.net/yogyakarta-principles/backgrounder-agyp-fr/
All this advocacy is done surreptitiously, below the radar, without public debate.
Vigilance is also required on the definitions of hate speech and hate crimes in which these same activists would like to include any reservation on the expression "gender identity". How long will this radio silence from the media in France, from women's rights associations, in the face of the rapid advance of transactivist ideologues in the French legislative corpus?
