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Denmark's minister of equality: There are limits to what rights trans people should have
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- Title
- Ibi-Pippi har fået mine øjne op for, hvor problematisk juridisk kønsskifte er
- Published
- Aug 14 2024
- Word count
- 905 words
If you go ahead and add a "what was your assigned gender at birth?" question to those questionnaires, you can easily solve this issue, and maybe collect some important data about trans women's health as well.
The rest is the same sports, bathroom, prison concerns that we've heard and addressed ad nauseum. If a person is behaving inappropriately in a bathroom or locker room, their genitals don't matter, their behavior does, and their genitals don't determine their behavior. If a person is behaving appropriately, then not only do their genitals not matter, there's a very good chance you may not even know what genitals they have.
In a prison, it's similar logic, extended a bit further. If your prison is unsafe for inmates because they're able to harm each other, it doesn't matter what genitals they have. Inmates in women's prisons should already be protected from being harmed by cis women there - I can't fathom it taking significantly more or different resources to protect them from being harmed by trans women. Not to mention the lack of safety that trans women experience in men's prisons.
How can you write these two sentences in the same essay and still claim to be a serious person?
Edit: Apparently that was a mistranslation. This minister is still not a serious person, and the ideas espoused in this piece are worthy of scorn.
I had to keep checking the date on this publication several times to make sure it wasn't years old. Is Denmark living in the past? I should go to Denmark when I want to drink. Maybe if I cross the Øresund Bridge will I be 25 again and my hangovers won't be so bad.
Denmark is sadly a lot less progressive than our reputation would have you think. I'm not the first to say this but trans rights are where gay rights were in 1994, give or take..
Do you think this minister will face any sort of repercussions for this? Will she still have the same amount of influence?
(Also I hope you know I'm only joking about hating Denmark. But don't tell the Swedish government - I don't want the ding against my citizenship application. <3)
No repercussions at all. This is a very common opinion for centre-right politicians such as herself. Her party is unlikely to continue being in government after the next elections though so hopefully she will not have the same influence.
(I would assume you were an AI and not a real Swede if you didn't joke about hating Denmark ^^)
It's good, at least, that they won't be in power for much longer. Hopefully whoever takes power has a much more well-educated and up-to-date view on trans equality.
Well said. And a lot of the prison sex abuse is coming from staff, not from cis or trans inmates. What I hate the most about these "conservative values" people are how they often completely ignore the obvious things to do outside of the controversy: teach your own kids sex ed, have washrooms where no-one can see another person poop, fund way better protection for prisoners, fund proper health care for women and babies.
There are folks on the other side who do care about actually addressing them, and usually it's a quick way for me to tell if they're willing to entertain honest discussions, vs just repeating "because that's not right" in circles.
The survey may already collect the gender identity information and thus be useful. The minister doesn't actually say.
That's a good point. It doesn't seem this minister has earned my assumption of good faith.
Saying "wokeism has gone too far" really destroys most faith I might have hypothetically had in someone. Doing it after that particular article... Well.
It was really just that one claim that I assumed she would know more about than me, but considering how little research she would have to have done to make those claims about Imane Khalif, like not even a cursory google, I probably shouldn't have.
Google translate did something like "well it's hard to tell what's up or down there but if I'd been a boxer in the ring with a man..."
Gross.
Yeah that's the correct translation. It's always big "if" scenarios and hypotheticals with these bigots - because they can't actually find any real life examples.
I have been sent similar surveys as well as an invitation to get a checkup for cervical cancer. It is so painfully obvious that you just ignore these letters if you don't have those organs. Seems like the minister apparently needs things spelled out for her..
Many universities account for trans folks and even if they're not using the data they ask the questions and can screen responses out if needed. But they may indeed use the data if they get enough responses from trans women.
This translation seems kinda misleading to me (I'm neither a native Danish nor native English speaker, though).
I think it would be better to translate that to something like "they should not have the right to use women's changing rooms" since omklædning means "the act of changing one's clothes" and not "to dress as so./sth." and I think it's clear from context the author refers to changing rooms and so on.
https://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=omkl%C3%A6dning
So I don't think the author wants to legally police what anyone wears in terms of their gender expression (even though the author seems to pander to a crowd which might ostracize or ridicule anyone who dresses "as a woman" while not being "woman enough" to their standards).
She uses gender-essentialist and biological-reductionist talking points (to her, everyone born with "male biology" is inherently a threat to people born with "female biology" no matter what, so they should be kept out of women's spaces), while "not caring what anyone identifies as" (I wonder if she is laissez-faire about people wanting to medically transition or if she is one of the "concerned" ones).
The Swedes go to Denmark and the Danes go to Germany :)
Thank you for the correction! There's plenty to be horrified by here without an incorrect translation adding to it.
This is exhausting and gross. And it restricts cis men and women into boxes of behavior that are absolutely unnecessary. Also I wish the minister had been more specific so Imane Khelif could add someone to her lawsuit.
I don't understand this modern obsession with whats in everyones pants, just let them be. Someones genital configuration is of no importance to me.
Last time I checked, if you are human, you are entitled to human rights, all of them. I just get sooooo exhausted at the fact there are people out there who have flawed thinking and honestly believe someone different than them is "other". Um, sorry, no. I hate that we have to live in a world where this is so pervasive.
I hope the link is accessible for foreigners. I can't be bothered to translate the whole article manually, but she basically says that there are only 2 biological genders, stuff about public changing rooms and other talking points that are usually seen in the UK.
All this said in the middle of Copenhagen pride week, the largest and most significant LGBT+ event in the country.
https://www.deepl.com/en/translator usually works really well if you want to read the whole thing. But I will warn you that it's just a load of nonsensical bigotry and ignorance.
The tiniest, most insignificant silver lining - this is helping me hate Denmark, a critical step towards becoming a true Swede!
Is Sweden good for trans healthcare, though? My understanding is that it's pretty grim throughout the Nordics. I know Norway, for instance, has even worse access to trans healthcare than the UK (which is a big reason my wife and I aren't moving back for a few years at least, as we can get the medical care we need more easily here in Germany).
Honestly it doesn't seem great. I have no first hand experience with it, but I have trans friends, and they've had to wait a long time for a lot of aspects of their transition to be handled by health services, but it would be available and covered if they were willing to wait. Instead they went private for a lot of things, which was less expensive than it would be in a place like the US, but still, it should have been covered.
The good aspect is that it doesn't seem like there are a lot of hoops or barriers other than the wait, which is bad, but more down to the availability of providers than anything. We have a shortage of providers in most areas of medicine here, my understanding is that a lot of them move to Norway and get paid a lot more.
One of them also waited way longer to get diagnosed for ADHD than to transition, and that did have a bunch of hoops along with waiting for a provider, Sweden's got a lot of places that we can improve our healthcare.
From my outside perspective, based on what my trans friends have said, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of trouble with experiencing transphobic barriers in things that the article is talking about, locker rooms and bathrooms and things. I have no idea about sports, we're all indoor kids.
Ah yeah this sounds more or less like how it is generally in the Nordics. Norway is worse because you can't go private anymore (they took away the license of a doctor who was providing private trans healthcare) but otherwise it all sounds pretty similar. I've heard similar things about the social situation being pretty safe, though, and at least in Norway it's very easy to legally change your name and gender legally.
Ahh, that's very harsh of Norway. Is it possible to go private for other things there, or is it just a part of making sure that healthcare is equitable and universal, with an unfortunate side effect?
I haven't really known the trans people that I've met here long enough to think they've told me the worst transphobia they've ever experienced, so it could be a lot worse than I know, but from what they have told me the social situation here seems pretty good. They've told me some stories about times they were visiting America that my American trans friends would find pretty "normal" in terms of transphobic harassment, and the Swedish trans folks were pretty shocked to have experienced it, so it seems like it's at least better here than America, so the bar is at least not in hell.
I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that private healthcare providers do exist for other things. The removal of the doctor's license was explicitly because of the trans healthcare, as in Norway my understanding is that you have to go to one specific hospital in Oslo to get any trans medical treatment (and that hospital is incredibly gatekeeper-y even for binary trans people, in addition to not recognizing that nonbinary people are valid whatsoever).
Well that's terrible. It definitely seems - from my outside perspective - to be much better than that in Sweden. Still not nearly as good as Germany, though.
I can also say, again second-hand from still-new friends, that it seems like the "maintenance phase" of transitioning is handled pretty well. Once any desired surgeries are done and a good hormone regimen is in place and just needs to be monitored and tweaked occasionally, it seems like Sweden handles that part quite well. At least as well as other routine healthcare, and my non-binary friend has had no complaints about their treatment here. They're also from America, though they've been here a lot longer than me, so that might be coloring their experience as well.
Yeah, I've heard that once you're on hormones and have had the surgeries you want that it's not too bad in Norway either. That's one of the big reasons we're waiting to move lol
downer tag and transphobia tag would be appreciated on this and other similar articles . as a citizen of the cursed isle, i have been trying to avoid this kind of thing recently. since i'm here, does anyone have any background on the artist person they are talking about in the first part? is it a situation of someone claiming to be a woman to troll? or just a gnc trans person in the public eye?
Added!
Thanks for that. Sorry @talluntidygothgf, I forgot those tags were a thing. I'll remember next time.
He's not well known at all, an "artist", here's his insta if you want to see for yourself. He is a media whore who is hanging a minority out to dry to get attention to himself.
grim - it feels like they're intentionally trying to create the incidents to produce political ammo for transphobes . it's like the "larry the bearded nurse" (or whatever tf it is this week) myth that transphobes in the UK spout, but they uh, decided to make it real? 'art' indeed 🙄 are they going to dress as a helicopter next? high-larious.