Article – GenderDissent
The man who suddenly heard women – and renounced the Yogyakarta Principles
ROBIN SINGER – 1 December 2022 – genderdissent
Calgary-born Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law at King’s College, London, is a hit now in the UK among women trying to roll back the demands of synthetic sex industry activists.
Wintemute — who completed his BA in Economics at the University of Alberta in 1978 and earned his LLB (common law) and BCL (Québec civil law) in the National Programme at McGill University in 1982 before practicing law in New York, ending up finally in London – was one of the original 29 signatories of the Yogyakarta Principles.
The group was brought together in 2007 by Canadian company Allied Rainbow Communities International (ARC International), which sent them to Indonesia to craft the principles. They were intended to deal with the application of human rights law on matters of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The principles have not been adopted by industrial states or the U.N. But ARC International aggressively promotes them. As the website proudly states, they:
worked with partners to successfully launch the Principles, prepared backgrounders and advocacy materials to support regional launch initiatives, developed a website, track the ongoing use of the Principles, are participating in the development of an activists’ guide, and conduct ongoing training and support for organizations using the Principles.
The Critic Magazine recently noted, “The Yogyakarta Principles have no legal force but they, and their interpretation of ‘gender,’ are extremely influential internationally.”
The international synthetic sex industry has been using Canada and Canadians in the drive to desex the world’s population for years. Readers can find more about the role of the Arcus-funded ARC International in a previous GenderDissent article and about other American-funded initiatives directed at Canadians here and here.
So we wonder if it’s prophetic that a Canadian is the first to renounce his capture and complicity in a movement that is already responsible for substantial harm to women and to children. But is it too little, too late?
Wintemute has become a Trustee in LGB Alliance, the British organization that aims to represent homosexual people who no longer feel represented by Stonewall. He is a lawyer and has written about the Maya Forstater case.
Wintemute is now critical of Yogyakarta Principle 3 (that governments “fully respect and legally recognise each person’s self-defined gender identity”) and Principle 31 (that governments “end the registration of the sex and gender of the person in identity documents”). He has said that the conflict with women’s rights was not discussed at the time the principles were written. And he went on to elaborate:
Men are rarely if ever affected by transgender demands so it is easy to say yes. We must always try to imagine ourselves in the changing rooms, hospital wards, and prisons of lesbian, bisexual and heterosexual women. Better protection of the human rights of a very small minority must not come at the expense of the human rights of the majority of the population.
Wintemute explained, to the wild applause of his audience at the LGB Alliance conference in November 2021, that he changed his mind as a result of listening to women. His recorded speech begins at minute 10:55 in the video: The ideological capture of the Welsh Government I: Follow the Money Part 1. The following is a partial transcript of his comments:
In November 2017, the second version of the Yogyakarta Principles incorporated the fourth transgender demand. Principle 31 claims that under existing international human rights law, every country in the world has an obligation to end the registration of the sex of the person in identity documents such as birth certificates. Until this is done, the third transgender demand, self-identification, must be adopted. No eligibility criteria such as a psychological medical diagnosis or minimum age shall be a prerequisite to change one’s legal sex.
With regard to change of legal sex, theYogyakarta Principles are not a neutral document in human rights law but rather a radical advocacy document. I would argue that the GRA (Gender Recognition Act) is very generous, that parliament should not amend it for England and Wales, or the Scottish government in Scotland especially because the Strasbourg court does not require us to change it.
Proponents of change consider the requirement of a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to be humiliating or stigmatizing, but we must remember that a transgender person seeking a change of legal sex is asking for an exemption from the general rule that a person’s birth sex is their legal sex for life because their birth sex never changes.
Exemptions have conditions. We can justifiably attach conditions to crossing the legal border from male to female or female to male, just as we attach conditions to crossing an international border, acquiring a new citizenship, being granted refugee status, being approved as an adoptive parent, obtaining disability benefits or being granted the status of conscientious objector to military service.
In none of these situations is it sufficient to self-identify as a visitor, citizen, refugee, adoptive parent, disabled person or conscientious objector. The transgender rights movement has gone well beyond seeking equal rights. It seems to liberate women without their consent from the legal protections of their birth sex and even from the recording of their birth sex.
Better protection of the human rights of a very small minority must not come at the expense of the human rights of the majority of the population. In closing, I would like to say that I have changed my mind with regard to certain transgender demands including access to women only spaces, after listening to women.
Though he was not invited to participate, Wintemute commented on the Yogyakarta Principles 10+, a later addition to the original guide:
Instead of changing the person’s legal sex, the guide could have simply sought to protect people from harm triggered by the difference between their legal sex and their appearance on the basis of their presentation. This would remove much of the current conflict, as it would affirm trans people’s birth sex as their legal sex, while ensuring their protection from discrimination based on gender non-conforming appearance or behaviour. Birth sex is less important now, with same-sex marriage and equal state pension ages. But in my view birth sex is not an irrelevant detail and should not be automatically ‘trumped’ by gender identity in single-sex situations…
The original Principles were based on the law as it existed somewhere in the world, even if only in one country.
Wintemute admitted to The Critic, that he “failed to consider” that trans women still in possession of their male genitals would seek to access female-only spaces. He should have challenged references to “self-defined gender identity” and to “changes to identity documents recognized in all contexts.” “Women’s rights weren’t raised,” he added. In fact, he only noticed UK’s “spousal veto” provision in 2018, which gives spouses of people transitioning the right to an annulment before the transition is legally recognised.
Does the fact that Wintemute described a reasonable legal alternative to Self ID mean that the conflict with women’s rights was always the plan of at least some signatories of the Yogyakarta Principles? Wintemute commented on Principle 31 again in The Critic, saying “It’s outrageous! There is no country in the world that has ended the registration of sex on birth certificates.”
He said that few women were involved with the writing of the Yogyakarta Principles, and those few focused on specific details such as health. He said, “The issue of access to single-sex spaces largely affects women and not men. So it was easy for the men (and trans identified men) in the group to be swept along by concern for LGBT rights and ignore this issue.”…
WINTEMUTE ORGANISED EVENT – McGILL UNIVERSITY 2023
