Denmark's decade of self-ID cools debate on trans rights

• Denmark was first European country to introduce self-ID
• No criminal incidents recorded since law passed
• Self-ID remains subject of debate around world

COPENHAGEN – When a Danish court ruled that a transgender inmate should not be transferred to a women’s prison unit because of her violent past, the case failed to ignite the kind of political storm gender identity issues have sparked elsewhere.

Activists credit the country’s long-standing self-identification law, which allows people to change their gender without a medical evaluation, for helping to lower the temperature in conversations about transgender issues.

Ranked as one of the best places in the world for LGBTQ+ rights, Denmark was the first country in the world to recognise same-sex partnerships in 1989. This month, it marks 10 years since becoming the first European country to introduce a law permitting self-determination, also called self-ID.

Such legislation has become a hotly contested issue in places like the United States and Britain. A self-identification bill in Scotland was blocked by the British government in 2023.

In Denmark, a legal case by a trans prisoner, referred to as “A” in court, who argued that serving time on a men’s ward and being subject to strip searches in the presence of male staff was a violation of her human rights thrust self-determination into the spotlight for the first time, activists said.

Yet after a decade of little controversy around the law, the case has not led to a wider campaign against trans rights, they said.

In September, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court judgment from 2023 that denied the prisoner’s petition and cited the nature of her offences that included “serious violence and rape” against women before she changed her legal gender.

LGBT+ Denmark, the country's oldest association for the community, said it largely agreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling not to move the prisoner, due to her criminal background and sentence length, but it has concerns about the decision permitting strip searches.

The group have called for the inmate’s gender identity to be respected, no matter where she is placed.

“We want trans women to be treated as women everywhere, including in prisons, and we know that there are trans women in female units in Denmark," Susanne Branner, director of LGBT+ Denmark, told Context outside the organisation's offices in Copenhagen.

"This is a special case, and we want it to be treated as such. It would not have been reasonable to transfer her."

ILGA-Europe, an international advocacy group, had called the lower court's ruling "regressive" in a report earlier this year, but declined to comment on the binding judgment.

Wedge issue

High-profile cases in other parts of the world have been used to subvert the rights of trans people, said Richard Köhler, senior policy officer at Transgender Europe, a network of rights groups.

"The distinction to the UK is that there, these kinds of situations are artificially brought to the attention of people and constructed as a conflict (over self-determination),” he said by phone from Berlin.

"Using this case to undermine the right to self-determination for most trans people is an absolutely absurd escalation and the simplification of a completely different topic."

Trans rights have been a contentious political issue in general elections in Britain and the United States this year, even though the community is estimated at less than 1% of the population worldwide.

Self-determination laws have been adopted in 12 European countries, including Belgium, Malta, Spain, Germany and Norway.

LGBTQ+ groups say the laws allow trans people to get on with their lives quicker as the gender they identify as, but opponents say they could be used by predatory men to gain access to single-sex spaces and put women and girls at risk.

In Demark, more than 2,600 people have changed their gender since 2014, with each individual undergoing a six-month reflection as part of the transition process. 

In August 2022, authorities in Denmark told Transgender Europe there had been no cases of individuals using the self-determination process with fraudulent or criminal intentions since its introduction. 

"I wouldn't say that self-ID has been any threat to women's rights movement in Denmark - actually I would more say the opposite," said Helene Forsberg, director of the Women's Council Denmark, an umbrella NGO for more than 40 rights organisations, who noted it was not one of the group’s focus points.

"Many parts of society unfortunately try to make some kind of opposition between (trans rights and women's rights), which I don't believe there is."

Debate moves on

In Denmark, more than half of LGBTQ+ people said they believe their government effectively combats prejudice and intolerance towards the community, according to a European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights survey published this year. This was above the EU average of 26%.

In August, Danish Equality Minister Marie Bjerre faced criticism from LGBTQ+ groups after she described self-determination laws as "problematic" in a column for the newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Bjerre was later removed from her post in a cabinet reshuffle. The Danish government did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

With self-determination well-established, the political debate has mostly moved on in Denmark. Parliament has considered removing the age limit on legal gender changes and banning conversion therapy.

Trans activists in Denmark want the public discourse to concentrate on challenges the community still faces, such as healthcare and employment.

One pressing concern is access to gender reassignment surgery, as trans people can wait up to 10 years for this through public healthcare, unless they choose to use private treatment at their own expense.

"The discussion should be about our engagement in society. We have huge unemployment, we (need more) participation in the different public clubs in Denmark, like amateur sports, so we can be a part of society," said Ninna Helsinghoff, a board member at Danske Bank Rainbow and LGBT+ Denmark, who changed her gender as soon as the self-determination law came into effect.

"Right now we are kind of stuck behind in this discussion about which changing room we can use, and it is really not what matters to us."

(Reporting by Lucy Middleton; editing by Ayla Jean Yackley.)