Something is Rotten in Denmark Pt. II: Prisons, Sports and Politics
By Dorte Toft
As we saw in Part I, the trans lobby has been rather successful in Denmark. Compared to the UK, where campaigners have provoked a backlash against Stonewall and Mermaids by spotlighting the consequences of trans ideology for women and children, Danish trans activism remains relatively unchallenged. This may be because LGBT+ Denmark employs a more subdued style, or it could be the absence of high-profile scandals. The Danish media, like the BBC and The Guardian in the UK, seldom platform gender critical views. Even so, cracks in the LGBT+ consensus are beginning to show.
Pride, Politics, and the Public
Copenhagen Pride, the organizer of the biggest annual pride celebration in Denmark and a strong trans lobbyist, has been generating negative headlines for months. It all started back in February when the leadership demanded that the sponsors of the 2024 summer Pride event explain their “interest and activities in Israel and Palestine”. The companies were told that if they didn’t give a “satisfactory answer” they would not be accepted as partners. Copenhagen Pride’s position was "We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people".
Conflating support of LGBT+ people with the war in the Middle East was too much for many significant sponsors who began canceling. Among those who withdrew their support were the shipping company Mærsk, Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals, LEGO, the supermarket chain Netto, Dansk Industri (Danish Industry - an organization representing approximately 20,000 companies), the travel agency TUI, and the amusement park Tivoli. Copenhagen Pride quickly backtracked and apologized claiming that it was a matter of miscommunication.
The politically polarized debate about wokeness has compounded the trans lobby’s problems by giving new ammunition to right-wing parties, previously almost totally focused on immigration. Opposition to social transition and medicalization for children with gender dysphoria is now firmly on their agenda.
As for the Danish public, the most important issue sowing the seeds of doubt about gender identity ideology is the admission of transwomen into women’s prisons, crisis centers, and sports.
Women’s Prisons
The trend for convicted male criminals to suddenly discover they are really women—common in countries where trans ideology is strong—has reached Denmark. The number of such inmates in Danish prisons is not public, but a few cases have made the news. Lawyers acting on behalf of two male prisoners, both serving long sentences, have argued that they should not be made to serve time in a men’s prison or be subject to strip searches by men. One of these lawsuits, filed on behalf of a transwoman convicted of two aggravated rapes and a bank robbery, failed in both the district court and the high court. The other case is pending. A third inmate, convicted of complicity in a brutal murder, is known to have changed “sex” prior to committing the crime. It is unclear whether he legally transitioned before the murder or whether he is serving time with men or women, but legal status matters in the Danish system.
The Danish correctional service, Kriminalforsorgen, currently places inmates on the basis of their CPR number (the Danish social security number which reflects gender). As of 2021, a man who has undergone legal “sex” reassignment (the process only takes a bit of paperwork and six months of waiting) can serve time in a women's prison. Until 2021, prisons were mixed sex in Denmark. Before a male-bodied person with legal gender change is transferred to the women's jail, the correctional service carries out a security assessment regarding the risk to female inmates and female staff.
Human rights organizations like the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Danish chapter of Amnesty International take the same position as LGBT+ Danmark; that inmates should be placed in prison according to their gender identity.
Crisis Centers
In Denmark, transwomen with legal gender change may access women’s crisis centers (domestic violence shelters). As with prisons, the determining factor for obtaining a placement is the gender indicated by the CPR number (social security number). This means that those males who have undergone the relatively easy-to-obtain legal “sex reassignment” are eligible for placement with women. The number of transwomen in crisis centers is not public and there have been no reported conflicts so far, but the days of crisis centers as institutions reserved specifically for women seem numbered.
The first women’s crisis centers in Denmark were established after a great deal of effort by feminist volunteers, but in recent years some have come to regard running them as a business opportunity. More centers are operating and revisions to the law, which came into effect July 1st, mean there will be even more.
In April of 2024, the language of the law stipulating that access to crisis centers was for “women” exposed to violence in intimate relationships, (servicelovens § 109 - Section 109 of the Social Service Act) was changed to read, “persons”. This single-word change will lead to a vast expansion of the number and scope of crisis centers.
For instance, men exposed to violence in intimate relationships will now have their own crisis centers where they can stay with their children. There are already several hostels for men in crisis run by a men’s organization called Mandecentret. These will now become crisis centers that are eligible for additional public funds.
Likewise, LGBT+ Danmark, which opened its first hostel for LGBT+ people exposed to intimate partner violence back in 2022, and Red+, a hostel/crisis center for LGBT+ ethnic minority youth at risk of honor killings, will become crisis centers. The increased costs for housing and psychological assistance will be borne by municipalities and the state.
Sports
The trans lobby has influenced Danish sporting organizations. Denmark's two largest sports confederations, Dansk Boldspil Union (DBU - football) and Dansk Idrætsforbund (DIF - athletics) have both adopted new trans-inclusive policies. When it comes to grassroots sports, both organizations prioritize the inclusion of transgender people over fairness. This means that a teenage boy who thinks he is a girl can participate on the girls' team.
DIF’s policy still reserves participation at elite-level competitions to women only, but DBU’s new policy permits participation by transwomen on an individual basis pending an evaluation. It is not just athletes affected by these rules. DBU also specifies that spectators must be able to choose the sex of the person patting them down upon entering the football stadium in accordance with their gender identity.
Neither DBU nor DIF surveyed female athletes prior to the announcement of their new policies. Only the voices of transgender people, their allies, and representatives of the sports organizations were part of the working group that developed them.
Not all the large sports confederations allow male-bodied athletes to compete. Dansk Svømmeunion (swimming), has chosen to follow the international confederation, Fina, which keeps transwomen—those who have undergone male puberty—out of women's sports, but they are the exception.
Sport is the one area where the Danish media have been somewhat critical of the trans-activist agenda. Their sympathetic coverage of a male associate professor from Aarhus University who specializes in sports and doping was notable. When he spoke out about the problem of transwomen’s inclusion in women’s sports, he faced some harassment but ultimately escaped a witch hunt.
Politics
When it comes to trans issues, left-wing political parties in Denmark are all on board. The second largest party on the left, Enhedslisten (representing around 7-9 percent of voters), is completely imbued with intersectionality. Their position is that transwomen ARE women and that men can give birth to children. They are not alone. Intersectionality is also strong among the others on the left, and in the country's largest left/center party, the Social Democrats.
Back in 2021, the Social Democrats, then the only party in government, presented a plan to ban so-called conversion therapy. Though that original proposal is still on the drawing board, the party also included a ban as part of their comprehensive action plan for the LGBT+ community the following year. The plan included, among other things, an expanded definition of “father” and “mother” as part of new family forms, more inclusion of LGBT+ topics in schools, and new initiatives to combat violence against LGBT+ people.
In arguing their case for a ban on so-called conversion therapy, the government relied on a dubious report based largely on self-reported accounts from people in the LGBT community. The same report also cited studies from England, and from the USA to support its case. Including references to the USA is highly questionable because, while America does have a history of gay conversion therapy as practiced by religious fundamentalists, Denmark has no such history. The definition of “conversion therapy” in the Danish context is also unclear. Would it include pressure or doubt expressed by parents or friends? What about explorations by professional therapists and psychiatrists? Would it apply to priests in small religious sects?
Beyond banning so-called conversion therapy, back in 2022, the government, which was by then consisting of the Social Democrats and two conservative parties, Venstre and Moderaterne, tried and failed to present a bill to remove the lower age limit for gender reassignment.
Hate Speech
According to a new LGBT organization, ILGA-Europe, Denmark is the fifth best place “for LGBTI-people” to live out of 48 countries they evaluated, but they warn, that there has been a significant increase in the number of hate crimes, against transgender people in the form of “hate speech”.
ILGA-Europe, which was lobbying heavily up to the election of the new EU parliament in 2024, claims the increases in “hate speech” occurred in the context of debates about the bill proposing the removal of the lower age limit for the legal change of gender, and a single debate about a proposed drag queen show for kids at a library. According to ILGA several politicians who participated in the debate were guilty of “hate speech”.
ILGA, like LGBT+ Danmark, is diligent about encouraging their community to report “hate speech” and other hate crimes in surveys and to the police. And yet it is difficult to evaluate the truth of these claims because ILGA does not bother to provide a definition of “hate speech” or any statistics about these alleged hate crimes. There seem to be no documented examples of crimes against transwomen. There are no examples of “hate speech” against trans people beyond far right-wing politicians bashing trans ideology in the name of “caring for children”, nor have there been any arrests.
There are, however, plenty of attacks against gender-critical women. While these attacks are mild compared to what has gone on in England and Scotland, and the Danish police seem far more neutral, Denmark’s radical trans activists don’t hold back. There have been a few attempts at getting gender-critical women sacked.
Meanwhile, ILGA-Europe convinced 23 Danish EU candidates out of 169 to sign on to a pledge called Come Out 4 Europe in the EU Parliament. Candidates promised to “put the safety of the community above any other concerns and always follow the ‘do no harm’ principle, including by keeping my work out of the public eye whenever necessary”. In other words, they promised to put LGBT+ issues first and to conceal their efforts from the public if it might be controversial.
The Danish Press and Social Media
The largest media outlets in Denmark remain friendly to trans activists. They uncritically report claims that transgender people suffer the most hate speech, the most violence, and the most murders. They do not question claims about the prevalence of suicide and suicidal ideation. Instead, they feature feel-good stories about how unhappy an individual was before their gender change and how happy they are after. New research, showing that the science of gender medicine and surgery is not settled, is ignored by the biggest media outlets. Documentaries from countries like Sweden, Norway, and The Netherlands showing that some people have regrets or that all is not happiness post-transition are not shown.
DR, the tax-funded radio/TV broadcaster created "A Whole Person", a five-episode series about gender reassignment. The series follows a boy who “knew he was a girl” at the age of 2.5, and a teenage boy who starts on cross hormones, gets breast implants, and goes on to undergo genital surgery as an adult. DR has several other programs, mostly targeted at young people, about the happiness of becoming "one's authentic self".
Meanwhile, a search at DR’s website for “The Cass Report”, “detrans” or “puberty blockers” yields no results. The same is true of a search on the website of the more populist public television station, TV2. Like DR, TV2 recently ran a series of six programs with the title “Completely Ordinary Trans” about an adult man, a teenage girl, and a teenage boy who have all “changed sex”.
A recent opinion poll conducted by TV2 included language from the trans activist’s lexicon including words like “cis”, “AFAB”(assigned female at birth), and “gender assigned at birth”. The poll was conducted after a debate about the inclusion of transwomen’s bodies as part of a new version of a well-known bestselling book targeted at young women, named “Woman, Know Your Body” (Kvinde, kend din krop). Unsurprisingly, the book’s current editorial staff is dedicated to intersectionality.
Denmark's largest daily newspaper, Politiken, did not write about The Cass Review and sticks almost exclusively to the trans-allied path. For example, they ignored a major policy change at Sexologisk Klinik, that drastically reduced the use of puberty blockers on teens despite the fact that it fits the journalistic criteria for news.
The two second-largest daily newspapers, Jyllands-Posten and Berlingske, are both conservative. Like Politiken, their coverage contains depictions of the happiness of gender change, but they have been more critical of trans ideology, covering the problems with freedom of expression, the well-being of young people, and the debate over allowing transwomen into women’s safe spaces and sports.
So far there is no evidence that LGBT+ groups are operating within the media houses or attempting to police the opinions of colleagues, but established news outlets are losing readers and viewers to social media in any case.
Denmark has the highest share of citizens on social media in the EU, with 91 percent of the population signed on. All 16 to 19-year-olds are on social media and half of those are on at least five social media sites with Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube being the most popular. It is not surprising then that with so many people spending time in an arena rife with ideas about “being born in the wrong body” and promises of “trans joy”, that trans ideology has gained a foothold.
Dorte Toft is a prize-winning business journalist and author, who is now semi-retired. She started her career as a programmer, but the fight for the right to legal abortions in Denmark was one of the main reasons for her switch to journalism.
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