https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/16273
By signing this citizens’ initiative, you are claiming the repeal of the Trans Act, i.e. the Act on the Confirmation of Gender (295/2023).
According to the Trans Act, which came into force on April 3, 2023, a person can change their gender annually, and in some cases more frequently before the end of the one-year period, simply by submitting a legal notification to the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. The Trans Act, or the Act on the Confirmation of Gender (295/2023), should be repealed because it contains regulatory disruption. This means that the existing law is not optimal in terms of its objectives. Its impact on people’s everyday lives and safety is highly inadequate and negative.
According to the Trans Act, gender is solely a matter of gender identity, i.e., a person’s internal experience of their gender. However, gender is a biological fact determined by chromosomes, and there are two genders. Legislation must be based on scientific facts. The Trans Act is an idealistic law that is not based on reality and research data, but promotes the ideology of Seta and similar organizations.
The government amendment to the law, which prepares for the extension of the Trans Act so that children and adolescents have the right to self-determination in confirming their gender, must also be suspended. The fact that children and adolescents are still developing must be taken into account, and they must not be burdened with responsibilities that are not appropriate for their age and stage of development.
The repeal of the Trans Act also aims to protect minors, i.e., those under the age of 18, by ensuring that they are not offered or given treatment to change their gender. Adults are not allowed to intervene with a child’s development by defining their gender contrary to biology when their identity is still forming. Persons under the age of 18 should not be given responsibility for a decision that is not in line with their level of development and will affect the rest of their lives. In adolescence, the search for and construction of identity involves identity experiments and situational fluctuations in identity as the individual interacts with their social environment. This is part of normal development and does not mean a permanent state requiring gender reassignment.
Reasons
According to the Trans Act, legal confirmation of gender is separate from medical research and treatment. We want to change this so that a person’s own experience and declaration of their gender cannot be grounds for legal gender reassignment. There must be evidence of the commencement of trans treatments, or the effects of the treatments must be visible.
The Trans Act violates the rights of women and children to a safe space, as a person who identifies as a woman but has the physical characteristics of a man can use the same intimate spaces. The Trans Act must be repealed so that, among other things, toilets, sanitary spaces, and changing rooms at swimming pools can be separated into intimate spaces for biological women and biological men. The right to a safe space must also be guaranteed in other sectors of society, such as healthcare, schools, educational institutions, religious communities, emergency services, the military, and prisons.
The Trans Act violates national and international agreements stipulating that the most vulnerable citizens must be protected and that they have the right to health and safety. The Trans Act causes a safety and health risk, especially to children, adolescents, women, the elderly, people with autism, and healthcare professionals.
The key criteria for evaluating legislation should be research data and experience, as well as laws that have been approved both in Finland and abroad. One foreign example is the United Kingdom.
The UK enacted a law similar to Finland’s Trans Act, which caused problems in prison, for example, when men convicted of sexual offenses changed their legal gender to female in order to be transferred to women’s wards. This created dangerous situations in which, among other things, the sexual integrity of women was threatened. In 2024, the UK adopted a new policy and returned to using biology as the basis for legal gender instead of perceived gender identity. The term ”gender,” which describes perceived social gender, was replaced with the term ”sex,” which refers to biology. The British government also ordered the construction of separate toilet spaces for men and women.
Sources:
Constitution
Convention on the Rights of the Child
UN Convention on the Rights of Women
Directive on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence
Puolimatka Tapio (2019): Gender in transition. Päivä Osakeyhtiö