What’s the worst thing the SNP could do to you
personally? Many Pro UK people would assume that it would be if Sturgeon
achieved her goal of Scottish independence. But this is not true. Whatever we
might think about the economic consequences of the breakup of the UK these
would not necessarily affect us personally. We would still have choices. We
could at the very least move elsewhere. Whatever the emotional consequences of the
destruction of the British identity and the unity of our three-hundred-year-old
country we would survive as others have survived the loss of historical
nations. While the SNP could damage us severely economically and emotionally
these are not the worst things it could do.
Politics is important, but it is nothing compared to
family. The loss of a child, a husband, a house or a job are far more important
to each of us individually than the result of any election. It is here that the
SNP can do the most damage.
The SNP recently published a document “Supporting
transgender young people in schools: guidance for Scottish schools.” This can
do far more damage than independence ever could.
Imagine you are a young mother with a little boy. He is
just about to start school although he is still four years old. If he had been
born when I was born, he would almost certainly never have met a boy who wanted
to be a girl. I certainly didn’t. It just never occurred to me nor anyone I
ever met that it was possible to change sex or gender. Throughout my studies I
never once came across an example from history or literature prior to the past
few decades of someone who genuinely thought it was literally possible for a
man to become a woman. There were women who pretended to be men, such as Portia
in the Merchant of Venice, but she knew that she really was a woman. But now my
little four-year-old is presented with a choice that previously was not open to
him. He can go where no man has gone before.
Prior to the mid-1950s no one thought there was a
distinction between sex and gender. Sex was considered to be something unchangeable
determined at birth and gender if it was used at all was a matter of grammar or
of referring to biological sex in a general way. It is the invention of the distinction
between sex and gender such that they can be different that is the root of the choice
that is presented to my little boy.
There is no experimental evidence whatsoever for there
being a distinction between sex and gender. If there were such a distinction in
nature, we would expect it to be present in animals. But no bull has been shown
to think that it is really a cow and for that thought to be true. Only human
beings are presented with the idea that it is possible to be a little boy, but
really be a little girl. Only human beings are told that while their sex may be
objective their gender is subjective and a matter of choice. But once you
introduce this choice do not be surprised when some children take it.
My little boy will enter into a school where he is
gradually introduced to an ideology that was never presented to me nor anyone
else in Scotland until the last few years. He will be told that there are lots
of genders. He can be a boy. He can be a girl or he can be non-binary or indeed
any one of any other gender that he might choose to make up. If he is unhappy,
or if he prefers for whatever reason to play with the girls or dress up as a
girl, then he will be told that he has a choice that was not open to me. Perhaps
you really are a girl. Did you know that being a boy is not fixed? All you have
to do is say that you are a girl and you can change your name and your pronouns
and everyone will have to treat you as a girl.
Let’s say my little boy, influenced by some of the
things he learns in primary school tells his teacher that he wants to be a
little girl. This teacher has been told by the SNP that I need not be informed,
indeed that it might be better if I am not informed. At that point my little
boy might take on a new name at school. He might be called she. He would then
go to the girls’ toilets if he wanted to. If there were a school trip, he might
share a room a tent or a shower with the girls.
The parents of these girls would not be allowed to
object that there was a boy in a changing room. They would not even know. If a
little girl objected to the sight of a male body in her tent or shower, she
would be told that this male body belonged to a girl just like her. If her
parents objected, they would be told that what mattered was the gender identity
of the person with the male body and if they objected further, they might find
themselves admonished for being transphobic, which might get them into trouble with
Scotland’s hate crime laws. Meanwhile I might know nothing about any of this
because I would not have been informed.
This is the greatest damage the SNP could do to any
one of us. It can turn boys into girls and if I object convict me of a hate
crime, while making clear if I continue to object, I would be an unfit parent.
The SNP could take my child away from me because on a whim and influenced by
teaching materials that have no scientific basis, he decided that he was really
a girl.
Not only might I lose my child, he would be put on a
path where he would be encouraged to believe that he really was a girl. No one
would say “Don’t be silly you are a little boy”. No one would point out the
life changing consequences of his decision. He might in time be given pills,
medical treatment and eventually surgery. He might be unable to have children. I
would not be allowed to persuade him of his folly, because the authorities
would insist that it was not folly and anyway, I would not be told.
The consequences of putting people with male bodies in
single sex spaces are not merely about the embarrassment for those with female
bodies. We don’t care about the gender identity of the person with the male
body we care only about that body and what it has the potential to do.
People with genuine gender dysphoria must be treated
kindly and with respect, but the initial stage of treatment must be to try to
persuade them from going down this path at all. In the past someone with gender
dysphoria would have been told by friends and family that it was not possible for
boys to become girls. This meant that only a very few people who insisted
despite all of this opposition reached adulthood maintaining they were really
women despite being men. These few were a non-issue when I was a child. It was
a medical matter rather than a whole ideology.
But now my little boy would face no opposition,
instead the SNP would encourage him to be a girl if he just once suggested that
he liked wearing dresses. If you think Scottish independence would be disastrous
for your family imagine the distress of your little boy coming home as a little
girl, knowing what the future held for him if he continued with this view.
Imagine being unable to persuade him otherwise out of fear that he would be
taken away. Imagine not even being told.