Until relatively recently the UK Government was
planning similar changes to the Gender Recognition Act that are now being
proposed by the SNP. But after listening to the concerns of women it decided to
reverse course. At present it is necessary to obtain a medical diagnosis and to
wait at least two years before being allowed to legally change gender. That
situation will remain in England and Wales, but not for us in Scotland. The SNP
proposes to allow anyone to self-declare their gender before a notary or
justice of the peace and for the process to take around six months.
Nicola Sturgeon of course wants Scotland to be
different. This is the main reason why we have to wear masks while people in
England don’t. It enables her to put up posters in airports with someone in a
kilt telling passengers that in Scotland you have to wear a mask. But it’s not
just that. The SNP have embraced woke with genuine fervour and are now
seriously out of step with what most Scots of all political persuasions believe
about gender.
I have long argued that the distinction between sex
and gender is invented and reflects nothing real in nature. It is absurd to
suppose that a bull has a different gender to its sex. But to suppose that
people have a distinction that is not present in the animal kingdom is to
suppose that we have a radically different biology to animals and somehow
evolved a distinction between gender and sex that they lack. At what point did
that occur and if it occurred millions of years ago why have we only recently discovered
its existence?
I believe that the concept of gender dysphoria has in
part resulted from people being told that it is possible to change gender.
Prior to that it was simply not an option that occurred to anyone. We had to
accept who we were. But I recognise that there are trans people who disagree
with me and who genuinely wish to change gender.
Even those of us who do not think it is possible for a
man to become a woman must recognise that gender dysphoria is real. But the
correct response to someone believing something that is false ought not to be
to tell him that it is true. This is to treat someone who believes he is
Napoleon as if he really did win the Battle of Austerlitz.
But a trans person ought to be free to believe that men
can become women so long as this freedom does not impinge on other people. I
ought to be free to disagree on the same condition.
There are a variety of ways in which changing your gender
identity might affect other people. We use gender to identify strangers. It is
fundamental to our descriptions. We have
certain spaces such as changing rooms, groups and societies which are reserved
for women. Certain jobs may only be available to women. There are certain
rights that women have and the law may apply differently to women and to men. This
means that who is considered by law to be a man or a woman has consequences for
all of us. It affects other people.
I may disagree that it is possible to change gender,
but I accept that it is a response to gender dysphoria that a free society should
allow. But at least the requirement for a medical diagnosis meant that the
person who wished to change gender had to seriously consider the issue and had
to convince a doctor that the desire was genuine and of long standing. This
process would make it less likely that people who legally change gender would
be opportunists. It provided a safeguard.
The SNP would remove every safeguard. Now anyone without
any diagnosis can simply declare that they have changed gender and after a few
months become that gender. The difficulty though is this. According to the mantra:
Trans women are women. There is considered to be no valid distinction between
biological women and trans women. But this means that trans women must
logically have all of the rights and privileges of biological females. It is
here where the freedom of one group comes into conflict with another.
The SNP promises that it will listen to the concerns
of women and that the rights and protections of women enjoyed at present will
be protected. But how? The only way to do so is to apply these rights to
biological females and to deny them to trans women who are biologically male.
We could for instance say that women’s changing rooms are reserved for women
who are female. Women who are male must go elsewhere. But if we were to do this
it would make the legal change of gender redundant. There would be two classes
of women. One which is male and one which is female. It amounts to what we have
now. But if we are to keep that distinction, why bother changing gender in the
first place? This would also fatally undermine the idea that trans women are
really women. There would be a class of biological women who got to use the
women’s changing room and trans women who gained none of the rights they had
hoped for by changing gender.
This is the dilemma for the SNP. Either they protect
the rights of the biologically female by excluding the biologically male or
they allow the biologically male into women only spaces. The whole process of
allowing self-declaration becomes pointless if you exclude biologically male
women from women only spaces and refuse to give them women only rights. For
this reason, the SNP trans agenda will force it to allow people with male
anatomy into places which up to now have been exclusively used by people with
female anatomy.
This means that your daughter may end up in a tent in
a guide camp with a girl with male anatomy. This girl will physically be able
to rape her and will have the strength to do it. All he has to do is
self-declare that he is she. It means that a woman’s prison will allow women
with male anatomy who have been convicted of rape to share a cell with a young
mother. It means that a lesbian will be deemed to be transphobic if she objects
to being the lover of a woman with male anatomy. It means that if a man marries
a woman, he has never slept with he would have no grounds for divorce or even
objection if he woke up with two plugs and no socket.
I think the vast majority of the Scottish public
thinks that we are born boys and girls and that this cannot change. That there
is no choice involved. While we wish to be tolerant of trans people and to
treat them with compassion and respect, we don’t want our whole world turned
upside down. We don’t wish to forced to believe things that we consider to be
bizarre.
Nicola Sturgeon said “Shame on you” when Murdo Fraser
mentioned the concerns that women have. It shows that women will not be
listened to by her government. But when the inevitable consequences of allowing
male anatomy into female only spaces becomes apparent, let us at least hope
that Scots wake up and say to Sturgeon shame on you for betraying women.
