Pauline McNeill is an impeccable left-winger. The Scottish Labour MSP is a socialist, a feminist, and a devolutionist. All her pros (rent controls, Palestine, gay rights) and antis (inequality, war, western imperialism) line up as you would expect. Yet the Scotsman reports that she has been forced to pull out of a meeting with some lawyers and feminists after Scottish Labour received a complaint.
Why would anyone object to such a thing? Come on, let’s not be coy. We all know why. The event, scheduled to take place at Holyrood next week, is titled ‘The Meaning of Sex Under the Equality Act 2010’. There is plenty to discuss. There’s the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which would remove medical experts from the gender transition process in favour of self-identification. There’s Lady Haldane’s judgment in For Women Scotland 2, which concluded that the definition of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act was not limited to biology and included anyone holding a gender recognition certificate.
The event boasts an impressive panel of experts and campaigners who are well-placed to address these issues. There’s Naomi Cunningham, barrister, employment law specialist, and co-founder of the organisation Sex Matters. There’s Maya Forstater, a researcher who was victimised and unfairly dismissed from her job for her belief that men cannot become women. Alongside them are Helen Joyce, author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, and Dr Michael Foran, a Glasgow University legal academic whose analysis convinced the government to block Holyrood’s gender bill.
According to the Scotsman, Scottish Labour received a complaint against McNeill for hosting the event and for the fact it was scheduled during Pride Month, which ‘appears to be a deliberate attack on trans people and their allies’ per the complaint. McNeill will now neither host nor attend the meeting.
To be clear: an MSP has been prevented from meeting with lawyers and women’s rights campaigners at the Scottish parliament to discuss legislation passed by the Scottish parliament. Have you ever heard anything so sinister or absurd? Scottish Labour may think it has drawn a line under this matter but what it has actually done is set a precedent.
Is Anas Sarwar the sort of man who is okay with a female colleague being pressured out of political activity?
Don’t like an MSP attending an event or meeting with a particular group? Just whack in a complaint. That’s exactly what will happen next time a Labour MSP plans to host or attend a meeting with gender self-identification activists, and if the outcome is not the same as here it will only heighten tensions. You’d need the political acumen of a wheelie bin not to get that.
In failing to back its MSP and her right to organise and attend meetings at the Scottish parliament, Scottish Labour has also kicked this question up to the leader’s office. Is Anas Sarwar the sort of man who is okay with a female colleague being pressured out of political activity? Does he want to lead a party where cowardly authoritarians can use the complaints process to target Labour politicians for expressing mainstream views and meeting mainstream campaigners and lawyers? The Labour party — especially the Labour party — should be vigilant about its representatives sharing platforms with extremists but none of the people involved in this event remotely fits that bill.
Pauline McNeill withdrawing from this meeting will do not one solitary thing to improve the lot of trans people, but it will give professional activists and intolerant sociopaths — the distinction becomes blurrier by the day — a sense of achievement. Got another one, boys. Nothing has been more counterproductive to the trans rights movement than the bullying, censorial tactics of its self-appointed spokespeople. The contempt for free expression and the zeal for punishing thought crime has only brought public attention to the movement’s agenda. A whole lot of people who would have gladly swerved this topic, myself included, have been drawn into it specifically because of the expressive liberty dimension. Seldom has a political movement made such advances only to Streisand itself onto the back foot.
There are any number of questions on which I vigorously disagree with Pauline McNeill. She never has a good word to say about Israel. She’s a massive fan of Noam Chomsky. Her favourite band is Coldplay. But none of these justify silencing her or curtailing her political activities. No, not even the Coldplay thing. That’s because freedom of expression is what it’s all about. It’s how we explore new ideas, size up policy and fine-tune legislation. Without freedom of expression, liberal democracy is impossible. That might suit some people just fine but I think these ideals are still worth fighting for.
Trans people should be free to live their lives as they choose, free from workplace discrimination and able to walk down the street safely. They deserve to be as valued and respected as everyone else. But all of us must be free to discuss gender policy, and its effect in statute and practice, without intimidation or attempts to shut down debate. Open discussion about law, policy and current affairs, about how we are governed and why, is a basic principle of a free society. Pauline McNeill should be allowed to host her event. Only a tyrant would think otherwise.
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