The omnishambles playing out in Scottish politics makes one thing clear: Nicola Sturgeon has no clue what she is doing when it comes to trans rights. The First Minister’s flagship Gender Recognition Reform Bill has hit the buffers. Now an ‘urgent review’ has been launched on an issue that hardly requires much common sense: that trans women should not be housed in women’s prisons.
In its wisdom, the Scottish government has tried to build law and policy on magical thinking – that a man can become a woman just because he says so. Sturgeon didn’t listen to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, nor did she listen to Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls. But perhaps she should have taken note of something Ayn Rand once said: ‘We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.’
Until Sturgeon’s prisons policy blew up in her face, she was happy to open up womanhood to any man who saw an advantage
Sturgeon might continue to insist that transwomen are women, but it’s becoming clear that that there are limits – transwomen are most certainly not women when it is politically embarrassing for her SNP government. Her car-crash interview with ITV – reported on Monday by Steerpike – was inevitable considering the way she has driven transgender policy without due care and attention to facts and reality.
Meanwhile, on Sturgeon’s watch, some of the most vulnerable groups in society have suffered dreadfully. JK Rowling last year wore a T-shirt that read: ‘Nicola Sturgeon – destroyer of women’s rights’. For doing so, the author received plenty of abuse. But if Rowling did anything wrong, it was that her statement didn’t go far enough. Why? Because the First Minister’s gender crusade has backfired so spectacularly that it has done great damage to trans rights too. In seeking to protect trans people, Sturgeon has, in fact, undermined our rights – and made life harder for us.
Back in 2016, when I first started writing about trans politics, it was plain to see the worrying direction in which this debate was heading – and the deleterious impact on trans rights that might result if this debate was handled badly.
‘Transwomen, in particular, may find that goodwill is replaced by suspicion should abusive men spot an opportunity to exploit women’s spaces and protections,’ I wrote when self-ID was first debated in the Commons in late 2016. In Sturgeon’s Scotland, such goodwill towards trans people has indeed been replaced with suspicion – thanks, in large part, to the decision to put a male rapist, Isla Bryson, in a female prison.
Despite the insistence of some progressive campaigners, trans people don’t need more rights. Even in 2016, we already had the rights and protections in law we needed.
The Equality Act 2010 protected us against less favourable treatment for being ‘a transsexual person’ or merely being perceived to be a transsexual person. It gave my employer the confidence they needed to support me when I transitioned in 2012. It offers security and protection; as Kemi Badenoch told the Commons last year: the Equality Act is a shield and not a sword.
The Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004 is a whole different beast. It creates a legal fiction – that trans people are the opposite sex – and then envelops that change in secrecy. Section 22 of the GRA makes it illegal for officials to disclose the fact that someone’s legal sex has been changed by a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). Once someone has a GRC, unless they choose to disclose their history it is virtually impossible to prove from their paperwork that they are not the sex they are claiming to be.
In 2004, those rights were restricted to those who actually needed them – people who had been through a meaningful transition and could provide evidence that they had made significant changes to the way they lived their lives. The law certainly impacted on women’s rights, but the small number of GRCs – along with the checks and balances in the process – offered some reassurance to women that it would be hard for bad actors to exploit this legislation.
But Sturgeon, it seems, viewed things differently. Until her prisons policy blew up in her face, she was happy to open up womanhood to any man who saw an advantage.
Let me offer an analogy that might be helpful to Sturgeon: blue badges are issued to disabled people who need extra flexibility in where they can park their car. There are processes that applicants must follow to get a blue badge. They cost £10 for starters – more expensive than a GRC, but let’s not dwell on that – and the local council conducts an assessment to decide if you are eligible.
Now let’s say that some progressive politicians decide those processes are unnecessary bureaucracy, or even demeaning to disabled people. They decide instead to offer blue badges to anyone who chooses to self-identify as disabled. The incentive to do so is obvious, as is the inevitable chaos. Traffic would snarl to a halt as those who wanted to park more easily filled out the paperwork to be allowed to do so.
Who suffers? Ultimately, everyone – parking is usually restricted for good reason – but specifically those who needed the extra flexibility. The privilege that they required is brought into disrepute by those who merely wanted it. Sturgeon has done something similar to trans rights.
What was once a respected process has become a circus. Now, trans people are more vulnerable to suspicion and mistrust than we were in 2016 – but it is not the fault of JK Rowling, or anyone else grounded in reality. The responsibility lies squarely with those who were so naïve they thought they could sweep away safeguards, and that selfish and abusive men would not take advantage. Sturgeon is not capable of legislating on trans rights; she is certainly not fit to run a government.
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