She was meant to symbolise so much for women. Nicola Sturgeon, Queen of Scots – her rise a triumph for the Second Sex. Proof positive that even in the fractious, testosterone-fuelled world of Scottish politics, a female was – at last – the equal of males where it matters most: in power. And as the first woman to hold the post of First Minister, thousands of her Scottish sisters cheered when Sturgeon demanded independence from England or quarrelled fiercely over Brexit with one after another from the transient pack of British prime ministers.
It seemed to be a dream come true for women. Sturgeon denounced with alacrity her former close mentor and boss Alex Salmond when he faced charges of sexual assault, and lamented in 2017 that “Some of the brightest and best women in our society are stifled in their ambitions”.
So why now, has that totemic appeal to women – in Scotland and beyond – turned so sour that it affects not just her personally, but also jeopardises political loyalties including to the SNP? Why have so many women done the unthinkable, and abandoned old allegiances (to the EU, to Independence, to the Left) and made the decision that they are “female first” and those rights are more important than political parties or national identity?
Is it that in Sturgeon, they no longer see a champion for women’s rights but a sort of turncoat, who seems intent on stripping them of their rights, privacy and dignity?
**Gender self-identification**
This Thursday, the breaking point between ordinary women and Sturgeon will reach a new nadir with the introduction of draft legislation for the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The proposed law is expected to make it easier for people to change their legal gender by allowing a system of self-identification, and reduce the time someone must live in the “acquired gender” from two years (as currently required) to three months.
It is a deeply controversial idea – a recent BBC poll found while 40 per cent of people support the right of trans people to ‘self-identify’ their gender, 38 per cent do not. A Panelbase poll in January found that as much as 71 per cent of Scots opposed the SNP’s reforms.
The process began with a 2018 consultation held across the UK on changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) in order to allow people to change gender without the medical checks currently required. Politicians such as Sturgeon argued at the time it would only impact a small number of transgender people, that it was in effect a fringe issue.
But as feminist campaigners started digging into the consequences of self-identification – without any meaningful gatekeeping, there were warnings new legislation would inevitably redefine the very basis of what it means to be male and female, and putting women at risk by depriving them of their rights to single-sex spaces.
Indeed, if the law is passed, all a man must do to gain access to female-only services is to state that they are a woman (through self-ID), campaigners warn, as obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) changes the way that equality laws designed to protect women are applied.
Concerns have been raised about the impact that this will have on toilet facilities, on healthcare, on women in prison, and services such as women’s refuges. Women at their most vulnerable will be denied the privacy and dignity of having spaces free from physically intact males, they point out. In extreme cases, it is feared those wishing to harm women could gain access to their spaces by claiming to be female. Often cited is the case of convicted paedophile Karen White, who was legally still a man when on remand for sex offences and rape but was placed in a women’s prison and assaulted female inmates. There are 12 trans prisoners convicted of violence or sexual crimes presently in Scottish women’s jails, according to figures released under Freedom of Information laws.
Sturgeon’s legislation may be the most pressing concern for campaigners, but it comes against a backdrop of events over the past two years across the UK which have alarmed women and brought the issue of self-ID into the wider consciousness. On the one hand, the Conservative Government ditched its own plans to change legislation UK-wide in 2020 with Liz Truss explaining that there were already “proper checks and balances in the system” for people who wanted to change gender.
Yet, despite this, there is a growing feeling among women – especially Generation X and older who remember the fight to establish single sex spaces in hospitals, for example, in the first place – that online and political “bullies” are still determined to shut down debate about women’s and transgender rights. The appointment of Mridul Wadhwa, a former Scottish parliamentary SNP candidate, as chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis, a job that was advertised as reserved for a woman, has caused particular outrage. Wadhwa has allegedly no gender recognition certificate nor undergone gender reassignment surgery.
The increasingly polarised arguments have seen death threats and vitriol thrown around the internet. Women have been branded “terfs”, female academics such as Professor Kathleen Stock have been hounded out of universities, authors like JK Rowling – herself a Scottish voter, note – have been “cancelled” from the cultural universe and medics have lost their jobs because they held what are called “gender critical” or GC beliefs and insist on the reality of biology and science.
No wonder so many women – and men – are now at odds with the politicians who they thought would champion those rights, but who seem to be part of a group eroding them in the name of progression politics.
Those on the Left are finding themselves particularly hit hard. Many liberal feminists report finding themselves abandoned by their natural political home. Just last month Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman wrote a piece saying she did not feel supported to voice doubts about “gender ideology” and those questioning the narrative were being dismissed “as irrelevant middle-aged mums”.
In Westminster, Labour MP Dawn Butler claimed that “a child is born without a sex”, and even the party leader Sir Keir Starmer claimed it is wrong to say that only women have a cervix.
The Women’s Equality party, of all things, couldn’t seem to make up its mind, seemingly for fear of being on the wrong side, claiming it “supported the right of all to define their sex or gender or to reject gendered divisions as they choose” before sacking spokeswoman and feminist Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans on allegations of transphobia.
There is no doubt that the row has created an intellectual void where any woman wanting to debate female rights is labelled anti-progressive and threatened with losing their livelihood or reputation. No wonder many have retreated into private WhatsApp groups, or forums such as Mumsnet, to discuss concerns over gender neutral toilets, or the word ‘women’ being erased from issues surrounding healthcare and maternity.
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She was meant to symbolise so much for women. Nicola Sturgeon, Queen of Scots – her rise a triumph for the Second Sex. Proof positive that even in the fractious, testosterone-fuelled world of Scottish politics, a female was – at last – the equal of males where it matters most: in power. And as the first woman to hold the post of First Minister, thousands of her Scottish sisters cheered when Sturgeon demanded independence from England or quarrelled fiercely over Brexit with one after another from the transient pack of British prime ministers.
It seemed to be a dream come true for women. Sturgeon denounced with alacrity her former close mentor and boss Alex Salmond when he faced charges of sexual assault, and lamented in 2017 that “Some of the brightest and best women in our society are stifled in their ambitions”.
So why now, has that totemic appeal to women – in Scotland and beyond – turned so sour that it affects not just her personally, but also jeopardises political loyalties including to the SNP? Why have so many women done the unthinkable, and abandoned old allegiances (to the EU, to Independence, to the Left) and made the decision that they are “female first” and those rights are more important than political parties or national identity?
Is it that in Sturgeon, they no longer see a champion for women’s rights but a sort of turncoat, who seems intent on stripping them of their rights, privacy and dignity?
**Gender self-identification**
This Thursday, the breaking point between ordinary women and Sturgeon will reach a new nadir with the introduction of draft legislation for the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The proposed law is expected to make it easier for people to change their legal gender by allowing a system of self-identification, and reduce the time someone must live in the “acquired gender” from two years (as currently required) to three months.
It is a deeply controversial idea – a recent BBC poll found while 40 per cent of people support the right of trans people to ‘self-identify’ their gender, 38 per cent do not. A Panelbase poll in January found that as much as 71 per cent of Scots opposed the SNP’s reforms.
The process began with a 2018 consultation held across the UK on changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) in order to allow people to change gender without the medical checks currently required. Politicians such as Sturgeon argued at the time it would only impact a small number of transgender people, that it was in effect a fringe issue.
But as feminist campaigners started digging into the consequences of self-identification – without any meaningful gatekeeping, there were warnings new legislation would inevitably redefine the very basis of what it means to be male and female, and putting women at risk by depriving them of their rights to single-sex spaces.
Indeed, if the law is passed, all a man must do to gain access to female-only services is to state that they are a woman (through self-ID), campaigners warn, as obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) changes the way that equality laws designed to protect women are applied.
Concerns have been raised about the impact that this will have on toilet facilities, on healthcare, on women in prison, and services such as women’s refuges. Women at their most vulnerable will be denied the privacy and dignity of having spaces free from physically intact males, they point out. In extreme cases, it is feared those wishing to harm women could gain access to their spaces by claiming to be female. Often cited is the case of convicted paedophile Karen White, who was legally still a man when on remand for sex offences and rape but was placed in a women’s prison and assaulted female inmates. There are 12 trans prisoners convicted of violence or sexual crimes presently in Scottish women’s jails, according to figures released under Freedom of Information laws.
Sturgeon’s legislation may be the most pressing concern for campaigners, but it comes against a backdrop of events over the past two years across the UK which have alarmed women and brought the issue of self-ID into the wider consciousness. On the one hand, the Conservative Government ditched its own plans to change legislation UK-wide in 2020 with Liz Truss explaining that there were already “proper checks and balances in the system” for people who wanted to change gender.
Yet, despite this, there is a growing feeling among women – especially Generation X and older who remember the fight to establish single sex spaces in hospitals, for example, in the first place – that online and political “bullies” are still determined to shut down debate about women’s and transgender rights. The appointment of Mridul Wadhwa, a former Scottish parliamentary SNP candidate, as chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis, a job that was advertised as reserved for a woman, has caused particular outrage. Wadhwa has allegedly no gender recognition certificate nor undergone gender reassignment surgery.
The increasingly polarised arguments have seen death threats and vitriol thrown around the internet. Women have been branded “terfs”, female academics such as Professor Kathleen Stock have been hounded out of universities, authors like JK Rowling – herself a Scottish voter, note – have been “cancelled” from the cultural universe and medics have lost their jobs because they held what are called “gender critical” or GC beliefs and insist on the reality of biology and science.
No wonder so many women – and men – are now at odds with the politicians who they thought would champion those rights, but who seem to be part of a group eroding them in the name of progression politics.
Those on the Left are finding themselves particularly hit hard. Many liberal feminists report finding themselves abandoned by their natural political home. Just last month Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman wrote a piece saying she did not feel supported to voice doubts about “gender ideology” and those questioning the narrative were being dismissed “as irrelevant middle-aged mums”.
In Westminster, Labour MP Dawn Butler claimed that “a child is born without a sex”, and even the party leader Sir Keir Starmer claimed it is wrong to say that only women have a cervix.
The Women’s Equality party, of all things, couldn’t seem to make up its mind, seemingly for fear of being on the wrong side, claiming it “supported the right of all to define their sex or gender or to reject gendered divisions as they choose” before sacking spokeswoman and feminist Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans on allegations of transphobia.
There is no doubt that the row has created an intellectual void where any woman wanting to debate female rights is labelled anti-progressive and threatened with losing their livelihood or reputation. No wonder many have retreated into private WhatsApp groups, or forums such as Mumsnet, to discuss concerns over gender neutral toilets, or the word ‘women’ being erased from issues surrounding healthcare and maternity.