President Putin’s regime has mocked Scotland for its “transgender centaurs” after police said suspects could ask for separate searches of their top and bottom halves.
Kremlin officials and supporters have long portrayed the SNP government, and other northern European administrations, as in the grip of decadent and even debauched liberalism.
In their latest attack, Maria Zakharova, the official spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, commented on the controversy surrounding Police Scotland guidelines for searching transgender people.
Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, made remarks that were aimed at a domestic audience
MAKSIM KONSTANTINOV/SOPA IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK
The force said that suspects would be able to request “separate area searches” by officers of different sexes.
Designed to accommodate people who have not completed a full surgical transition, it means detainees could ask for a woman to search their top half and a man to search below the waist — or vice versa.
Zakharova, using the analogy of the half-human half-horse mythical creature, said: “We stopped believing in centaurs when we were children.” Her remarks were made in Russian and clearly aimed at a domestic audience.
Her rhetoric, which was reported widely, goes far further than that of Scottish gender-critical activists, who said they believed the new guidelines amounted to a “botched compromise”.
Sex Matters criticised Police Scotland’s new guidelines. Fiona McAnena, its director of campaigns, said: “This ludicrous policy that allows one half of a suspect’s body to be searched by a woman and the other half by a man comes from a police force which has embraced transgender ideology. ”
There is no suggestion that mainstream gender-critical groups welcome support from the Kremlin.
There was a subtle but important inaccuracy in the way pro-Kremlin outlets covered Police Scotland’s new guidelines. Russian media said transgender detainees could “demand” separate area searches. In fact, all they can do is make a request — one which can be turned down.
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Catriona Paton, assistant chief constable at Police Scotland, said: “While the guidance will bring clarity to both our colleagues and members of the public, we are acutely aware of the impact and depth of feeling around this issue, both among the transgender community and those who hold gender-critical views.”
The Russian government has taken an increasingly hard-line approach on trans issues at home while criticising what it sees as damaging liberal initiatives abroad.
Catriona Paton said the force had to negotiate a line between the transgender community and people with gender-critical views
ALAMY
Russia outlawed all medical support for gender transitions in 2023, including surgery and drugs, except in rare intersex cases.
In the same year Russia’s Supreme Court proscribed the international LGBT movement — without specifying what this was — as an “extremist organisation”.
Human rights defenders have said that the vague wording of the ruling means almost any advocacy for same-sex-attracted or trans people has been criminalised. Russia already has increasingly tough laws banning “gay propaganda”.
Earlier this year — along with Bulgaria and Hungary — Russia was ranked as the lowest in Europe for gender-recognition rights, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association’s Rainbow Map.
After the historic UK Supreme Court ruling that defined women by biological sex, the UK dropped to 22nd out of 49 European nations, below Montenegro, Croatia and Estonia but above Georgia, Albania and Azerbaijan.
Zakharova has become one of Putin’s most recognisable officials in recent years. This spring she said that US AID (the US Agency for International Development) — America’s now scaled-back international aid operation — had been forced out of Russia in 2012 for promoting an LGBT agenda.