We should focus on the real threats
Nicola Sturgeon has come under fire after saying some women’s concerns were “not valid” in a debate about reforming the Gender Recognition Act (GRA).
The First Minister made the comments in regards to plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act which is currently in place in Scotland. In an interview with the BBC, Ms Sturgeon had suggested people should focus instead on the “real threats” to the safety of women.
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A number of critics have pointed out that there could be an increased risk of harm to girls or women from predatory men [if the GRA is changed to make “gender recognition” easier] as they may be able to take advantage of the lack of checks which would normally restrict access to single-sex spaces like women’s toilets or hospital wards.
In other words men would be able to invade women’s spaces more easily.
Speaking about the plans to reform the Act, Ms Sturgeon said: “Gender recognition reform is about changing an existing process to make it less degrading, intrusive and traumatic for one of the most stigmatised minorities in our society.”
Who says they’re one of the most stigmatised? People say that over and over and over and over but what reason is there to think it’s true? At this point it’s more of a very stale advertising slogan than a truth-claim.
And maybe they’re stigmatised partly because of this determination to do what they want regardless of women’s safety. Maybe some of them should be stigmatised, for being selfish narcissistic bullies.
Also women can be quite stigmatised, for being women. I thought that had gone out of fashion decades ago, until having an opinion on the internet taught me otherwise. There are plenty of people (mostly men) ready to let fly with the “cunt!!” and “bitch!!” the instant they find themselves feeling irritable at some opinion-having cunt-haver.
“We should focus on the real threats to women, not the threats that, while I appreciate that some of these views are very sincerely held, in my view, are not valid.”
Concerns about a man in the hospital bed next to you are not valid, but concerns about the stigmatisation of trans people are. Why? Why isn’t physical risk a valid concern?
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, trans philosopher professor Sophie-Grace Chappell said: “There’s going to be a crimewave of dreadful homosexual murders…
“It’s going to be awful if we do that.”
He also said it doesn’t matter if there’s a surge in violence against women. Why didn’t the Express mention that part?
“The concerns of 50% of the population are just too tiny to be dealt with right now, so let’s get to it after we deal with the concerns of 0.02% of the population first.”
Silly on its face, but worse is the fact that there will always be some other thing to be dealt with before getting to the concerns of that 50%.
I would suggest (as a tactic) that someone employ the code-words “cis” and “trans” and just honestly present the crime statistics for “cis-women” and “trans-women.”
Of course, this goes against the campaign to eradicate the idea that there are any differences between “cis” and “trans” women. This particular campaign crashes against a number of rocks but it exists nonetheless.
We live in a world where TRA’s get taken seriously for saying: “Forget transwomen! The idea that perverted men could take advantage of Self-ID strikes me as nonsensical!”
On the other hand it buys into the idea that biological females (who don’t identify as trans, non-binary etc.) are indeed “cis”, and that biological females and TIMs are different kinds/versions/subsets of “women”. I have previously commented on why that’s too high a price to pay:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2021/guest-post-implicit-framing/
I suppose Sturgeon is sincere in her commitment to this issue. She is such a bull-shitter on other issues that I view her with cynicism but this does seem to be something she has taken to heart. When Deputy First Minister she talked of her commitment and determination to get more people cycling, while the government cut budgets for active travel. Education was her priority once, and the standards have tanked. She makes a fine-sounding policy, with photo opportunities and which is then handled incompetently and peters out. She launches a ferry built in Scotland – the ferry situation is dire now, causing inconvenience and distress to the islanders. The ferry she launched in fact had no windows – they painted some instead. The ferries are now to be built in Turkey. There was supposed to be a National Energy Company, which got a lot of fanfare at an SNP conference – it has now been dropped.
When the Named Person policy, which she had pressed for for years, finally became too controversial and difficult, it was dropped.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-49757890
I had thought the GRA was one of those progressive sounding policies that she thought would make her look like the leader of a progressive independent small country eg Denmark or New Zealand. If it proved too controversial, she would let it drop. But she does seem very fixed on it – when some of the trans activists said they would leave the party over this issue she released a video begging them to stay.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nicola-sturgeon-doesnt-care-called-23397760
I would guess she has taken to heart the Stonewall scenario of beleaguered would-be transgenderists desperate to be accepted as the sex they are not or else they will commit suicide. That is a popular scenario among many of the young, and she does like to appeal to young people, while the older, more small c conservative Nationalists join Alba or stay silent, not wanting to rock the nationalist boat. (“Wheesht for indy” it’s called.)
Meanwhile she has to promise another referendum, which she can’t actually deliver, which few people want at present and which she would have a good chance of losing. She is stringing people along on this. It might be a relief to her to get at least one policy through.
The SNP are in coalition with the Greens – quite unnecessarily as the Greens support them on a lot of things and they get their motions through Holyrood – but this gave Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater ministerial posts. Both are gung-ho for GRA – it seems more important to them than actual green issues. The GRA may be a bone she can throw to them as she does not want to come down hard on oil – the modern independence movement did ride on the back of Scotland’s oil and it made a big part of the economic case of the 2014 referendum.
It is utterly painful that the Greens lost Andy Wightman over this issue, one of the brightest and best of the MSPs. It is appalling how this issue has messed up our politics so much. The Tories are the only party that is immune.
My own MP, Christine Jardine of the Lib Dems, was on Women’s Hour yesterday, trying to defend the Lib Dem position, “speaking as a mother”. I’ve found her a good constituency MP in the past – it’s a shame she has to talk nonsense on behalf of the party.
From what I’ve seen, everything is more important to the Greens than actual green issues. During the second Obama campaign, I was looking them up for some reason, and I read their platform. Nothing green was mentioned until plank 10, when it was given a small bone. Most of it at that time was anti-war, but anti-racism came in for at least a couple of nods. While I agree these are important issues to consider, don’t call yourself Green Party unless you have something environmental as the first priority.
And don’t get involved in stupid shit like trans. The thing is, a lot of greens are anti-science, as I discovered to my horror. They view science as the enemy, the cause of all the problems. So it’s probably natural for them to pick up on an issue like this which is so anti-science even while pretending to be cutting edge science, much like the green issues they do favor, which are often unrelated to the science and related more to the notions of the woke.
Maybe they should just change their name to the woke party.
@iknlast – The Greens have made themselves very woke friendly on a national level in Scotland. At a local level the Green councillors in my city don’t bother with that much and get on with practical things like cycle provision or looking after our canal or taking people on bat walks or opposing building on the green belt – issues that are actually green and don’t need queer theory behind them. I do have a lot of time for individual Green politicians who have supported causes that I support, and have put the work in.
KBPlayer, you are more fortunate than I am, then. We have no actual Green politicians, and the people we have that call themselves green party spend most of their time arranging pride marches.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I’m playing the privilege Olympics. ;-)
On cue, I see a Green councillor on Twitter.
The Green councillor works on my pet issue, cycle campaigning. She comes across as an intelligent, hard-working local politician.
On Twitter her pronouns are she/her.