Shadowy forces
Nicola Sturgeon throws mud in the general direction of feminist women yet again.
Ms Sturgeon’s comments last week came during interviews marking the tenth anniversary of Scotland’s equal marriage laws.
The ex-SNP leader told Diva magazine: “I’ve had more abuse hurled at me on the issue of trans rights than I have on probably any other issue in my career and I am a politician who helped lead an independence referendum.
“There are people who have muscled their way into that debate no doubt because they are transphobic but also because they want to push back rights generally. I do think that we need to be very vigilant about that as well.”
Separately, in the Guardian, she said the debate around the Gender Recognition Reform Bill “became so toxic, and opposition became so entrenched and – this is not the case for everybody who opposed that legislation – but there were forces that muscled into that debate who, I think, you know, had a bigger agenda in terms of rights more generally.”
Charming, isn’t it? Feminist women are “muscling in” when we object to heads of state blithely driving a tractor through our rights. We’re muscling in, we’re phobic, we want to push back rights generally.
Please, tell us more about how “toxic” we are.
Susan Smith, Co-Director of For Women Scotland told The Herald: “No doubt, Ms Sturgeon would prefer to believe she was thwarted by well-funded ‘shadowy forces’ rather than determined ordinary women risking their all, but her words have the potential to do a good deal of reputational damage to groups like FWS.
“If Ms Sturgeon has any decency or honesty, she will spell out what she means. If she has any introspection, she should acknowledge that her own hubris also played a part.”
Spoiler: she has acknowledged nothing.
Are these “shadowy forces” also “actual Nazis” because that could be dangerous territory to stray into even for an ex politician. (As I read it this is just the standard calumny that anyone who opposes the gender agenda is simply a right wing bigot. Of course she won’t actually say women’s groups are guilty of right-wing bigotry because she doesn’t want anyone to know that actual feminists oppose this nonsense. Which leaves it mysterious as to who or what were the victims of the muscling in. But that as always this is a feature not a bug. Johanna Cherry is, of course, right to ask for clarity but she knows she’s never going to get it.)
Is she willing to publish screen shots of the ‘abuse’ she received from opponents? Was it death threats? Rape threats? Or just women suggesting she go back to the basics and learn what a woman is? We’ve gotten to a point politically where any disagreement is couched as abuse, but for some reason, one side never seems to publish actual evidence of the ‘abuse’ they are receiving.
JK Rowling has published screen shots of the death threats, rape threats, and other vile forms of abuse she has received. Shouldn’t we expect at least as much from Nicola Sturgeon? Or is actual evidence colonialist, imperialist, patriarchal hegemony being enforced on a poor, marginalized people?
Sturgeon is furious because gender reform was supposed to be Gay Marriage 2.0. A nice feelgood rainbowy policy that only a few fossilised old God-botherers would object to, which could be implemented pretty much at the stroke of a pen, and most importantly wouldn’t cost any money. Theresa May tried exactly the same thing and she almost got away with it because it was impossible to get anyone in the British media to pay attention to anything that wasn’t Brexit (or What Idiocy Came From Trump’s Mouth Today, and I am NOT relishing the return to that) except that some brave and awkward women got in the way.
Oh, yes, women “muscling in” on the discussion of dismantling their rights . . . caused by hulking men literally “muscling their way in” to every single thing set aside for women. She’s identified the wrong party as the bullies who are doing the ” muscling in.”
I disagree with Sturgeon and fully endorse all the comments above.
However, while we all welcome the acceptance that the Emperor is naked and that the fog is starting to lift from people’s brains, I fear that because the Left ceded all the ground to the Right there will be “people muscling their way into the debate” because they are Anti Gay and Lesbian.
That the T was either welcomed into, or successfully colonized, far too many Lesbian and Gay groups, means LGB will be collateral damage. Rather than seeing a return to having Women’s Rights front and centre, I fear it will be a return to the “poof bashing” and she the “just needs a dick” era of my youth.
I fear for people like Arty Morty and our Good Host here and the many more like them whose writing I find enjoyable, entertaining, and above all, informative. Because the “No LGB without the T” mob have been so successful with their propaganda the ascendant Right Wing lawmakers will use their anti Trans campaign as a cover to also reduce the Human Rights of Gays and Lesbians. Like all social revolutions, it will start out with mainstream acceptance as men are pushed back to men’s spaces, sports, awards, etc. but it won’t take long before mission creep starts to unwind same sex marriage, inheritance laws, anti discrimination in work and the provision of goods and services laws, and any other Human Right they detest.
Well may we think we are now winning the Great Gender Wars, but unless the Left gird their loins join in, there is far, far worse ahead.
I’ll be 72 on Saturday, I suffer from Necrotising Myopathy, but I have still got a march or two left in me and I hope I can persuade some of my erstwhile Leftie colleagues to redeem themselves, reclaim the Left’s legacy of Human Rights activism, and to ensure that the rights of Women and Girls, and Gays and Lesbians are safe from those who hate them just for existing.
Damn, sorry about the Necrotising Myopathy.
I should say, for the sake of accuracy and full disclosure and so on, I’m not a lesbian. It’s more that I’m indifferent to men for no good reason. (I do kind of wish I were in the lesbian club, but we all know where that kind of thinking ends up, so I don’t dwell on it.)
But for Sturgeon and other trans activists the only “real” feminists are the trans-friendly Quislings who welcome men who claim to be women into their ranks.