Council confusion over sex and gender ‘could put women at risk’

Are we sure Linda is female? Perhaps her parents were equally confused so simple threw a dice before deciding to give him/her a girls name.

You can’t tell a persons sex until after puberty? Tell that to the dead baby girls in China and all the girls worldwide who were subjected to female genital mutilation.

(If I am being charitable I suppose she might’ve gotten ‘biological sex’ and ‘sexuality’ confused - I suppose most people probably become aware of being gay or straight around puberty?

Still a massively stupid error in this particular context, of course)

Aye but it is Falkirk btw.

They probably think that "gender" in their statement includes male / female ie encompasses sex as well.

But it doesn't.

And women and girls are not treated differently to men and boys due to invisible feelings in our heads, We are treated differently becasue of our bodies,our sex.

And all the people who are trying to reframe sexism against women as "femmephobia" > being treated differently because of feminine presentation can fuck off. Women are not discriminated against because they are feminine, in style or in manner. We are discriminated against for a variety of reasons but that isn't one of them. Femininity is foisted on us, in fact. And lots of us don't like it at all.

the Scottish government believes that gender equality should take prominence in its policy making

Why?

What is the case for making (trans) gender equality so important?

Can the Scottish government justify its belief?

Why, in its arrogance, can the Scottish government ignore the Equality Act and say that it knows better?

“It is usually not possible to determine sex until after puberty and sexual maturity"

My goodness. Then why on earth are so many health systems (not just the NHS) wasting all this money on scans, partly to determine sex, particularly when sex can be relevant to considering developmental variations or sex-specific conditions.

LG should issue FOIs concerning this waste of public money. Unless she has a gnawing suspicion that she doesn't mean what she says...

Linda Gilliard is an employee in the councils policy department

Shirley-Anne Somerville sounds like a good egg.

How is she coping with the reaction? I assume there is a strong one.

They literally state above that they are no longer / less interested in anything to do with women.

Side issue > works both ways > means things that effect men are no longer of interest to them either e,g, suicide, higher rates of alcohol & drug abuse, unreported mental health issues, prostate etc

Scots govt say nope not interested. Sex is not of interest. We are changign sex to gender identity, which has no stable definition, we don't believe that issues based in biology and social aspects of male / female are of any interest any more.

I'm flabbergasted TBH.

"Although the Equality Act 2010 lists ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic, the Scottish government believes that gender equality should take prominence in its policy making."

Oh fuck.

So the scottish government confims that they have no interest in sex related issues / discrimination etc and genuinely want to bin it.

That's bananas.

So what about all the cunty people who are eg more likely to be in poverty than dicky people and more likely to be looking after children so children in poverty
This is no longer an issue that is predominantly faced by women
By by people who may have any gender identity and we don't know until we ask them individually
And many dont' have internal lady-feels
So there is literally no way of measuring describing this

And scottish government have stated that this is CORRECT they are no longer interested in stats around sex.

Well fuck me sideways those utter utter bastards.

You’re right, sounds like she is an employee! So yes, she must have applied and been deemed best for the job. She’s the creme de la creme. Even scarier.

Indeed, Zutt . But in this case I wouldn’t even assume she’s consciously lying. There’s as big a chance that she’s just absorbed some right-on mishmash of ideas about gender and sex being socially constructed and is attempting (failing though, obviously) to parrot them without pausing to think, “Wait, did I know my sex before puberty? What actually is sex?”

Never underestimate how little thought some people give to opinions they’re quite happy to put their name to...

You just can’t argue with stupid of that level. You’ll go mad trying.

Is she a council member or an employee? I took 'team leader' to mean employee which (I assume) involved competing for the job.

Legislation in Scotland last year that defined both woman and female to include some males:
fairplayforwomen.com/scottish_stole_woman/

The problem is, as the quoted email demonstrates, council members in the UK tend to be of a very low calibre, at least where I live.

It also shows how willing they are to lie when it suits them.

Is Linda saying she didn’t know her own sex until puberty? That it was a complete surprise when she got a period as opposed to getting a deeper voice and body hair? That it had been a 50/50 chance of either until then?

The problem is, as the quoted email demonstrates, council members in the UK tend to be of a very low calibre, at least where I live. There’s basically no standards for being one and some of them are extremely young. It’s seen as a completely unimportant job, yet they’re in charge of crucial policy decisions at a local level. So things like this keep happening.

Shirley Anne Somerville is close to NS, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had the same opinion on this.

It does sound a bit like Shirley-Anne Somerville and Joan McAlpine get it though. Shirley-Anne is my MSP, I might write to her thanking her for the clarification but I have no idea what to actually say.

Ooops potentially outing. Better name change.

Id join you Igneococcus Im nearer than you and have kept a copy of her email to me.

I can't get my head round her putting that in an email to a member of the public. This isn't a woke intern who got hold of the Twitter account. Linda Gilliland is a team leader. I imagine that means she monitors other staff. She may conduct their appraisals and organise their training. She may have an input into council policy. And presumably she went through a competitve selection process before her appointment.

Wake up Falkirk.

A lot of trans work in IT so ‘bit’ might be appropriate.