Scottish GRA consultation

Re the posted advice from Women and Girls in Scotland:

This was written following a meeting with Shirley-Ann Somerville and I'm afraid what she is reported to have said is the minister at her disingenuous best.

I refer to this sentence in particular: "The point is the govt is consulting re the content of its Bill and EQIAs, & thus will only adapt its proposals & impact assessments based on how responses address this content " and here's my view on why this is disingenuous:

1. The Scottish Government has no intention of adapting its proposals. The government is decided upon its course of action and this bill can only be stopped by convincing MSPs to vote against it.

1. The Scottish Government has no intention of adapting its impact assessments. If it did, it would have produced proper impact assessments to begin with. The government didn't even follow the advice it gives other organisations on how to produce impact assessments. If it did proper impact assessments, it would have to withdraw its draft bill.

1. The Scottish Government received countless submissions providing evidence addressing the negative impact of self-id on women in the original consultation as well as during the Census Bill debate and hearings. It chose to ignore ALL of the evidence that ran counter to its aims and did not incorporate any of it into the bill. There is no reason to expect this Scottish Government to pay any more attention to our evidence this time round.

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I would - just generally speaking - advise anyone to consider for themselves how much weight to give to any comments made by the minister who is fully committed to pushing through this reform and who has repeatedly rejected women's concerns as unfounded, no matter what evidence is provided. Especially when that minister had a consultation document published that claimed there had been meetings with women's groups to consult them about the government's GRA reform proposals, something which those groups were reportedly quite surprised by.

Because the Scottish Government has already decided what it wants to do, women's rights campaigners across Scotland and the wider UK decided on a two-pronged approach in addressing the consultation:

I) get the wider population involved by encouraging everyone who disagrees with self-id to register their disagreement by responding to the five questions with short answers opposing the proposals. Various groups have or will provide brief guides for this purpose.

II) encourage all organisations/grassroots groups/individual campaigners able to do so to submit detailed responses addressing the non-existent evidence base of the bill.

Shirley-Ann Somerville's comments seem designed to discourage the first approach of the two. And with good reason - the headline news after the consultation report analyses the responses won't be the sophisticated counter-evidence received from clever people, but how many agreed or disagreed with the proposals.

That's because in order to pass this bill and turn it into law, a simple majority of MSPs have to vote yes. And in order to defeat it, the same principle applies. If the majority of respondents reject these proposals and women's rights campaigners make enough noise, we stand a good chance to make our MSPs think twice about voting yes.

And that can only be achieved by first motivating as many as possible to submit the short responses saying no to self-id.

So, please remember, our target audience for our submissions made through this consultation is not the Scottish Government but the MSPs serving in the Scottish Parliament.

The government are decided already.

Which is why whatever Shirley-Ann Somerville advises is of course in aid of the government's objectives AND irrelevant to our strategy. The Scottish MSPs however, can be convinced to stop the bill from going forward and to send it back to be completely overhauled again.

This is why the For Women Scotland campaign slogan is Bin the Bill.

Ooo Igne thanks for that. BBC..

A friend has commented that it might be worthwhile contacting the centrist press about the Scottish GRA and asking them to consider running with a story on it.

On the news just now they said there would be a special report on the GRA on BBC Scotland at 9 pm

It's incomprehensible how they can equate a woman who has had a mastectomy with a male bodied person.

Its just vile, it really is. Offensive as hell.

The Scottish Government state that there is no evidence - as far as they can see - that self ID will be exploited, will remove safeguards and lead to abuse of women and girls

This is utter utter bullshit. There would not be proof for something that has not happened yet really, would there?

Mind, there is much proof of males abusing this already, before its happened. SO..yeah, bullshit to claim abusive men would not see this as jackpot tbh

Thanks both! Will submit a response

This is from Women & Girls in Scotland on the GRA draft bill consultation just FYI off anyone interested -

“A reminder that our GRA consultation guidance will be published in February, & will help respondents make clear how & why Self ID, as proposed, would infringe women's rights & protections, as well as helping with what to include re the impact of losing female provisions. Our guidance is designed to help ensure we can generate an evidence base re the need for female-only provision (not least as the govt currently takes the position there is no evidence base re this) & will pay for independent analysis of responses to pull this (& much else) out. Using our guidance will not mean that respondents cannot also use other forms of guidance available, & we highly recommend that respondents wait until around the start of March before responding anyway, so as to have access to the best available/up to date evidence.”

And “The point is the govt is consulting re the content of its Bill and EQIAs, & thus will only adapt its proposals & impact assessments based on how responses address this content”

Adding to this - you can open/start your response online, save it & return to it at various points to add to what you want to say. Any responses that have already been sent online, you can ask to withdraw & resubmit before the deadline, to add or change what you want to say.

It's really important to respond, but it’s also important to understand that it’s the responses/challenge to the EQIA and the bill itself that this consultation covers & it’s important to say why you object, not just that you object.

Further guidance to help with that will be out soon, giving people plenty of time to respond before 17th March

I think it's already out Thin here you go

forwomen.scot/

forwomen.scot/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Bin-the-Bill-Guidance-A4.pdf

Does anyone know when the advice on how best to respond to this is likely to be available?

If already available - where can I access it?

Many thanks!

The Scottish Government state that there is no evidence - as far as they can see - that self ID will be exploited, will remove safeguards and lead to abuse of women and girls

This argument is so exasperatingly annoying!
There will never be any evidence because:

1. No-one is allowed to do any research into trans issues.
2. No-one is allowed to collect any data where trans women are analysed separately from women (e.g. census data)
3. Any crimes committed by trans women are now recorded as women's crime so it would be impossible to find evidence within crime data that trans women still posed a male level of risk towards women and girls.
4. Any crimes committed by men "pretending" to be trans would also be recorded as women's crime because "self-ID".

The Scottish Government state that there is no evidence - as far as they can see - that self ID will be exploited, will remove safeguards and lead to abuse of women and girls.

Not to mention the negative impact of self ID on the privacy and dignity of women and girls...

A hear no evil/see no evil policy = no evil happens...

My question for those of you who know law/government policy formation - what is the legal basis of the Scot Government to completely ignore the masses of evidence that self ID / enabling a policy which legally enshrines the rights of adult males right to female only spaces - as a basis for this policy.

If they restate there is no evidence at the end of the consultation period and use this erroneous rationale to implement the policy - can they be sued?

It's interesting that the government says that 1 in 50 males in the prison system now identifies as transgender.

And half of them are sex offenders.

Trying to remember where I saw it but there was an academic paper or report where the author stated that they had refused transition to some men because their stated motives was to enable access to women and children. Anyone remember this? If so anyone got a link?

I've a friend who works in the prison service and I was asking her if she has to deal with trans inmates. She does and when I asked her why there were so many she said "because they're fucking bored"...

It's interesting that the government says that 1 in 50 males in the prison system now identifies as transgender. That's double the proposed number of trans people in the general population. Any ideas why, snow?

If trans people are already using the facilities of choice why are all these supposed predatory men waiting for self-ID? If there was an issue it would be happening now.

You do understand that self-ID means being able to change your legally recognised sex, don't you? That's not the same as popping into the ladies' toilets.

Here's the current prison policy for transgender prisoners.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/825621/transgender-pf.pdf

"all individuals who are transgender must be initially allocated to part of the estate which matches their legally recognised gender (or best-known evidence where legal gender is not known)."

Don't you think being legally recognised as a woman might become fairly popular amongst rapists and paedophiles?

So wait, are men covered under "non trans women" too? I mean technically...

I must tell my dad that his new official identity is "not a trans woman" and that's really all anyone needs to know about him. I'm sure he'll be chuffed to bits.

If trans people are already using the facilities of choice why are all these supposed predatory men waiting for self-ID?

They aren't. Otherwise we'd be bumping into them all the time. Outside very woke locations, we aren't. Please don't even try to claim that we wouldn't notice male people in women's spaces. We do.

Cmon kittens. There’s no women in Scotland anymore

Just trans women and non trans women

I don't know nonny there wasn't anything in my comment that could warrant deletion. It was basically "if you like to contribute to the consultation, here is the link"
I've had links refused before and others that got through.

Right, so that's women with PCOS, women who've had mastectomies, and women who're infertile who're being told that we're not really women. Is there any other group of women they'd like to insult while they're at it?

Thanks Nonny Have bookmarked for submission nearer the date.

Why can’t they admit that even if they think TW are all fluffy bunnies some predatory men will abuse self ID????

If trans people are already using the facilities of choice why are all these supposed predatory men waiting for self-ID? If there was an issue it would be happening now.

Igneococcus not sure why they would delete your comment with the link, unless the deletion was based on something else within the comment.

I post it on Page 2 and so far it's still up.

Here it is again for reference.

consult.gov.scot/family-law/gender-recognition-reform-scotland-bill/

I am sitting in my chemo unit having my cancer treatment, burning with anger and rage at reading this!!!! I've only had a left mastecomy so does that make me a demi woman according to this fuckwads?

How fucking dare they!!!