Events at work this week and the discussion here re: Nicola Sturgeon have reignited my recurring feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness.
To express perfectly reasonable, understandable, logical, evidenced concerns about the harms that come from self-ID and to have that all just dismissed.
I really fear for the society my daughters are growing up in and I feel utterly powerless to do anything about it. The march towards self-ID feels inevitable. And I just can't envisage a reasonable outcome.
How do we create a society that recognises and accepts all those people who, for whatever reason, want to deny their sex whilst simultaneously recognising and accepting all those people who, for whatever reason, want to (or can't help but...) recognise sex?
We can all accept people of other religious beliefs, and make accommodations for them to hold and practice their beliefs because there is no obligation on us to participate in those beliefs or any associated rituals in everyday life. (Totally understandable to observe rituals you may not believe in when you're in someone else's religious space. And as a society we do allow people to have religious spaces.)
But with self-ID we are all expected to participate in an individual's belief about themselves. We are all asked to participate in their rituals through the use of pronouns. Their 'religious space' as we might see it, becomes society itself. So where do those of us who don't share that belief system fit into society?