Susan Dalgety column today

[Alicethroughtheblackmirror]

Fantastic article from Susan Dalgety today that covers a lot.

Some extracts:
"But the harsh fact of life is that for every one of those 56,000 young women in Ireland who were treated so cruelly because of their biology, there were 56,000 men who suffered no consequence because of theirs."

"The Scottish government’s chief statistician, Roger Halliday, certainly thinks he knows the answer. A few days after Lady Wise’s declaration, he issued draft guidelines recommending that public bodies should not ask questions about a person’s sex, except potentially where there is direct relevance to a person’s medical treatment. “Such a question is likely to breach an individual’s human privacy,” he writes.

"Instead, Mr Halliday encourages organisations to pose questions on the basis of gender identity. What matters in 2021, it seems, is not whether someone has a cervix or a penis, but whether they “feel” male or female.

"Now if I had only had known this clever trick during the summer of 1976, I could have self-identified as a burly bloke instead of a scared pregnant girl."

"If sex no longer matters when collecting data for public services, then the distinct needs of women and girls – rooted in our biology – can be ignored, just as those 56,000 Irish girls were hidden away for the sin of being female."
www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/trans-gender-debate-world-where-life-women-can-be-worse-simply-virtue-their-sex-biology-matters-susan-dalgety-3101863?fbclid=IwAR3tR9p4HtlhtgI15_E40yQ81gaJqp6Zz5x7YOKfJHcIIIChpVLswG7_HfE

But the harsh fact of life is that for every one of those 56,000 young women in Ireland who were treated so cruelly because of their biology, there were 56,000 men who suffered no consequence because of theirs.

I've never thought of it like this, but of course that is the stark and bleak reality.

Those poor women.

A really powerful article.

Superb article, which somehow managed to capture the essence for me of what it means to actually have a woman's biologically female body rather than a 'feminine gender identity' and why we simply can't afford to give ground on this issue.

Thanks for posting.

I wonder if the report from Ireland and the issues it raises will be a bit of an eye opener for those waving banners and jumping on bandwagons. I hope but I am guessing not. We didn't matter then and it appears we don't matter now. Good article, hope it gets some results.

It is a very good article.

It is such a short time ago that becoming pregnant at such a young age was considered to have 'ruined your life'. I can think of at least a couple of contemporaries who managed to conceal their pregnancy and had their baby on the bathroom floor. It is a difficult start to adult life that is nothing to do with how you present your gender.

Excellent article. The absence of sound of TRAs offering moral support for these women and girls is deafening.

Why would asking a person’s sex breach an individual’s human privacy, but asking their gender identity wouldn’t be?

Eyes that is what I want to know! Especially as sex is a required data point for a lot of equality or health monitoring and GI is not legally protected or defined.

This is a really good article and very well expressed.

That really is a thumping quote, that goes right to the awful heart of it.

And yes, the whopping lack of any activists getting passionate about what those women and children suffered and wanting to raise awareness is interesting. You'd think all women would be interested in and upset by this.

You would Michele

Think the Tw would be all over this in support ......

She’s absolutely nailed it, not a word wasted!

Thanks for linking

Awaits accusations of ‘weaponising’ trauma.

Excellent article I agree.

What an excellent article. It really is this simple.

@EyesOpening

Why would asking a person’s sex breach an individual’s human privacy, but asking their gender identity wouldn’t be?

More Stonewall law, I'm afraid. Halliday- for reasons known only to himself - has chosen to ignore all of the advice provided to his working group on the need for sex disaggregated data, as well as the legal obligation to collect it under the Public Sector Equality Duty. Instead, he has chosen to listen to those whose declared aim is to remove sex from all laws, policies and regulations (cf Principle 31, from the Yogyakarta Principles plus 10).

The latest argument in aid of this goal is that your sex is private and therefore ought not to be asked. And anyone who does violates your privacy. This is of course not only wrong in positing that an average person's sex isn't something anyone else can observe, it's also wrong on the privacy argument.

The new(ish) GDPR law which is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into this argument to prop it up does actually allow us to collect sex where this is typically done, contrary to the claim made in the legal opinion Halliday references. (An interpretation of the GDPR law which has been robustly rejected by a few legal experts already).

Personal data must only be collected for a specific purpose. As far as sex is concerned, there are a large number of such purposes, which is of course why the argument is spurious.

As I said, we cannot know why yet another Scottish Government official has chosen to deny the importance of sex as the most powerful predictor and measure of discrimination and inequality experienced by women and girls. But I would point to the recently declared policy of the Scottish Government not to treat females and males who identify as trans differently unless forced to do so by law. As there is no law that has this effect either in Scots law or UK law, this is in my view a declaration of war against the protections afforded to us on the basis of sex by the Equality Act. Which doesn't and cannot force anyone to treat females and males differently, but which allows us to do so where otherwise one sex would be indirectly discriminated against. And of course, the Public Sector Equality Duty which Halliday ignores completely with his proposed guidance, arises from that same Equality Act the Scottish Government is so uninterested in.

I do hope all of these people will one day be tormented by their conscience. A statistician, arguing against collecting one of the most important and easily defined data points in humans - a material fact furthermore that is indespensible in ensuring that discrimination and inequality of women and girls can be measured and addressed at all - in favour of a metaphysical, disembodied entity that in 15 years of trying no legal experts have yet succeeded in defining (neither in international law nor in national laws nor in any British laws - because it is an innermost, unverifiable, untestable feeling that only a small minority of people even experience) seems to me one of the most shameful acts any statistician can engage in.

And yes, Susan Dalgety's column is brilliant. Thank you for posting it Alicethroughtheblackmirror.

Great