SNP ministers ignoring women’s groups on GRA reform

[Letsnotdothisplease]

In today’s Telegraph

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/03/snp-accused-ignoring-feminist-religious-groups-gender-reform/

Remember Nicola Sturgeon heckled an MSP in parliament by shouting "Shame!" when he said he had spoken with women's rights protesters. She has also decided women's opinions are "not valid".

@JellySaurus

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said...“No group that has requested a meeting about the Gender Recognition Bill has been refused.

Is he lying? It's hard to believe that For Women Scotland have not requested a meeting. Have FWS stated that they have requested a meeting and been refused?

The choice of words and deliberate emphasis on requesting a meeting is nothing but obfuscation and dodging the issue of consultation.

The government when consulting on a bill should be involving interested parties. It would be normal practice for officials to draw up a list of organisations and 'stakeholders' to include them in the consultation.

That's the elephant in the room. Which organisations did they invite and not invite?

The government when consulting on a bill should be involving interested parties. It would be normal practice for officials to draw up a list of organisations and 'stakeholders' to include them in the consultation.

This is the trouble, though. The Scotgov use the word 'consultation' to mean 'PR exercise'. They are again repurposing words.

The government when consulting on a bill should be involving interested parties. It would be normal practice for officials to draw up a list of organisations and 'stakeholders' to include them in the consultation.

The bill is about trans people, so no doubt the Scottish government would claim that stakeholders and interested parties would be organisations representing trans people. After all, why would they invite...I dunno...the Farmers' Union to consult on trans issues?

Obfuscation and dodging indeed.

Emma Barnet discussing this today with one of the policy people from Mackenzie and co.

@JellySaurus

The government when consulting on a bill should be involving interested parties. It would be normal practice for officials to draw up a list of organisations and 'stakeholders' to include them in the consultation.

The bill is about trans people, so no doubt the Scottish government would claim that stakeholders and interested parties would be organisations representing trans people. After all, why would they invite...I dunno...the Farmers' Union to consult on trans issues?

Obfuscation and dodging indeed.

Then like the GRA consultation, where a trans bill is involved, a parallel consultation needs to take place for female impact, representation, stakeholders and interested parties. Because while it's openly acknowledged there is a clash, women are not permitted a voice otherwise, and it's now wholly apparent that trans and women's interests cannot be held in the same brief or given fair balance. Two separate groups are needed to fact find and reach conclusions and then solutions found that work for both groups equally.

And I'll wait for the howls of rage and the demands to be centred and exclude women's voices and representations from the same political trans lobby in female centric consultations. I'll bet 'clash of rights' and 'we're stakeholders too' is allowed to be said then!

Which tells you really all you need to know about where the real oppression is.

@ArabellaScott

The government when consulting on a bill should be involving interested parties. It would be normal practice for officials to draw up a list of organisations and 'stakeholders' to include them in the consultation.

This is the trouble, though. The Scotgov use the word 'consultation' to mean 'PR exercise'. They are again repurposing words.

There are regulations supposed to prevent this, but no accountability. So 'consultation' often means 'box ticking exercise to gather evidence to make what we've already decided to do look somehow justifiable'.

The problem with democracy is that the bloody voters just won't do what their betters tell them.

Women: watch your votes. I'm serious. Women having the vote is going to come to be really bloody inconvenient, we have seen that the UK governments really don't give a toss for women's rights and they're being hurled aside at the speed of light (and women scolded for arguing). And two years ago you'd have said I was being dramatic that convicted rapists would be in women's prisons, a women's rape crisis centre would have three separate options of service for TW and none at all for many females, and that the Scots government would change the legal meaning of women to 'anyone of either sex'.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/if-gender-exists-on-a-spectrum-surely-being-trans-does-too-v7f86pdr8

'In January Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish parliament it was important to “allow a proper debate”, the better to “convince those who have concerns about the issue that there is not a tension and inevitable conflict between women’s rights and trans rights”. That sounds less like a consultation than like a means by which a preordained outcome can be reached'

The deletions of comments in The Times is a fucking scandal. It's even worse than the worst days on here, when the TRAs used to swamp the mods with reports.

This is like the many schools' Equality Impact Assessment isn't it? The only assessment that is done is on the effect on trans pupils. Or the prison one where only trans prisoners are asked how they would like to be treated.

I noticed a lovely one about Limerick Prison the other day. All sorts of requests/demands/comments from the trans prisoners (including a demand that no male prison guard be present when a male bodied prisoner is being searched by a female guard), but nothing about how the female prisoners feel (or indeed the guards, who are imo sexually assaulted every time they are forced to touch a male-bodied prisoner).

Consultations have to follow the Gunning Principles in order to legally count as a legitimate consultation. If these are not followed then the government can be taken to judicial review. These principles include the Consultations must take place at a formative stage and concientious consideration must be made of the result of the consultation. It can not be a persuasion exercise nor a tick box one.

I agree. It's become very much the case that trans cannot be held in a brief with anything else because it pushes out discussion, consideration and equality of the other groups lost behind it. Why and how this happens is irrelevant - it is, and it needs to be addressed by one assessment of trans need and voices and a wholly separate one of other involved stakeholders by a separate group who are able to focus on those other needs and voices. And then solutions found for all and equality of access and interest properly balanced, with 'one group wins and the other group loses and gets nothing' left firmly in the past where it belongs.

@Lovelyricepudding

Consultations have to follow the Gunning Principles in order to legally count as a legitimate consultation. If these are not followed then the government can be taken to judicial review. These principles include the Consultations must take place at a formative stage and concientious consideration must be made of the result of the consultation. It can not be a persuasion exercise nor a tick box one.

This is the answer. However that means, yet again, women have to fire up the energy, fund raise (which will be attacked and prevented vigorously), find women with the time, capacity and ability to withstand the awful behaviour they and their families will be subjected to who can go and do the fighting and the actual process involved...

this is what it takes, but it is bloody wicked that in 2022 women have to continually force the law to obey the bloody law to maintain their equality. And they have to keep on and on and on fighting and winning.

While the govt try to remove judicial review because it's inconvenient.

@JellySaurus

The government when consulting on a bill should be involving interested parties. It would be normal practice for officials to draw up a list of organisations and 'stakeholders' to include them in the consultation.

The bill is about trans people, so no doubt the Scottish government would claim that stakeholders and interested parties would be organisations representing trans people. After all, why would they invite...I dunno...the Farmers' Union to consult on trans issues?

Obfuscation and dodging indeed.

Good grief. It's normal and only common sense for government to consult a wide range of organisations that would be affected by or have interest in legislation. If the government was proposing to amend employment law it wouldn't consult only employees or trade unions and ignore employers' associations. Nor would it include only those two sides, ignoring all other interests. And the government definitely would not defend such a preposterous notion.

@Lovelyricepudding

Consultations have to follow the Gunning Principles in order to legally count as a legitimate consultation. If these are not followed then the government can be taken to judicial review. These principles include the Consultations must take place at a formative stage and concientious consideration must be made of the result of the consultation. It can not be a persuasion exercise nor a tick box one.

Exactly that’s what Lucy was saying on womens hour

'SNP ministers ignoring women'

Is more like it.

If they won't even listen on this, then I don't trust them to listen to women/girls on anything tbh.