Heartbreaking column in today's Scotsman

[howonearthdidwegethere]

Columnist Susan Dalgety reflecting on the words of the Cabinet Minister Shona Robison in the Scottish Parliament last week.

www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/abusive-men-will-exploit-proposed-new-gender-recognition-law-susan-dalgety-3596504

Shame on Robison and Sturgeon. Traitors to their sex. How do they sleep at night?

Thanks for linking

I'm so angry I will never forgive them for wishing away our daughters' safe spaces.

Thank you, Susan Dalgety. The next time a fool wishes to misuse/appropriate the phrase 'stunning and brave' they should read this. Thank you from one who, 45 years later, still hardly speaks of it. I think this is rather the norm than the exception.

It makes me want to cry. How can they possibly not see the bigger picture? These people are in charge of the running of this country. On the anniversary of Sarah Everard too, the ultimate horror of someone parading as someone else.

Thanks for the link.
to all the betrayed women.

That's powerful but there are so many people who don't give a shit that there are so many of us had our childhood and rest of our lives ruined by male abuse. If other women aren't bothered about female spaces, they should just leave those of us who are to get on with maintaining the ones that we set up in the first place rather than giving them away to men. My contempt for them is endless.

to Susan Dalgety and the rest of us who've experienced similar

Brilliant writing

Emotive yet factual and truthful and clear

We must never give - three are children, women of all ages we must fight to protect

That was heartrending - and it illustrates so clearly the issues of destroying single sex spaces. Not all males are rapists but all rapists are male. Sex matters.

Robison's reprehensible statement brings to mind Hitler's statement in Mein Kampf about the Big Lie.

I ask you how is not her statement not a prime example of the Big Lie?

"...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses ... more readily fall victim to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, ..."

That made me cry, for that little girl then and for the ones going through it now.

I will never, ever forgive the people pushing this anti woman and anti girl agenda. They are absolutely beneath contempt.

This is a moving and brave testimony But it doesn't clearly make the case it aims to unfortunately. That little girl was not protected by the single sex spaces and provisions that were commonplace at the time. The man who abused her did not have to pretend to be a woman in order to gain access to her.
So (devil's advocate here) why would being kind to TW put her in more danger?

@GibbonsGoatsGibbons

Thanks for linking

I'm so angry I will never forgive them for wishing away our daughters' safe spaces.

Its a heartbreaking story, and my heart goes out to the author. But it has nothing to do with the existence of safe spaces, rather the protection of young people from abuse and their (female, male, trans, gay, whatever) ability to speak out about it and be listened to. No trans person was involved in the account given, nor are trans people responsible for global warming or all the other ills of the world.

This is what the article is in response to.

Hopefully this will post this time

The determination of the Scottish Government to break down safeguarding (and exampled by Robison's statement - outright denial that abusive predators will pretend to be something they are not) in order to force through self id shows their utter contempt of women and girls.

The fact that an elected official could say the above, in all seriousness, is absolutely appalling.

And to be clear, this appalling statement was made by Shona Robison in her introduction to the GRA Reform Bill in the Scottish Parliament.

The point is that men have always taken advantage of any loophole they can in order to carry out abuse. Anything at all that can be taken advantage of is taken advantage of.

Do you think that it just so happened that men who were Catholic priests also happened to be paedophiles, by sheet coincidence? Or was it that they knew that becoming a priest would provide the double whammy of access to vulnerable children and the fact they knew the church would cover for them if they were ever found out?

Men will target women with all sorts of stories about themselves that are total bullshit in order to get close to them and their children to carry out abuse.

Men will use the loophole of the anonymity of the internet to pretend they are a 13 year old boy in order to lure girls into abuse.

They pretend that they care about charity work, or kids football, or the Scouting movement, because they worked out that doing this provides them not only with a large supply of vulnerable people, but also a level of respect which protects them from suspicion.

Because why would someone go to the trouble of training as a football coach to carry out abuse when they could just do it anyway?

Why would someone go to the trouble of training as a physiotherapist to carry out abuse when they could just do it anyway?

Why would someone go to the trouble of training as a priest to carry out abuse when they could just do it anyway?

Why would someone go to the trouble of signing a single form to change their legal sex and therefore have much easier access to females in order to carry out abuse when they could just do it anyway?

Why would someone go to the trouble of walking into a female changing room and using the culture of self-ID to claim that he is a woman and how dare you challenge me that's so transphobic of you, in order to carry out abuse?

Do you really not understand this?

@StillWeRise

This is a moving and brave testimony But it doesn't clearly make the case it aims to unfortunately. That little girl was not protected by the single sex spaces and provisions that were commonplace at the time. The man who abused her did not have to pretend to be a woman in order to gain access to her. So (devil's advocate here) why would being kind to TW put her in more danger?

Because safeguarding is about reducing risk, not creating a wide open chasm of risk that could be exploited by predatory men.

@StillWeRise

This is a moving and brave testimony But it doesn't clearly make the case it aims to unfortunately. That little girl was not protected by the single sex spaces and provisions that were commonplace at the time. The man who abused her did not have to pretend to be a woman in order to gain access to her. So (devil's advocate here) why would being kind to TW put her in more danger?

We want spaces without males to feel safe to talk and heal and to receive the type of support most of us have only experienced in a female only environment.

Fight for safe spaces for trans people and the women who are happy to be in those spaces. Don't take away the only spaces that those of us who've been abused as children can manage to be in. Do you not realise how dodgy it sounds to impose males on abused women and girls?

We don't demand we have access to transpeople's space, wouldn't dream of it.

God, Susan.

I was so utterly floored by that comment from Shona Robison. Utterly gutted. How could she be so cruel, and so stupid, on that day?

Message from the Scottish Goverment - 'there is no evidence that abusive and predatory men will pretend to be anything else in order to be abusive and predatory'

mobile.twitter.com/MeanwhileIPaint/status/1281980419609681921

Its a heartbreaking story, and my heart goes out to the author. But it has nothing to do with the existence of safe spaces, rather the protection of young people from abuse and their (female, male, trans, gay, whatever) ability to speak out about it and be listened to. No trans person was involved in the account given, nor are trans people responsible for global warming or all the other ills of the world.

It has nothing to do with trans people, no. Why have you brought them up? Could you not put aside your relentless and crass hectoring about trans people for one minute, and let women speak? We are talking about males, predatory males, who will abuse vulnerable women and girls (and boys, for that matter), and who will use every loophole, every glimmer of a chance that they see, to access and abuse victims.

As girls we grow up with this shit. With the threat of it and the reality of it. We learn how to avoid it, minimise it, deal with it. We learn how to spot tells, warning signs, red flags, danger signals. Any woman knows this with a practised ability that becomes second nature by the time you are middle aged, and again, especially, when looking out for one's daughters - then our senses are even more heightened because for a mother to protect her children is an instinct that runs very deep.

We know predators and abusers are out there, are common as muck, are liars, deceivers, charmers, positions of authority, upstanding members of the community, the people who we are supposed to rely on to protect us - they're in the judiciary, the police force, they are doctors, teachers, churchmen. They know how to manipulate, present a convincing exterior, take the mantle of victim themselves, pretend camaraderie, twist, guilt, gaslight, lie, and shame women.

There is not anything that men haven't thought of in their determination to harm and control women. Not a thing. And they won't ever stop unless they are forced to and women - and men - start to realise what safeguarding is for, and how it works, and how it must be applied, maintained, and protected.

Someone who works in the law and has never heard of a male who pretends to be something he isn't for his own advantage? The mind boggles.....