Nicola Sturgeon is on Radio 4 now. She's said that her gender reform won't make any difference

[Clymene]

Transwomen aren't men. Very tiny numbers of people.

She's such a bloody liar.

Some extracts:

The current process is stigmatising and traumatic. If anyone seeks to misuse the process, they'd be committing a criminal offence.

Individual risk assessments.

Abusive men are a risk to women, we shouldn't seek to be further stigmatise and discriminate against a tiny tiny minority.

Many threats to women. Real feminists should be focusing on them.

I really, really dislike her.

Was there any pushback in the interview? I'll have a listen later (I will have to prepare myself as she gives me the rage on this topic)

Meanwhile in the real world, self id is having an impact on women's rights.

www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/male-prisoners-changing-gender-under-28149343.amp

Mishal Husain found a question which expressed the problem in clear and non-sensational terms (paraphrased): Any man in this room could spend 3 months living as a woman*, declare themselves to be a woman, and then get into women's changing rooms and prisons, that's right isn't it?

Sturgeon had to respond with gabbly word soup sounding both evasive and distinctly uncomfortable.

Husain was sounding a long way away from TWAW.

* undefined

Did she say 'real.feminists'? That's a bloody cheek if she did.

Some pushback but not enough, it felt to me.

She seemed to be saying, women are at risk from men, not trans women. Trans women are not men. Therefore making it easier for men to become trans women isn't a problem.... more trans women will make the world safer for women, not more dangerous.

How the fuck does a person "live as a woman"?

Agreed. Very pointed questioning from Mishal.

Yes Husain was good at making clear the basic effect. I wish she'd challenged Sturgeon on 'the risk to women is from men not trans women'🙄

She did. I'm sure you can rewind if you pull it up now

I think Sturgeon's discomfort is that the plan was to rush this through with as little debate as possible and if it led to assaults and rapes she'd be able to say "this is very unfortunate, but how were we to know?"

Every time she has to engage with questioning, she takes on board a bit more ownership and a bit more responsibility. She knows this and she doesn't like it.

I'd actually rather have Alex with his alleged wandering hands in charge than this traitor. At least I could avoid Alex's hands, I know he has them (allegedly) and can take steps. But this betrayer of females is intent on forcing me to share everything with ALL the wandering hands. There isn't a hell hot enough for women who feed other women to the wolves like this.

That's a really good point, nauticant.

How the fuck does a person "live as a woman"?

It could be as minimal as simply declarating "I'm living as a woman". Which would make it a double self-declaration.

Sturgeon's answer is that there's a very strong safeguard against this because anyone abusing the process would face criminal sanction because they'd made a false Statutory Declaration. However, in any given year how many people are prosecuted for doing this? I suspect few or zero. More importantly, there would be zero prosecutions based on the prosecuting authorities claiming that what was in a person's head a year or two back wasn't actually in their head.

Mishal set the change out twice (‘any man in this room’) and gave some of the locations that this relates to (changing rooms, prisons and refuges) and then just let Nicola expose her bizarre and bullish views on this. Nicola is TWAW to the core and unshakeably so.

It makes me so angry that people like NS refer to Iran etc in these conversation without seeing the irony at all.

“Real feminists like me” my arse. If NS is really concerned about male violence how can she possibly justify the idea that females should accept any male in our Single sex facilities. Very tiny numbers blah blah. And people should be prosecuted if they abuse the system. She just does not see that she is enabling another form of abuse of women. How many of these men have been prosecuted, and why should we have to wait until it happens?

She is unbelievably arrogant, that she thought she could get away without ever having to answer for what she's doing to women.

Every journalist should be asking her these questions, every time.

My thought on this was that it's bit bloody late after the abuse. And also, abuse would be a criminal offence so how does it help to also have 'they lied about becoming a woman' as an offence? Barshit

how does it help to also have 'they lied about becoming a woman' as an offence?

It's rather in Alice in Wonderland - the crime of lying while lying.

I have spent a lot of time trying to understand how people I respect intellectually (not Sturgeon, obvs, but colleagues who are clearly highly intelligent people) can be so entrenched in the TWAW position. I have come to realise that it is part of a general insistence on the subjective nature of reality (cf ‘my truth’). In other words, what you feel (femaleness) is real and somehow essential in a way that your observable body (vagina, breasts) is not.
That seems to me a rational position, in the sense of logically explicable, although I disagree with it very strongly.
But it doesn’t answer this next question (or I haven’t worked out an answer). If our material, sexed, bodies are immaterial to our felt gender, in other words if the sexed body has no relevance to or bearing on the gendered mind, why then do we feel the need to categorise people with regard to sex and gender, in sport, changing rooms, medical statistics, prisons - in other words based on actual differences between differently-sexed bodies?
What has happened to the world that means that instead of saying ‘I have a vagina and like trains - and your point is?’ we say ‘I have a vagina and like trains therefore I am actually a man’?
For me, freedom lies in the former, but it seems that to very many people it’s about the latter.

She really is awful.
i was at the rally yesterday - why does she refuse to listen to the experiences of women?

The current process is stigmatising and traumatic. If anyone seeks to misuse the process, they'd be committing a criminal offence.

How would you ever know? If the only thing that determines that you're a woman is that you say that you feel like a woman, how can anyone ever be accused of misusing the process?

I can't get over the mindless stupidity of it. Surely Sturgeon doesn't really believe this shit?

God me too

So dismissive of women’s concerns and rights

Labour would likely stick to the same script

It’s very depressing and anger inducing

I thought Husain was pretty good actually. She pointed out the utter nonsense of this proposed legislation twice. I do wish she'd mentioned the fact that half the transwomen who are currently incarcerated in Scotland transitioned after conviction though.

And yes, Sturgeon did say real feminists. She is odious. And yes,mid rather have Alex with the wandering hands.

I am not Scottish and don't want to see Scotland leave the UK. I have no love for Nicola Sturgeon, so it may be that I am looking at this from a very biased angle.

However, it seems to me that Sturgeon is a person who adheres fast to an ideology and will not allow reason to penetrate her beliefs. For instance, she is absolutely wedded to the idea that independence from the UK will solve all of Scotland's woes, and every problem faced by Scotland is the fault of Westminster. During the independence campaign in 2014, she wasn't able to answer some of the basic questions put to her and it's clear that she hadn't fully considered some of the issues. I think the SNP's inability to answer certain questions was the reason for Scotland staying in the UK.

As regards gender ideology, Sturgeon has nailed her colours firmly to the TWAW mast. It's not in her nature to go away and think about the other side's arguments - she is a True Believer in the cause. Moreover, she despises the Conservatives with a passion and will do the opposite of what they do, without bothering to weigh up the issues. Conservatives are rowing back from self-ID? Well, in that case the SNP will go towards it, full throttle.

Trump did something similar in office - whatever Obama did, he made sure to do the opposite. Sturgeon might be 'progressive' and her politics 'just' - but the consequences of just doing the opposite of whatever your opponent does can be dangerous, as the women of Scotland may be about to discover.