Scottish Parliament final debate on Gender Recognition Reform today

[ArabellaScott]

At some point after 2pm, in the Big Room (the Chamber).

www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/whats-on-and-watch-live/whats-on#wm

Will be interesting to see how the Amendments go down, if they are all struck down as the ScotGov wishes - www.holyrood.com/news/view,gender-recognition-reform-crunch-vote-after-shona-robison-warns-msps-over-amendments

'the Scottish Conservatives have warned that the debate could lead to a "travesty of democracy" because a 15 minute time limit for each proposal will "shut down" discussion.'

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64032916

Self-id trumps everything.

There's a similar story for disability rights, minority rights, freedoms of belief, conscience, speech, association and assembly and lesbian and gay rights. The Scottish Government is fully committed to upholding all these until and unless there's even a hint of a conflict with its intention to enshrine self-id in law.

Then all of these good intentions take a backseat to gender identity ideology and it's implementation in Scotland.

This is why it's so confounding and infuriating. The Scottish Government was moving towards improving things for disadvantaged groups and making progress, as far as I know. Suddenly, it's all out the window in order to force through a law that protects and elevates the rights of males to access all areas.

How? Why?

I am not a conspiracy theorist, I just find this really jarringly odd.

This from the BBC: "The 150 amendments included failed attempts to restrict rights for sex offenders, add safeguards in women's prisons, protect of single sex services for vulnerable women and faith groups, along with measures for women's sport and commitments to data collection." Surprisingly impartial, and sums up the utter batshit disregard for women...

The Times view. It's good, but misses the risk posed to children by child sex offenders who would wish to exploit this legislation:

The Times view on gender self-identification: Collision Course

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0006a5d8-816f-11ed-ab78-11b70ed96428?shareToken=31507bee153fc2fc02a67dbbb2f5ff6c

The Scottish rules would treat anyone legally certified as a woman as biologically female. That could lead to institutions being found guilty of breaching equality law if they refuse to recognise a Scottish GRC.

That is clearly unacceptable. The government must make clear that it will not accept gender self-identification in Britain by the back door. That may set up a clash with Holyrood. But Holyrood cannot be allowed effectively to impose its laws on the rest of Britain on an issue so contentious, and where women’s safety may be at stake.

Whereabouts was that? I can't find it on their current article ... although this one has a bit of interesting info:

'Aileen McHarg, professor of public law and human rights at Durham University's Law School, said there was a third route which opponents of the bill might go down: a challenge under Article Eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which codifies a right to respect for privacy.

But, said Prof McHarg, supporters of the bill could also mount a human rights challenge if there was a blanket refusal to recognise Scottish-issued gender recognition certificates elsewhere in the UK.

She told the BBC: "This is going to be very messy whatever happens."'

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64033750

Yes. They are.

Apparently inclusion only applies to the sparkly rainbow end of things though.

The boring work of including people with personal care needs or caring responsibilities (or inconvenient religious beliefs) or anything else that just isn’t fashionable, is not just ignored. These inconvenient people with needs are painted as villains standing in the way of the progressive utopia the TRAs are building.

It’s entirely within the gift of the Scottish parliament to organise its working practices with proper consideration of the needs of people (to mainstream a whole
set of reasonable adjustments that would make life better for everyone involved). But they’d rather do the exact opposite.

It’s utterly shameful.

On the live feed page, Arabella. Not sure whether it's written by someone less biased than usual, or whether it's simply impossible to discuss it factually in detail without exposing what's really going on...

I've been looking at the Daily Record FB page for the last few days

I know a couple of articles have been linked here- but silence on FB.

Why the silence? Is it not an important enough issue? They are not numpties - they know most Daily Record readers would be against this.

Some of the shit that pops up on my feed from the Daily Record, yet they don't post anything related to this?

Glad to see it on BBC Scotland News though.

I'm guessing someone, somewhere, has deeply incriminating or humiliating material on the main pushers and is blackmailing them.

I cant see any other reason, good or bad.

With regards to personal care, there is already a lack of respect for boundaries in Scotland (don't know if its the same in England).

Women get sent male carers, men get sent young girls who are not even 18 to provide intimate care.

I get that there are staffing issues, but people, men and women deserve dignity in a time of need.

The narrative I've been getting from Radio 4 is that the passage of the Bill has been so complicated because Scottish Conservatives have been using tactics in order to impede its progress. There hasn't been much room in that narrative to look into what it actually objectionable in the Bill itself, or what kind of reasonable amendments have been rejected.

A few years ago when I had dealings with care companies in England, women were always provided with female carers when requested: the problem was that there were hardly any male carers so it was actually impossible to provide men with male carers.

Recently my MIL told me that a transman we both know was working as a carer, and she found it hilarious that this person was being sent to clients who'd requested a male carer, and they were unaware. When i pointed out that the company could therefore send a trans woman to provide personal care should she need it, she didn't find it quite so funny.

I worked in legislation when the EA 2010 was passed: it was the end of the Labour government, Labour was expecting to lose the upcoming GE and so they were passing legislation thick and fast. When the EA came across my and my colleagues' desks, we all said that we'd never seen such an important piece of legislation so badly drafted and that it would come back to bite - I'm just sad that we were right.

(A lot of legislation is badly drafted, but when it's about salmon farming or the like, it's not that important)

Thanks, Selfportraitwithhagstone.

Lovely song here: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/1a79600e-8183-11ed-ab78-11b70ed96428?shareToken=8eda9fd3621798b4c4d278e0d2f2a26d

'Women's rights are human rights - this isn't over yet'

No curiosity as to why it's such vital legislation that it must be rammed through at speed making MSPs sit until 1am? What is the rush, the emergency that would make it so bad to take a couple of extra days to debate?

They look insane.

Some coverage on Radio 4 has been better, Nick Robinson for example, but you can see that real coverage depends on individual initiative from those having a position to expose some of the realities. But overall most of what I've heard has been a bland let's-have-one-easy-to-deliver-and-digest approach and Bad Scottish Tories provides that.

A free to access story about the potential clash with Westminster

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11520867/Nicola-Sturgeon-collision-course-ministers-gender-recognition-plans.html

Clearly written but its "the Mail" just like opposition to the Bill was "the Tories".

I wish people would engage brains and consider the utter immorality of enabling a convicted sex offender to share a prison cell with a vulnerable woman.

I might tune into James O'brien om LBC at 10 and see what he's got to say about it!

Or wait - he won't cover it will he? And likes the sound of his own voice too much.

Shelagh Fogarty may give it minor coverage (although as a woman I think she is too scared to really cover it like she wants).

I do think people have been thinking of transwomen as Hayley Cropper, that we need to be kind.

I think voting down an amendment which would have safeguarded females from transwomen sex offenders might peak a few of those people though.

To me it is not just “peaking”. When are the vulnerable girls in Rotherham, or female prisoners in Glasgow, or indeed girls at risk of forced marriage or FGM living in closed communities going to be heard. Let alone the confused middle class 12 year old who is scared of adulthood and puberty so thinks she might be a boy.

Has the first feminist, and the adults around her, lost their humanity. Why don’t they get it? If the Mail, and the Tories, and a number of ‘right wing’ commentators can, why can’t the left. They will be the ones who claim to care.

This is being covered on Woman's Hour now.

It's a shame Emma Barnett went on maternity leave last week. The stand-in WH presenters tend to be very fluffy on gender identity ideology.

That was a much better report. It was just Lauren Moss (LGBT & Identity Correspondent - BBC News) talking who covered a lot of ground. She's much more of a news journalist than an activist journalist.

I think they explained it quite well on womans hour.

It felt balanced and I think they made clear about the potential conflict with Womans Rights and the Equality Act.

I would suspect many TRAs will be annoyed at the segment because it was factful and didn't present any of the usual misinformation that they are so keen on.

I've been pleasantly surprised by Lauren Moss' contributions on the live coverage. Much more balanced than their previous LGBT correspondent...

I agree that Lauren Moss did a good job too. It was very factual.

Interesting that in the introduction to Woman’s Hour they followed the piece on girls and women in Afghanistan being banned from secondary and university education and now also potentially from primary education, with the Scottish GRR report, where trans people were described as “amongst the most disenfranchised and stigmatised people” (quoting from a UN spokesperson). TBF though, Lauren Moss did a pretty good factual report summing up the issues.