https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/11/scottish-government-is-ignoring-womens-rights?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1732971762
I confess I have not read the thread yesterday so apologies if this has already been posted.
Hannah Barnes New Statesman
On Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 November, the highest court in the land listened to arguments on how to answer a question that would, I think, seem extraordinary to most people: what is a woman? That we have got to this point makes a mockery of the Labour Party’s insistence, during the general election campaign, that the law is clear when it comes to the definition of sex.
Two things stood out as I followed the case on day two: that women (in Scotland in particular), were being gaslit by the Scottish government; and lesbians were, in effect, being told by the Scottish government that they were no longer protected in law according to their sexual orientation. By virtue of a legal piece of paper, it was argued, a “heterosexual male” could become a lesbian woman overnight. These were the words of Scottish government lawyers.
And
Having spent two years dismissing women’s concerns over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill – arguing that a GRC had no impact on the Equality Act or other people; that it was “just a piece of paper” that afforded trans people the dignity of having their births, marriages and deaths being recorded as their chosen gender – the Scottish government spent 27 November arguing precisely the opposite. “You had their lawyers in court using the words “far-reaching” more times than I could count”, Lucy Hunter Blackburn, from policy analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, told me.
And
Take just one example: in 2020, the Forensic Medical Services Bill proposed by the Scottish government was amended to explicitly state that survivors of rape and sexual assaults should be able to choose the sex – as opposed to gender – of the person examining them after an attack. The then Labour MSP Johann Lamont brought this amendment, which initially faced SNP opposition. “It’s quite clear that when that bill was going through, everybody knew what sex meant at this point,” Hunter Blackburn argues. “Yet now the Scottish government seems to be saying that everything that was done around that bill – which was a huge, huge political storm in Scotland – was a lie. They are burning everything to the ground to win this case.”
And
Crawford confirmed to the court that a lesbian association of 25 members or more would not be able to restrict membership to those who are born female. Natal males – in the language of the court, meaning those born male – with a GRC who were attracted to females could not be refused entry. The only way for these trans women to be excluded would be to regroup as an association which seeks to advance a protected philosophical belief: in this instance, the gender-critical belief that sex is immutable. Those inside the court building have reported “audible intakes of breath”. Under this scenario, lesbians were no longer lesbians but rather, as the academic Jo Phoenix put it, “gender-critical women attracted to other gender-critical women”: this was sexual orientation being replaced by “belief orientation”.