Overwhelming sense of despair due to being Scottish right now, please help me

[INeedAPensieve]

Just that really. The amount of absolutely bonkers stuff that's happening here in Scotland due to the gender ideologists taking over government and public and civil life has made me feel very despairing of living in this country and being Scottish. I need some positive reassurance that I've not woken up in some dystopian nightmare where my country has been taken over by the baddies from 1984.

Right now I've got; it was Scottish women who got the Supreme Court to confirm that sex was in fact, based on biology when it came to the EA2010.

Scottish women wrote the women who wouldn't wheesht which is doing a great trade.

Jk Rowling lives here and hasn't been chased out (yet, and I hope not).

Anything else? The negative side is mounting up and I'm feeling depressed.

Just in the past few weeks we've had:-
-ex FM Nicola's book promotion and denials of all she's done
-The national library of Scotland removing the WWW book from the exhibition
-Kate Forbes making people feel "unsafe" apparently
-glasgow uni students saying some women's signs/banners made feel "unsafe" and getting the women removed from the venue they'd booked.
-The whole NHS Fife v Sandie Peggie shit show
-edinburgh book festival ignoring any books that didn't toe the GI line
-My work (not saying the specifics as it will be a bit identifying but suffice to say it's wholeheartedly embraced GI despite other public organisations waking up to legal challenges. Over the past month there have been Comms about "people on maternity leave", a menopause group for "all genders" and a new progress pride lanyard for staff to wear but nothing about disability or any other characteristics.

It's so baffling to me that this has taken hold. I just feel like it's a mad uphill challenge. I feel like I'm in some alternative reality. Hoping I can get some reassurance!

You're not alone and the tide is turning. Have a re read of the Spartacus thread from 2016 for a boost of how many awesome wims there are holding strong. It's amazing how far we've come since then.

I totally understand you're feelings (I am so frustrated that the majority of my friends still can't grasp this whole thing).

Sending solidarity!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/2716595-TransAgenda-BullShit-The-I-am-Spartacus-Thread?page=5&reply=63183135

If it helps, I’m in a rural town and have met lots of people who think it’s nonsense. Unfortunately, it’s localized among those in power, to the point that the impression is very skewed, but most Scots I’ve met are as they always were.

It's been like this up here for years OP, and I agree it's an utter shit show.

I think it's going to take a very very long time to root out this ideology, it's like Japanese knotweed, and as we've already seen it'll be resisted every step of the way despite the SC win.

We just have to keep going, one step at a time, and understand that there will be times of despair and that's okay.

Ultimately this shit won't stand because the truth is the truth and reality is real...but I am demoralised by how long I think it will actually take.

I peaked over ten years ago and we're still fighting it...

Rural area - too much live biology around for people to take it seriously round here. Kids get suckered in because they want to be nice to everyone but the abuses ( the gala butcher for example ) make them squirm

I think most Scots are small c conservative. Particularly in rural areas. Practically everyone I’ve met or seen in comment sections online thinks Peggie is in the right.

On the positive side for you Sir Nicola has been thinking about leaving apparently.

Although she needs to go somewhere far away as I don’t want her in England (sorry to any country that does get landed).

Honestly, I have immense pride that through the sheer force of will of the dauntless grassroots feminism of Scottish women that we've managed to push all this shite back to the extent we have. We have been the epicentre of the battshittyist extremes of institutional capture and through the braveness of several specific women willing to put themselves in the firing line, the superb work of organisations like FWS and MBM, and the sheer tenacity of ordinary Scottish women writing to their MSP's, writing letters, embroidering banners, attending events, signing petitions and not allowing themselves to be brushed off, we have pushed it back. We have held Governments and institutions to account and not been found wanting.

The battle is not yet won but the end is on the horizon.

I don't feel disheartened. I'm just proud of us.

Thanks everyone! Your comments are making me feel a bit better. Today at work was a particularly low point for me. I was tempted to post Reem Alsalem's essay on why removing women's words and the word women is detrimental to our rights on the article about "people on maternity leave" but felt too feart in the end.

My mortgage is high, my kids are young and one of them is severe SEN and disabled. To risk anything at work (despite me being legally in the right) would be an added stress I don't need. This is why I am so awed at the bravery of Sandie Peggie and all other women who've fought back.

The equality team at my work are completely captured and there's an undercurrent of unpleasantness I feel from the head of that team whenever I engage with him. Perhaps because he's clocked I don't have pronouns in my email signature, who knows. So many do now at work and marketing push for us to update constantly that to not have them feels like I'm standing out now. Anyway. I think the menopause is just round the corner for me and I'd really rather not be in a support group that includes men. I wouldn't talk about all the ins and outs with my husband never mind male colleagues. It's just so performative but at the same time feels so exclusionary to women.

No reassurance from me sorry but I just wanted to empathise with you about feeling you’ve woken up in a dystopian universe. I work for a trade union and it’s completely captured by the cult, all the women’s groups and events centre men in dresses despite 75% of the members being women.
Just keep your kids off the internet as much as you can so they don’t get groomed into it like mine have.
Actually, a bit of encouragement. Wee Nippy seems to be getting openly slated all over the place and the National Library are getting plenty of press.

I think the ideology has a stronger hold in Scotland, but the pushback has been harder too. There are so many wonderful women in Scotland, and getting the Supreme Court judgement was a towering achievement that is being felt around the world.

It could be worse. You could be Irish.

Where men can self id, and can technically commit exposure and voyeurism at will in changing rooms, or anywhere women undress or are vulnerable. Imagine being the only woman present, or a mother with young children, and one of these blokes plonked himself into supposedly single sex space.

Where the LGFA (ladies Gaelic football association) sent communications to their local organisers on how to shut down parents who were concerned about their daughters on the pitch and in the changing rooms.

Where male sex offenders get to harass female prison inmates. Even when they threaten to rape the women prisoners who are trapped with them, the men don’t appear to suffer any consequences. Most of the men put into women’s prisons in Ireland are male sex offenders.

Where our former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, claimed he didn’t even know about how women were locked up with a very disturbed man called Barbie Kardashian. BK had almost ripped the eyelids off his social worker, and was threatening to rape and torture his mother. Big on violence against women, and then continues to threaten to rape women. The Irish police even said that there was a dangerous teenage ‘girl’ on the loose before they caught him. Not that women should in fact be wary of a 17/18 year old young man. So, no regard to the safety of Irish women at all. Despite it having been very widely reported, Leo claimed he had never heard of the whole BK thing at all. Sure, Leo! So, in my opinion, the prime minister of the country appeared to have no f&cks to give about women either. Such a progressive dude. Same old, same old.

I won’t even go into the depressing amount of tax funded of NGO’s who have men who pose as women in their boards and management. Even women’s orgs. Or, how there is no political choice as there is now a blur of ‘tweedledum and tweedledee’ who just share power, and alternate who is head honcho halfway through their term. All pushing this bs as if it is ‘progressive’.

All the recent reports and recommendations on foot of the historic sex abuse inquiries and commissions all thrown aside. It seems our recent shower of politicians are trying to frame it as ‘progressive’ to make it much, much easier for men to commit sex crimes and abuses against women and children.

At least you had legislation, on which women could seek to defend their rights at SC level. No such sturdy defence of women’s rights seems to exist in Ireland.

I'm Irish, living in Scotland - yes it's thoroughly depressing at home with gender replacing sex in legislation. It's like we went from one oppressive regime to another.

My workplace is completely captured - things are changing more broadly but my god it's like being surrounded by cult members. I've had my speech corrected in a spiky way as I misgendered someone who was non binary (and who didn't work with us any more) - I was paying the person a complement but, alas, I sinned.

Furious with NLS.

I think we will be fine. Just been to the book festival and two queer academics discussing ideas that are entirely irrelevant to material reality wondering how the foregrounding of biology first had come about and couldn’t define sex, gender or sexuality as they are too complex and blancmangey. Tent not even half full hardly any of their books sold and I bought T4W to cleanse my palate.

I haven’t read this yet (just seen on X), but here is JKRs review of Nicola Sturgeon’s bio.

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/the-twilight-of-nicola-sturgeon-j-k-rowling-reviews-frankly/

May take your mind off things!

Oh @Cailleach1 it's horrendous in Ireland and to think, if it wasn't for some tenacious and brave women in Scotland we would have been in the same situation. Barbie Kardashian is the most awful, awful situation. It beggars belief. I'm sorry there's no supreme court to help push it all back in Ireland. I was there recently on holiday and it's a lovely place, such beautiful scenery. I didn't encounter any gender madness thankfully, other than in cork city where there was a big progress rainbow on the road but other than that, it was mainly woodland walks and parks we went to. I hate that all this has happened in Ireland and the politicians are still sticking their fingers in their ears.

I mean, broadly there have been so many incidents like this in Scotland (all the violent prison inmates like Paris green, Karen White, Tiffany Scott, big Isla in his pink leggings), the one from the borders abducting and abusing that wee lassie before she miraculously managed to escape, the nonsense with the NHS in Scotland, the police, the decapitate terfs thing whilst Nicola sturgeon is telling us that we are all bigoted, racist etc etc for raising concerns.

Then there was Edinburgh rape crisis and the scandal of a man in charge of that, the bullying of Roz adams who worked for them, him on record speculating if rape victims orgasmed during their rapes and also telling women to reframe their trauma. Then the bullying of Jenny Lindsay, of Joanna cherry, of jkr (although she always rose above it), women being spat on and abused at Edinburgh uni for daring to want to watch a film, the non binary sex offender who worked for the SNP (pictures of him with Nicola) using a rape crisis centre before finally being convicted of various sexual assaults, the whole absolute bin fire of LGBTYS infiltrating our schools with two convicted paedophiles who worked for them (one the CEO). It goes on and on. Oh! And yes, the creative Scotland pornographic scandal, the man shouting abuse at women outside the Filia conference in Glasgow, a woman being punched in Aberdeen by an activist and the police doing nothing, it's felt endless. TIE and LGBTYS I feel need to be removed from Scottish schools otherwise this will continue into more generations. The government is still the same they won't stop gender ideology it's too deeply embedded. I know this as my work is public sector. Sadly. But I do hold out hope for Ireland as I've seen how brave women (and men!) have helped us here. X

Thanks for that review, v v enjoyable!!! JK does have a way with words, she should be a writer... 😜

I'm also Scottish and some days I just utterly despair. It seems every day there's a new incident of discrimination against gender critical views being reported in the news.

I find it utterly baffling that anyone can believe in trans shite but so many on our arts and third sector are so utterly captured.

Then I remember the supreme court ruling and how women in Scotland have been leading the pushback against this nonsense.

We will prevail.

I'm not Scottish but married to a Scot and have lived here 25 years, I love this wee country to bits and was happy to move here. But not happy with what has happened in the last ten years.
but thinking over history, and I say this just as random thoughts and not to offend, it seems as if there is something that makes some Scots go to extremes. I'm thinking of the Calvinist extreme Protestantism which seems so joyless (and anti woman).
and the burning of 'witches', which I think was the most numerous here than the England (pls correct me if I am wrong).
of course these things happened too in other countries to some degree.
but they passed, and eventually humanity and common sense prevailed, and we had the Enlightenment. Hopefully this cult will pass too, because the majority of Scots are too sensible to go along with it, at least in my experience.
if this country manages to get its independence it can vote out the SNP as being unnecessary and vote in a party of good governance as I hope a lot of good people will come out of the woodwork and actually act on what the people of Scotland want and put Scotland on a better footing.
this is my hope anyway.

You're right, it has been a shitshow in Scotland. However, in the long run the extremism here has probably helped the GC cause.

Isla Bryson and Sturgeon's refusal to admit he's a man - brought the issue into the mainstream and peaked a lot of people.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre - not as high profile as some other cases, but completely indefensible.

The GRR reform bill was so extreme (with even sex offenders allowed to submit their gas bills and get a gender update) that Westminster blocked it. I wonder how much of the push for this bill was simply a wish to look progressive and to get one up on Westminster.

Sandie Peggie's case has outraged even more people.

There has been an increasing amount of press coverage on the issue, and mostly I would say favourable to the GC side.

We have a raft of strong women standing up to this ideology, women who are not afraid to stand up and be counted. Maya Forstater, JK Rowling, Sandie Peggie, MurrayBlackburnMackenzie, Joanna Cherry, FWS, Ash Regan, Kate Forbes, Susan Dalgety, and many others. Don't feel disheartened!

Thanks everyone I do feel better. ❤️

Interesting perspective from @FizzingAda about the history of Scotland there and bouts of extremism. It's true witch burning was mad here, much more so than in England. I think it was James VI that led the charge, I'd need to check history again. You may have hit on one aspect of it, that such a small country can be prone to really pushing itself to extremes be it one way or the other. Maybe that's why it's taken hold so much in Ireland too, there was a deep rooted misogyny in both countries for so long that it overcorrected and then it's just meant it's misogyny again but a different flavour. Small countries with such conservatism for a long time, but always sadly it's women and girls who come off worst.

I feel so grateful for the brave women who have fought so hard against it. I want to start being braver at work and challenging more things. It's ridiculous at my work, I can't even get my head around it. We work with young people as well, so again, it's just continuing into education and training and I don't know how it can be pushed back.

Slight derail but I loved this line: …Boris Johnson, who could have been replaced with three ferrets in a sack and the only change would have been a slight increase in decisiveness and gravitas

In Scotland too and also despairing at times. The NLS furore, nonsense at Summerhall, NHS Fife...

And I just read this morning a headline in The Scotsman - I don't have a sub, so haven't read the whole article - but today's headline is that Edinburgh Council have declared government guidance on single sex spaces is unlawful in relation to schools. So what does this mean going forward?

I'm pretty damn despairing about Wales, too, @INeedAPensieve . Land of my fathers, indeed. ("My fathers can keep it". Thanks, Dylan.)

Yes, we are up shit creek here. I'm surprised about how unaware my friends are about the whole issue. A few friends had no idea that self id existed until I pointed it out, and thought that to be considered trans you had to go through full gender reassignment. Not many seem to know that the word sex has been replaced with gender in our legislation, and the implications of this (in fact no one I've talked to).
In my son's school there is a 6 year old 'trans-girl' who we are all expected to help socially transition and the kids are reprimanded if they misgender him. Everyone is turning a blind eye to how damaging it is to lie to our kids (except us).
Sorry OP, I share your despair and I'm dreading what the new school year holds. But at least we're all in it together and the tide seems to definitely be turning.

Sorry, OP. I'm feeling much the same.