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!

I read that headline with despair too but actually it's positive for the gender critical side. If you read the story they are saying the Scot gov trans guidance in schools is unlawful and needs to be updated following the Supreme Court ruling.

I’m in a rural area too. The children at my kids high school seemed to have moved past the gender stuff. The kids hanging on to it seem to me to be disproportionately autistic (all the ones I know of anyway). But it feels like a fad that’s passed its hey day now at our school. The children use chosen names and pronouns but in this way: “Jaz, Fliffy, Smoof - what’s his name now? Or are they they? - Oh yeah, Smiffy said they liked their chocolate”. It’s box ticking and feels very much like tolerance rather than belief. And the proposal for shared toilets has been shelved thanks to the Supreme Court ruling. That was a proposal the girls were very angry about.

The adults here have never bought into it.

However, on a recent trip into Edinburgh I saw at least three transgender women in the space of an hour. More than I’ve seen in years here.

I had a conversation with a friend who was very much TWAW until confronted with stories like Isla Bryson etc. She exclaimed: “But those are just perverts …” (a word I wouldn’t DARE use in public in relation to TW). And then I just watched her as the penny dropped. That penny has never been picked up again.

Cailleach1 · Yesterday 18:38
. Despite it having been very widely reported, Leo [Varadkar, form Taoiseach] 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.

When asked about the Barbie K case, presumably after he
had looked into it in detail and got all the facts, Varadkar gave a very clear reply:

Responding to whether he believes violent biological males should be put into women's prisons, Mr Varadkar said: "No, I don’t, quite frankly."

"If the situation that arose in Scotland [Isla Bryson] has now arisen in Ireland, well, then we’re going to have to deal with it in a similar way." [IB was moved to a men's prison].

Which is what happened to Barbie K, who was also moved to a men's prison.
Prison Service finalising policy on transgender inmates

So in fairness, Varadkar's initial response that he wasn't familiar with the case was just that - an initial response, but not the whole story.

Oh thank you for the info. Just read it now. Wonder which Edinburgh high school has no single sex toilet facilities for pupils?

The schools in Scotland are where the next push backs need to take place. It's crazy what's being taught. Science and biological facts have been thrown out the window. For the sake of what?!

I'm honestly dreading it when it comes up in my son's school. He's in an ASN base but I'm also worried for my younger son who doesn't have additional needs, but due to start next year. Kids are susceptible to ideologies and put a lot of trust in teachers. So I worry about the amount of power the activist ones have. Also enabled by the Scottish government pouring money into organisations that promote GI.

I wonder if it's because these are two countries where there was historically a powerful religious base, with all the misogyny, violence and repression that comes along with that... This feels like an outlet for that, behind the cover of being ever-so enlightened and modern and inclooosive...

Perhaps it's time Scotland hosted a new Enlightenment... 😄 A Vindication of the Rights of the Women Who Wouldn't Wheest...

Don’t think it’s been mentioned so far - Nicola Sturgeon voted AGAINST the repeal of Section 28, she said she didn’t think Scotland was ready for this change. How did she go from being homophobic to being captured by the trans cult? Oh, wait….

The despair transcends generations. We older mums are trying to help those forced to endure bigotry for £££

MOURNING
(after Jenny Joseph, with apologies)

Now I am old I can wear purple
I’ll tie green ribbons in my hair
Pluck white flowers from public gardens
Way down to Holyrood I’ll go

I’ll drag my stick along the railings
Bend painful knees and set me down
From my bag I’ll draw white flowers
Cast on the pavement one by one

The first flower’s for women Scotland
Our sex they wanted to erase
Yet see how strong its fragrance
How its petals rise with grace

The next bloom is brown and faded
This one’s for the law
And this blossom’s education
See how its sweet petals fall

This one’s for truth and wisdom
The next for a lost nation’s wealth
One for twenty thousand homeless
One for our poor nation’s health

I will draw out one last blossom
It’s stamens bent and petals gone
This once was the flower of Scotland
I’ll lay it very gently down

I’ll drag my stick across the railings
Rip green ribbons from my hair
Pull off my purple dress and lay them
By the white flowers dying there

INeedAPensieve

I suspect we work for the same organisation and I wholeheartedly agree with what you say. I've name changed for this as I could be too easily identifiable. What strange times we live in.

My strong feeling for a while now has been that the large numbers female staff are firmly at the bottom of the pecking order when it comes to caring what we might think, how we may feel and what's important to us. The efforts to reward and champion staff who tick the right kind of inclusion boxes shines through day in, day out.

Desperate efforts to keep the stampy of feet and hurty of feelings members of the workforce happy to the detriment of the majority of the rest of us.

I look forward to the day when the tide turns and will forever judge those who enabled it all. Solidarity with you and the rest of us (I suspect there are many) hiding in the shadows too anxious to speak freely.

That’s so poignant and beautiful 😢💖

What a beautiful poem @treeofwisdom thank you for posting it.x

And yes, @Newnameforthisthread1 we might do, it's hard as I genuinely think every public sector organisation in Scotland is the same. Which is so frustrating.

Baby steps.

I had some training the other day, ostensibly on Gender based violence. In defining GBV, the trainer said this was predominantly perpetrated by males against females but the slides said GBV could affect "people of all genders". I questioned, with a disingenuous air of puzzlement, whether we were talking about sex or gender as they were obviously different things.

There was a slightly panicked look in the trainer's eyes and a bit of burble which included "trans" and "intersex" (I refrained from pointing out that is no longer the preferred term) which I listened to politely but I felt I'd made my point (and didn't want to undermine the otherwise important message of the training).

I'm relatively new in post and there's no way I'd have felt comfortable even gently pushing back until very recently.

I sensed zero reaction from the other people in the room which I interpreted as what I said being not remotely controversial. We were all middle aged though.

All of them, because the previous guidance was that students could use whichever they felt comfortable in! (I don't think there are any cases comparable to the one where, iiuc, primary schools were being equipped with explicitly unisex toilets only, and that was - obviously - found to be unlawful earlier?)

I don’t believe for a moment that LV was not aware of BK having being placed in a woman’s prison. At that point the dogs in the street knew about the situation. He was put on the spot, couldn’t avoid the question, and threw out an answer in order to save face in front of the cameras with a view to self preservation. Or until the spin doctors had spun the line to take. My OH was watching at the same time, and interesting said he thought LV was lying. Now I understand others may wish to be generous to LV.

I suspect that his advised line to take was to most certainly to say they should be moving a male rapist who had gained enormous press coverage to a male prison. On a case by case basis, wasn’t it? In that very high profile instance when it is expedient to state that line. Or would look dreadful not to do so. Leaving all the rest of the consequences of the GRA untroubled and unhampered. What about the other male offenders? So, I wonder if it is only the very violent male sexual offenders set loose amongst trapped women that he thinks will look bad. Again, I wouldn’t believe the light of day from LV. He was fine with it all, and had nowt to say until he was doorstepped about it. BK also attacked a female prison guard, and was in court also for threatening to rape another inmate which was witnessed by a prison guard. No consequences for him, of course. At what point was he deemed to be too dangerous for the women’s prison, I wonder, and the women given some relief. LV, as far as I know didn’t try to repeal the GRA or amend it to put his money where his platitudes were. Not one iota of an attempt to row this rubbish back. Did he have nothing to say about the possible consequences of all this for half the country?

That prisons services policy on placing ’transgender’ prisoners will be looking at other jurisdictions and how they are handing the situation. Hmm. That will not necessarily be great news for Irish women prisoners. Anyway, with the GRA still intact, it is just moving furniture around.

Reminds me to listen to a Paddy O’Gorman podcast. He interviews the women who have been incarcerated with these men. I think he does refuges as well. Wait till Leo hears about women having been beaten up by men in women’s refuges. Who will tell him, and why will he the very last person in Ireland to hear about it. He will be shocked (well on camera and appropriate to the spin to be taken), I tell ya.

That they're a bunch of wooden headed ideologues, who will soon be sued to Hell and back, completely wasting valuable court time an public money, jn futile cases, which cannot hope to win.

Im in Scotland too and aghast at public bodies refusing to comply with the law.
Ive been following the Sandy Peggie tribunal and thread and feeling a bit alone now that its pretty much finished. Michael Foran did a good podcast this evening and its reminded me of my values.
But know too many who are in the #be kind camp and they think Im unhinged when I try and discuss it. I have no answer when one said that its ok for men-who-want-to-be-woman to have the right to join a lesbian group. I despair.

James VI/I was indeed a keen witch-hunter, at least at first. Even he decided things had got a bit out of hand. He didn't start it, but he did write a book about it, and seems to have been influenced by what was happening on the Continent at the time.

Scotland is said to have had the first conviction involving a "pact with the devil". I belive Mick Jagger was already alive at the time, which is an interesting connection.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_early_modern_Scotland

I have to say, much as I'm a bit despairing how all this gender stuff has gained traction, I'm feeling right now that uncontrolled immigration is a far bigger threat to European women than the trans lobby. Some of the stats posted in the current thread were pretty eye opening to me. And most worryingly many of the people I've seen trying to shut down such discussions are people who seem pretty clued up on the whole trans issue. I think it's a much bigger and more dangerous blind spot.

My point of optimism would be the Scottish media. During the Sandie Peggie case several newspapers used right sex pronouns for BU and realised that reporting in a sensible, factual way meant a bazillion clicks from news-starved TERFs. Even the BBC reported it, in marked contrast to what we got south of the border. Yes, the public and publicly funded sector is ridiculously captured but look at the way the Scottish newspapers are after NHS Fife now. The sharks have seen blood in the water.

That's true. The newspapers are becoming more dogged and determined in their reporting; I think they can see how ridiculous it is and also, it's providing great headlines. I'm so disappointed by the BBC as well, I've subscribed to the herald and the courier and Scotsman now as I'm impressed at their journalism. Also the Sunday post has been great on this. Which is my dad's paper!

Doesn't a lot of the madness come down to the combination of social justice activism/progressivism ( which is a movement everywhere) and nationalism. Being contrary and oppositional to whatever England does - as a show of independence and self rule?

@Shortshriftandlethal yes I think that's part of it. I voted for Independence because I thought that Scotland was a more left-wing country and more inclined to social justice, and also that Scotland was more likely to progress measures to counteract climate change.

I'm very glad now that we didn't get it.

The Scottish Nationalists, though, range from the socially conservative, to the full on wokeists that seem inseparable from the Scottish Greens. And England is, of course, very diverse with a far larger population.