Mick Hartley

Yes it's shooting fish in a barrel, but Alex Massie in the Times has fun with the gender buffoonery at Holyrood:

It is remarkable how often something that would never happen nevertheless keeps happening. We may now add the case of Amy George to those of Katie Dolatowski and Isla Bryson, sex offenders whose convictions have made a nonsense of the Scottish parliament’s gender recognition reforms.

George, also known as Andrew Miller, pleaded guilty last week to the abduction and repeated sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl. Dolatowski was convicted of a number of crimes and, despite being a biological male, served time at Cornton Vale woman’s prison. Bryson, formerly known as Adam Graham, was convicted of two charges of rape and was also initially sent to Cornton Vale.

Scottish ministers have made fools of themselves attempting to escape the inevitable, and predicted, consequences of their own choices. Asked about the Miller case last week, Shona Robison — now deputy first minister and in a previous incarnation the minister responsible for piloting the government’s gender recognition reforms through parliament — beclowned herself. “Clearly this is a predatory man who has carried out offending behaviour and should be treated as such,” she said.

But how can Robison know Miller is a man and not, as he says he is, someone “transitioning” to being a woman? How can she know that Isla Bryson is actually Adam Graham and just pretending to be a woman? Not that Robison is alone in her confusion. The first minister, Humza Yousaf, also judges that Graham is “at it”, skipping past his vote for a bill that opened the door to men to behave in precisely the way he now deplores….

Previously, trans people existed on a kind of spectrum of their own. At one end there were those with a GRC (some of whom would also have had significant surgical interventions) and at the other were those whose commitment to being trans was of a different, perhaps more nebulous, order.

The Scottish government’s bill collapsed any distinction between these different states of being trans. Among those thus damaged by it were trans people with gender dysphoria who now face being lumped in with what one might term lifestyle trans people.

Of course, Robison is merely the monkey. Nicola Sturgeon was her organ grinder and the former first minister emerged from purdah last week to collect an award for being the LGBT community’s top “celebrity ally”.

Accepting this bauble, she declared that “My rights as a woman are not diminished in any way by the enhancement of the rights of trans men and women. Never, never, never, let anyone tell you otherwise”.

At best this reflects a dismal failure of imagination. A simple example will suffice to rebut — and indeed refute — Sturgeon’s argument. If you are a female athlete or swimmer or cyclist suddenly required to compete against, and quite likely be beaten by, a biologically male athlete now identifying as a woman then clearly your rights have been significantly diminished by the “enhancement” of trans rights. Sturgeon may think this insignificant but plenty of women — quite rightly — disagree.

It is true that for most people, most of the time, these clashes of rights will not arise but it is Sturgeon and her allies who make palpably untrue claims of universal application. Even now, after all this time, our parliamentarians appear profoundly uninterested in the implications — and, indeed, the reality — of their votes. Welcome to the Hotel Holyrood; check your brain at the door.

For years now Sturgeon and her allies have insisted people are who they say they are. That is the entire point of self-identification. Asking questions or casting doubt on anyone’s commitment to living in their new reality was “transphobic”. Now Sturgeon, Robison, Yousaf and everyone else who ignored warnings about where this might lead are hoist with the petard of their own “transphobia”….

The mantra of “no debate” has given way to a period of no reflection. Perhaps this is because reflection might then require shame. And that is something which can never happen.