A thread on why trans rights might not be as much of a progressive badge as it's claimed. And why Malta provides a warning. The Scottish govt claims its GR Reform Bill will "advance Scotland's reputation as one of the most progressive countries.." and it's answer to any....
2./ ..concerns raised is a blanket assurance that it has analysed risks exhaustively. Really? The new Bill creates a glaring loophole in making a Gender Recognition Certificate easier to obtain. Instead of a 2 year process with expert medical supervision a person will need ...
3./ ..to spend only 3 months living in their "new gender" with no medical or psychiatric assessment (plus a token cooling period). To listen to some trans activists you'd think a touch of nail polish is enough to prove you've lived as a woman, so who will judge which males are ..
4./...really "women"? Step forward Tim Ellis, the Registrar General who also heads up National Records of Scotland, the very same people who have been trying to change questions on the Scottish census to make it super-woke, & recently defended a hilarious drop-down..
5./ ...menu of options for sexual orientation that included "demiromantic". Don't ask. They might as well have given the job to a random trans activist for all the safeguarding he'll be doing. In the future there really will be nothing to stop any bloke in..
6./ ...Scotland who says he's feeling his inner female from getting full legal recognition as a woman. Nothing except a solemn vow that he's (she's) telling the truth. Thankfully, it's well known how off-putting solemn vows are to that determined minority of men who have malign..
7./ .. intentions. So is this safe? Rest assured we're told. Other pioneer countries have done all the careful research for us. Places like Malta. When Scotland was named number one for LGBT rights in Europe in 2015 there was only one country that got higher praise by "experts" :
8./.. Malta. You see Malta had gender recognition and was one of the pioneers of the same non-medical self-identification that Scotland now wants to introduce and it was this that in 2017 that helped Malta seize no 1 position from Scotland altogether. equality-network.org/scotland-loses…
9./ Scotland was clearly going to have to get some of Malta's 'best practise' But how did Malta come to exemplify this 'best practise'; and can we take comfort by how carefully it was introduced there? Judge for yourself how important safety was for Malta from a story that starts
10./.. in 2003 when international LGBTi organisation, ILGA, was in deep trouble. For a decade it had tried to recover its UN accredited NGO status it lost when paedophile groups were linked to it. Here's ILGA's rather white-washed take on the scandal ilga.org/ilga-ecosoc-st…
11./ Semi-bankrupt, it moved its HQ to that of a small gay rights group in Malta, where local ILGA official Ruth Baldacchino began to focus on lobbying close to home. Malta has a smaller population than Glasgow so it wasn't long before her campaign began to gain traction.
12./ It also helped that the following year Malta joined the EU and local politicians were keen to find a way to sprinkle sparkle over their tiny nation's rather dubious reputation for corruption and nepotism. None more so than one of its first MEPs a rising star, Joseph Muscat.
13./ When Muscat was elected Labour leader in 2008 he and his circle embraced Baldacchino and ILGA's mish-mash of gender identity ideas and in 2013 when he became Malta's PM he fast-tracked the Bill that would soon be celebrated as "best practise". Forget that women's...
14./ ..rights were so secondary in Malta that it's still the only EU country to ban abortion in ALL circumstances. So little thought was given to how to enact the Bill that 3 years later transwomen prisoners sued the govt for leaving them in limbo. timesofmalta.com/articles/view/…
15./ So why the rush? Maybe Equalities Minister Helena Dalli sussed that merely following other countries' lead on gay rights wouldn't be good enough. To get noticed, to gain plaudits, you have to go further. Number One. It's the same pressure SNP Ministers are responding to now.
16./ Was Dalli well-intentioned? A local journalist claimed her obsession with trans rights was a cover for her prime focus, nepotism. That may be unfair, but it certainly doesn't sound like Dalli was probing any safeguarding issues. daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2017/08/mrs-pa…
17. As for the guy who drafted Dalli's 'best practise" Bill Scotland is now shamelessly apeing...he did so despite being convicted of sending revenge porn to his gay partner's workplace the year before. independent.com.mt/articles/2014-…
18. As Jack Lemmon said, "Nobody's perfect" So if he & Dalli weren't best placed to judge ethical dilemmas raised by their Bill, who was? Maybe it was Muscat the new PM who pushed the Bill through? Maybe. All we know for sure is that 2 years after the 'best practise' Bill was..
19./..passed Daphne Galizia, the journalist who'd criticized Dalli & who'd been following corrupt money to the heart of the Labour government was blown up in a car bomb. The man accused claims Joseph Muscat's office was involved. The fact Azerbaijani money is...
20./ ..implicated & Muscat was for years an EU link to Azerbaijan may be coincidental. What it does suggest is we should be suspicious of parties & politicians that fix on trans rights as a new progressive cause without thinking it through. It could just be displacement activity.
21./ We should also be wary of mumbo jumbo about 'international best practise' circulated by lobby groups with a narrow agenda. Malta was presented as a shining beacon. But some of its leaders who championed the sort of legislation the SNP is now intent on introducing may have..
22./..connived in unspeakable crimes. As citizens, we've a right & a duty to examine this proposed legislation fearlessly. We should probe every claim, question every assertion. Daphne Galizia, blown up in the country of so-called "best practise", would expect nothing less.
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