Thread by @Scot_Feminists

@NicolaSturgeon "doesn’t want pesky feminists scrutinising reform of the Gender Recognition Act. She wants it to pass committee stage on Tues, unrevised by 150 tabled amendments, the whole bill rammed through before Christmas"
A perfect summary! #Scarfgate
thetimes.co.uk/article/nicola…

A middle-aged scientist sitting quietly in a Scot parliament committee hearing was approached by a security guard. Either she must remove her purple, white and green scarf or leave the proceedings. (She left.) 2 other women were forced to take off similar coloured tartan scarves.

A fourth, in a plain purple scarf, was told to open her coat to check for signs of white and green.
The scientist questioned a security official and, squirming, he said he’d been told these colours were “political” and “associated with the women’s movement”.

Indeed: they are suffragette livery. After an online hoo-ha inevitably named “scarfgate”, the presiding officer (the Scot parliament’s Speaker) solemnly apologised for the security “error”. But the question remains: who had decided women must be surveilled for signs of sedition?

The truth is Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t want pesky feminists scrutinising reform of the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). She wants it to pass committee stage on Tuesday, unrevised by 150 tabled amendments, then the whole bill rammed through before Christmas.

That was the @theSNP’s coalition agreement with the @Scottishgreen and they will do it, whatever the reckless consequences.
The bill alters the process for obtaining a gender recognition certificate (GRC), which permits change to the legal sex on a birth certificate.

A present a trans person must be over 18, have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria & must have “lived in acquired gender” for 2 years. The SNP plans to reduce the minimum age to 16, & require 3 months in “acquired gender” plus a simple statutory declaration known as “self-ID”

Since there is no need to physically transition at all & no def of living as a woman, an SNP minister suggests it might mean changing the name on your gas bill, any man could become fully, legally female on his say-so alone.

There’s a notional 2-year prison sentence for making a false declaration. But when legal definitions are so intangible, what constitutes “false”? Last year the Scottish gov allowed GRC-holders to change the date and location of their weddings on their marriage certificates

to protect their identity. When public documents can be falsified at whim, what is “truth”?
The scarf-wearers have endured years of verbal and physical bullying for pointing out implications for women.

Under the UK-wide Equality Act, a GRC does not override biological sex. So sports, domestic violence refuges or intimate searches, as examples, can be kept female-only. But the Scottish gov argued in a recent judicial review that a GRC changes a person’s sex “for all purposes”.

This is calamitous for single-sex wards or rape crisis services, but particularly for women prisoners. The British Psychological Society has warned of rising “cases where men convicted of sex crimes have falsely claimed to be transgender females” to move to the women’s estate.

This has already led to sexual assaults. Currently in Scotland most trans-identified male prisoners remain, after risk assessment, in men’s jails. But Scot gov refuses to clarify whether self-ID would give them automatic transfer to women’s prisons, as in Ireland & many US states

One modest amendment proposed that registered sex offenders should be ineligible to obtain GRCs, possession of which would allow them into women’s spaces and could, in effect, let them conceal their prior identity and offending history.

Scot gov rejected this on human rights grounds. It's not addressed fears that this will also render DBS checks worthless.Ironically Scot gov is driving through GRA reform to prove progressive credentials compared with backward, conservative England just as global opinion turns.

Concern that a worldwide spike in mentally ill teenage girls identifying as boys is caused by social contagion has led to new clinical caution. The independent Cass review into England’s child gender services notes that social transition,

changing your name & pronouns, is “not a neutral act” but propels children towards hormones & surgery. What bigger, more concrete act of social transition than changing your legal birth sex! How are schools expected to treat a 16yr old male child with a female birth certificate?

Already GRA reform has provoked SNP government’s biggest ever rebellion & the resignation of the minister Ash Regan, who said her conscience wouldn’t allow her to support the bill because it endangered women & girls. Polls suggest public opposition to these radical, hasty reforms

Self-ID was not even in the SNP manifesto, so why is Sturgeon squandering so much political capital?
Some believe she seeks a tangible legacy, which, given the parlous state of Scottish education and NHS, she lacks. Or that, cynically, she would like the Westminster government to

strike down her new GRA if it believes it undermines protections under the Equality Act. Then Sturgeon could enjoy a proxy nationalist battle in the Supreme Court: see how the English won’t let us make our own laws!

So, backed by supine Labour MSPs who conceal their many private misgivings, this deep hasty new law will be whipped through. The safeguarding of young people, female dignity, hard-won rights and truth itself, all chucked aside for ideology and political expediency.

Despite the tireless efforts of the women in suffragette scarves!
#WomenWontWheesht
#ScarfGate