Scotland’s Gender MeltdownNicola Sturgeon championed a policy of letting biological men into protected female spaces. Now she’s paying the price for her dangerous folly.
Joan Smith
6 Feb 2023
Scotland is a small country with a rich intellectual tradition. It had its own Enlightenment, producing philosophers such as Adam Smith and David Hume, while its novelists—Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle—became towering literary figures. What they would have made of the scandal currently convulsing Scotland is anyone’s guess, but you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that a shaven-headed sex offender in a blond wig is actually a man. Adam Graham’s photograph, with and without the wig, has been splashed across front pages, TV screens and mobile phones for days since his trial for rape at the High Court in Glasgow, accompanied by growing skepticism about his claim to be transgender.
https://twitter.com/TalkTV/status/1618177595975106561The reluctance of leading Scottish politicians to break ranks and admit that Graham is male has turned them into a laughing stock. The country’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, couldn’t even bring herself to use his name, telling the Scottish Parliament: “I’m not going to get into the individual circumstances of that particular individual’s claims to be a woman because I don’t have enough information about that.” Some observers would respond that the fact Graham has been convicted of raping two women is a pretty strong clue about his sex.
Graham appeared in court under the name Isla Bryson, showing how successfully trans ideology has captured Scottish institutions. The judge addressed him as “Ms. Bryson,” and he was even remanded to a women’s prison, until an outcry prompted his transfer to the male estate. The Scottish government has now been forced to announce a pause in its policy of housing trans-identified male prisoners in women’s jails, yet a six-foot-five trans woman who assaulted a 10-year-old girl and secretly filmed a 12-year old in a supermarket toilet remains in the women’s estate.
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It is a story from which few in the governing coalition, made up of the Scottish National Party and some decidedly eccentric Greens, emerge with credit. It confirms all the warnings offered at the end of last year, when their wildly irresponsible bill to remove current safeguards governing the process of changing legal sex was passed in the Scottish Parliament. For reasons many people are struggling to understand, ministers staked their reputations on pushing through the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, ignoring not only its likely impact on women’s services, but also warnings that the legislation would probably be blocked by the Westminster government in London. That’s now happened, adding a constitutional crisis to the farcical events of recent weeks.
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Sturgeon has been left fighting for survival, looking weaker by the day. Instead of showing contrition, she has lashed out at critics of the legislation, many of them feminist organisations, smearing them with accusations of misogyny, homophobia, and racism. The row has wider lessons because other countries are adopting similar legislation that erases the difference between men and women, substituting vague nonsense about “gender identity.” But it also highlights a crisis in politics, showing how easily unwary politicians can be captured by fashionable ideology. Labour in Scotland could have abstained on the bill, but most of its MSPs (Member of the Scottish Parliament) voted in favour, apparently against the advice of the Labour party in London.
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Source:
https://quillette.com/2023/02/06/scotlands-gender-meltdown/
