Wilbur Whately @arzachel@mastodon.derveni.org

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-gender-issue-is-now-a-religion-fear-of-blaspheming-keeps-sensible-people-quiet-sl57bnbts

The gender issue is now a religion. Fear of blaspheming keeps sensible people quiet

Hestablished. No more interminable sessions dragging into the night, keeping representatives from seeing their children — and deterring mothers from entering the political fray in the first place. This would be a parliament with sex equality built in.

So it would presumably take a pretty critical matter of law to keep MSPs in the chamber past midnight on Tuesday and Wednesday, and beyond Thursday lunchtime, when the Christmas recess should have begun. But according to supporters of the bill in question — the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which passed on Thursday — this legislation would do . . . nothing. It was a mere administrative detail.

Why the rush, then? Because, according to these same supporters, reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 was absolutely vital to trans people. Nancy Kelley, head of Stonewall, said these reforms will allow trans people to feel “pure joy on their wedding day” and be “buried with dignity”. Which doesn’t sound like a law that does nothing.

Previously, changing your legal sex in Scotland followed the same process as in England and Wales: you needed to be over 18, have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and have spent at least two years living as your chosen gender.

Now, in Scotland, anyone over 16 can apply. No medical diagnosis is needed — expecting a change of sex to involve an actual sex change is “traumatic and dehumanising”, according to first minister Nicola Sturgeon, who threw her full might behind the bill. After a three-month “reflection period” (six for under-18s), the gender recognition certificate (GRC) is yours.

Effectively, Scotland will now issue GRCs on demand. Any man who wishes to be legally recognised as a woman just has to ask. As critics of the bill pointed out, this is likely to be highly appealing to the kinds of men who particularly want access to women’s spaces — otherwise known as sex offenders.

An unnecessary concern, said supporters of reform, because the new law includes a provision that anyone making a false declaration can be prosecuted. Which would be a helpful deterrent, if it was in any way possible to prove that someone was lying when they stated under oath that they really, really felt like a woman.

Don’t worry though, said supporters, because the Equality Act (which covers England, Wales and Scotland) will still apply. And anyway, according to Sturgeon: “A man who wants to abuse a woman, even a man who wants to masquerade as a woman, does not need a GRC to do that.” How reassuring it must be for Scottish women that their government accepts assaults against them as a matter of course.

Actually, Sturgeon is correct that in many areas, Scotland has already adopted self-ID. For example, NHS Lothian has said that patients who request female-only care may be allocated a trans woman member of staff — in other words, someone who appears to be a man in every way apart from the feeling in their head. Never mind the feelings of the female person prone and naked on a table.

Since 2014, Scottish Prison Service policy has been to house prisoners according to stated sex rather than actual sex. Including sex offenders: earlier this year, there were protests when the paedophile Katie Dolatowski was transferred to the women’s estate. That it might be “traumatic and dehumanising” for vulnerable women to be imprisoned with a sexual predator apparently counts for nothing.

Holyrood could have voted for an amendment barring convicted rapists from applying for GRCs. This was rejected because, said reformers, it unfairly conflated sex offenders with trans people. I’d say the conflation happens when you make it possible for sex offenders to opt into trans status, but I’ve long stopped expecting any of this to make sense.

Supporters of the bill say it’s had six years of scrutiny, and should be trusted on that basis. But only a week before the final debates, the Court of Session determined that reforming the gender recognition process will — contrary to all the platitudes that have been offered — affect the Equality Act. Holyrood could, and should, have set aside more time to consider the legislation at this point.

Instead, the whole thing was shunted through, thanks to a handwaving attitude from Scottish Labour, and despite the objections of the population at large. This sets up a constitutional showdown with the UK government, and MPs are ready for it: the phrase “Kemi’s [Badenoch] got a plan” has been heard around Westminster for some time. Scotland’s gender reform is, in other words, a colossal mess with implications for devolution itself.

This is what happens when you legislate based on faith. And gender identity is a faith. In a column last week, Scottish Labour’s Kezia Dugdale — a supporter of the reforms — complained that the objectors “simply do not believe changing sex is something that is possible”. It took me a while to absorb the full bizarreness of this statement: Dugdale believes that humans can, literally, change sex.

This is so transparently not true that even arguing against it feels like descending into madness. Of course humans cannot change sex. We’re mammals, not clownfish. You’re born male or female, you remain male or female, and your maleness or femaleness will affect your life in myriad ways — including how much you’re paid and whether you’re more likely to be a victim or a perpetrator of violence.

In the new religion of identity, inner feeling trumps all these material realities. Meanwhile, a fear of blaspheming keeps otherwise sensible people quiet. And Holyrood, the parliament that was supposed to have sex equality built in, has now decided that sex doesn’t exist. The new religion demands sacrifices: it’s women who will pay the price.

Imagine introducing an act so horrendous (seizing assets from innocent people to fund Ukraine war) that the left and right fringes unite in voting against it.