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Why, Nicola? Just why?
I don’t think the Gender Recognition legal changes in Scotland are really about gender (however you define it). It’s part of a bigger picture of nationalism, brinkmanship, and forced hands. ‘Gender Recognition Reform’ has been passed in Scotland; it will force the UK government to do one of two things. Either back off from Scottish law making – or shut it down.
This is made clear by the statement from the UK Minister for (among other things) Equality, Kemi Badenoch in her tweet after the Bill was passed at Holyrood. It is further amplified by the comment(from the Guardian of all places) that the antics in Edinburgh place ‘tensions around transgender rights into the constitutional arena.’
If the UK Government does nothing, it will be seen to be tacitly approving Scottish independence. They will have to treat Scotland as a lawmaker in the same way they view Ireland, or Sweden. If they intervene as Badenoch suggests, they’ll be seen as wielding the hammer of English oppression – even though MSPs knew full well what they were doing when they passed laws which conflicted with the (non-devolved) Equality Act.
Law-making brinkmanship
The ultimate, avowed goal for the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon is independence. They don’t care who gets steamrollered along the way: prisoners, children, athletes, LGB people, women? Away with them all. From their standpoint, either reaction from Westminster benefits Scottish independence., so it’s worth the row.
I don’t care about nationalism, at this point. Vulnerable women, children and teenagers have been thrown under the bus in service of the ‘greater cause’ of Scottish independence. It’s law-making brinkmanship. Sturgeon couldn’t use housing, education or policing for this, because they are already devolved. Making real changes to people’s lives in those areas is costly and hard, and wouldn’t make Westminster look bad. But when it comes to ‘Gender Recognition’ – there, Scotland can still tug at the leash of UK Govt law making. And they say, ‘it’s just admin!’ What could be cheaper than admin?
Except it’s not. It really, really, isn’t ‘just admin’. If you can’t see the problem with housing male rapists in prison with female offenders – if you’ve never known a girl teenager with an eating disorder, autism or a history of sexual harassment/assault, and seen their unhappiness at being born a girl – if you’ve never known a gay boy who was so badly bullied that they wished they’d been born a girl – then you just need to look around you. The answer isn’t to let them change ‘gender’ without scrutiny, or safeguarding.
Nicola Sturgeon has been denied a second Indyref, for now. So Scottish Government are trying to push through unworkable GRA legal reforms, which will be impossible to implement across current government borders in the UK, in order to force the UK government’s hand.
And they don’t care who they hurt in the process. Victims were never their concern.