I was astonished to discover recently that you support the “reforms” proposed by the Scottish Government to the Gender Recognition Act of 2004.
Surely you see that this is a matter of the most basic ontology and epistemology.
This is what is proposed, as I assume you know:
Grounds on which application to be granted by Registrar General for Scotland
(1) The Registrar General for Scotland must grant an application under section 8A(1) [for a gender recognition certificate] if—
(a) the application includes a statutory declaration by the applicant that the applicant—
(i) is aged at least 16,
(ii) meets the condition in section 8A(2) [that the person is the subject of a Scottish birth register entry or is ordinarily resident in Scotland]
(iii) has lived in the acquired gender throughout the period of three months ending with the day on which the application is made, and
(iv) intends to continue to live in the acquired gender permanently…
You will have noted, I’m sure, that the entire process will now be one of self-certification.
Thus, if a man aged 16 or over with a Scottish birth certificate or living here self-certifies that he is in fact a woman and intends to remain a woman, he cannot be refused a gender recognition certificate. Same thing for a woman who says she is a man.
Nothing else whatsoever is required. Using their gender recognition certificates, the man will become legally female on his birth certificate and the woman will become legally male on hers.
The reference to “gender” is of course a quite deliberate obfuscation. The self-certifying person legally, and quickly, changes sex.
Nor do those proposing these reforms regard this as a legal fiction. They vehemently believe — and demand that the rest of us also believe — that ontological reality has been observed. The man is now a woman and the woman is now a man. The fully intact male-bodied person is female and the fully intact female-bodied person is male.
I have fought the hegemony and its lies all my adult life — as you have for much of yours. In the face of everything ranged against us, all we have is the truth.
All we have is reality — the ontological facts — and the epistemology that is the genetic inheritance of all human beings to know what that reality is.
Being either a man or a woman is one of the most overdetermined realities there is in what Kant called “things for us” as human beings (as opposed to things for frogs or insects or giraffes, which we can never know, or “things in themselves”, which only a handful of particle physicists have even the remotest handle on).
If someone is prepared to surrender that reality for any reason then I’m at a loss to see what reality they won’t surrender. If what every fibre of their being (itself the product of millions of years of evolution) tells them is a man is standing in front of them (and if they know what’s more that the modern science of chromosomes, gametes, bone density, skull shape and size, estrogen and testosterone etc etc etc could also confirm it instantly) and they are prepared to say that this ontological entity is a woman, then there is simply no reality that is secure in their epistemology.
Bluntly, that person has demonstrated that the hegemony can tell them anything and they’ll believe it.
Indeed, their grasp on reality is actually at a level far below that of climate change deniers or believers in the literal truth of the Bible who at least have the excuses of complexity of the facts (climate change) and faith (Bible) for their credulity.
I honestly don’t know what excuse someone who thinks a man can be, or turn into, a woman, or vice versa, has for that denial of ontological reality or, as I say, what there might possibly be that they couldn’t be induced to believe.
I’m utterly baffled to think that this person could be you.
Gordon Dangerfield 
Dear Mr Dangerfield, thank you for this.
I live in England. As far as you know, will a scottish-issued GRC be recognised elsewhere in the UK? I presume not, and suspect that one of the intents of those who legislated for it is to create a ‘culture war’ wedge between scotland and england, with trans activists as the guerrilla troops.
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Thanks, halfscot. I can’t see any reason why a Scottish GRC would not be recognised everywhere, especially since all other documents — birth certificate, passport etc — will support it. The cult is as well established in England as it is in Scotland and, as you probably know, it was only the election of the Johnson Government, and specifically Liz Truss, that prevented GRA “reform” being even more advanced in England and Wales than it is here. Which only goes to show that no-one is all bad.
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May I ask a few questions of you, Mr Dangerfield, out of personal interest? Has the 2004 GRA been superseded by the same sex legislation, as I believe it has. If it has, how can reforms take place to an Act that has been superseded? If not, why not?
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As an addendum to my question on the GRA, it seems to me that data protection has made the other parts of the 2004 GRA redundant, too. Of course, I could be very wrong, but it would be yet another missed opportunity if reform of the GRA was to be pushed through when the GRA itself is redundant, just so that self-ID and the wider opening-up of spaces, and the usurpation of women’s fundamental protections under the 2010 Equality Act can take place under the radar.
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I hope he/she – not sure which is the correct pronoun – remains a friend. It might be difficult though given the strength of feeling that those true and blind faith believers in self-id have on this matter.
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Yes, faith is the key term here, duncanio. As with any cult, those already captured won’t be persuaded by anything and will have to find their own way out, as I believe many will when reality bites them in their own lives. The role of rational argument is to keep people, especially young people, from getting captured in the first place.
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I’m keeping well clear of gender, Scottish or anywhere
Sent from my iPhone
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That gave me a laugh, Chris, which I hope was your intention. I’m sure the Scottish Government would love it if we could have our very own Scottish reality. Reminded me of Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny and his suggestion to the witness that the laws of physics did not apply to the heating of grits on his stove: “Were these magic grits?” Soon in Scotland we’ll have magic men and women too.
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Aha! So Cousin Vinny is the lawyer you’ve modelled your courtroom persona on! (Great movie BTW) Does this mean you’ve got your own Marisa Tomei?
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To be fair, this novel approach to ontology might solve the ‘race’ problem. If all the people of colour self-identify as white, voila! No more racism!
There’s no beginning to the possibilities!
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Exactly, Peter. Why have we spent our adult lives fighting racism, sexism, homophobia etc when all we had to do was adjust reality so that these things could no longer exist? I’m sure all the racists, sexists and homophobes would desist once they too saw the light.
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Was this letter addressed to Craig Murray?
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I’m keeping that one to myself, toughluck. You’d be right though in thinking that Craig is a friend for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration and whose views on this issue baffle me.
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As we see, with a male without a GRC working in a female advertised role in Edinburgh Rape Crisis, self ID has already been brought in. Thus the point of the revised GRA would be just a certificate to say you’ve managed to beat reality. Seems a bit pointless. The Edinburgh Rape Crises case would be interesting in discrimination terms as it seems that they have discriminated against other men who don’t proclaim to be women.
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The case you mention is a disgrace and surely MUST be challenged in the courts by those with standing to do so. If the Scottish Government “reforms” of the GRA go through and the man in question gets a GRC by self-certification, as he undoubtedly will, there’s still the argument that the same sex exemption for women’s spaces in the Equality Act could be invoked to exclude him but the law is in such a mess as a result of the use of “gender” to sometimes mean sex and sometimes not that no-one can say with any confidence at this point what the law on that is.
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Ah but who is responsible for what goes on in the courts, the Lord Advocate who advises the First Minister or the Lord Advocate who serves the Crown? The current holder of the title seems to have confusing responsibilities. Does anyone know what made it so hard to sentence Craig Murray? Until after the election? A bit of clarity would be welcome.
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I suspect that the person being discussed here is in a magenrial position, and may not be interacting directly with clients. To my mind, that probably would make the employment OK. Others might disagree.
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Yet the job was advertised for females under the section of the equality act that allows such. Also, due to the trauma of rape (which can only be perpetrated by males) even the presence of a male may put victims off. In addition, as manager of Stirling rape crisis this person provided counselling to rape victims (despite not appearing to have any specific qualifications in that area). I don’t share your confidence.
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Robert: the person might, however, be in a position to open the door to others of his lk, i.e. men, and all in the managerial echelons. I daresay he took that into consideration when he applied.
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Completely disagree Robert, no man should be in a role that was advertised for a woman and that deals with women’s issues, especially not in rape crisis. There is something far wrong that the situation has not been addressed and the man removed from post.
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What an interesting and timely post Gordon!
I happened to stumble on a tweet from Craig Murray yesterday “explaining” the poor show by Alba which seemed to blame outright those opposed to the proposed reforms to the GRA. I was astounded by this claim but, more importantly, it was almost amusing to see that having backed Alba to start with, within hours of its failure to win any seats, CM was out there cosying up to those whose enthusiasm for these reforms knows no bounds, by trashing Alba and its policy to defend private spaces for women and girls.
That tweet and other similar tweets by CM were raised on his own blog later (beneath a post in which he was urging the left to take the Labour Party back). He was challenged by quite a few people on the stance he had taken in accusing people of directing hatred towards “trans people”. He did not differentiate between genuine trans people and those who physically are one gender yet “self-identify” as another. He didn’t cover, either, the shocking abuse, threats and all sorts directed at the likes of Joan McAlpine, Joanna Cherry and others over this issue. No, he was not backing down. He’s a very odd man in my view. He has produced a great number of articles on his blog over the years but, for me, CM is ultimately all about where his best shot lies and little else. So, now, Alba is misguided and, presumably, so is Salmond. Wow, talk about fair weather friends!
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We, the great Scottish Public (of NE Scotland), did not vote Alex back in as he had had his payback when the jury let him off. If he had been in Holyrood it would have been a panto.
ALso the PR system here makes it difficult for indy to get traction initially. PLus the young green voters of Aberdeen have just helped their parents lose their jobs. Could not make it up
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PaulMartin42, it wasn’t the job of the jury to ‘let Alex Salmond off’, but to listen to the prosecution and defence case and then decide. Unfortunately, the defence case was never given the light of day in the MSM
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“Unfortunately, the defence case was never given the light of day in the MSM”
This is irrelevant to the decision of the jury. And I suspect that MSM were following legal guidelines esp as a couple were taken to court for broadcasting, and at least one found guilty
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“Let him off” – your understanding is wrong or your words are poorly chosen. Salmond was acquitted not let off.
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Legalese mumbo jumbo – he was let off in my parlance since he & his defence did admit some behaviour was …
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He was not let off. He was acquitted on all charges. If you had read or heard all of the evidence you would not have come to that conclusion. After 20 police worked for two years and could find nothing, lo and behold, after WhatsApp messages at the top of the SNP they found 14 charges. None of them were believed by the mainly female jury. If you keep trying to say otherwise you might find you’re defending yourself in a defamation case.
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“If you had read or heard all of the evidence you would not have come to that conclusion” See my comments above – it was not possible for me to see “all of the evidence”
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Sadscot, what is a “genuine trans person”? Seriously, Nobody can change sex. Even if a man genuinely wants to be a woman, he can’t be. Even if he somehow thinks he is a woman, that’s a delusion, because he isn’t one. Shoud a genuine desire to be a woman, or a genuine delusion that he is a woman, absolve a man of any need to respect women’s boundaries, modesty and safe spaces?
On simply practical terms, there seems to be no way to distinguish objectively between men who declare they’re women because of a genuine delusion and those who would cynically take advantage of such legislation to access female-only spaces for their own perverted pleasures. Let one male in and that’s that, you can’t keep any of them out, because males look male irrespective of what’s going on in their heads. Even a law that said only males who had had full “sex-reassignment” surgery should have access to female-only spaces would allow anyone in in practice, because men still look like men even after castration and penectomy, and I presume that genital inspection would not be considered proportionate gatekeeping.
In reality, there’s no such thing as a physically male person with a female brain. The brain has the same chromosomal complement as the rest of the body and is subject to the same hormonal influences. Trans-identifying males have the same criminal offending pattern as other males, and you can see the male entitlement and aggression in many of the posts by prominent “transwomen” activists.
There are three reasons for a man deciding he is or wants to be a woman. Very effeminate homosexual boys and men may identify as women for sexual reasons, so-called HSTS or homosexual transsexuals. Nerdy boys who can’t cope with puberty may identify as girls to avoid the competitive, macho culture of young men (RODG or rapid-onset gender dysphoria). Men with the sexual fetish of autogynaephilia (AGP, sexual attraction to the idea of themselve as a woman) may take this as far as presenting as and identifying as female in wider society. They get a sexual kick out of taking on a femal persona and including themselves in the “women’s mysteries”.
Any one of these three groups may claim to be “genuinely trans”, as opposed to perverted men who simply see the chance to invade women’s spaces for voyeuristic purposes or worse. Even if it were possible to screen out the chancers and the fakers, should women be required to accept HSTS, ROGD and AGP men into their safe spaces? AGP men in particular can be extremely problematic and the internet is full of exhibitionist clips of them revelling in performing highly inappropriate behaviour in female lavatories while women are trying to use them for their intended purpose.
I think we need to get away from this idea that there are “genuine trans people” who should be accommodated within women’s spaces, if only we could weed out the fakes and the chancers. We can’t define “genuine” in the first place, and if we try we still end up with some very unpleasant people. Indeed there are trans-identifying men who behave themselves and respect women’s boundaries, and it was to accommodate them that women originally went along with the “polite fiction” that some men could be women. But it has now come down to a choice between excluding all males or including all males. There is no practical way we can legislate that “only nice, respectful men” are to be allowed the privilege of “becoming female.
So sorry if this is a bit rough on the polite transwomen who haven’t been causing any trouble for the past 30 years, but it it’s a choice between excluding you or allowing any man at all into women’s spaces (and frankly it’s the ones who want in who are the very ones who should not be allowed in, in most cases), then you lose. We need to find a different way of dealing with gender nonconforming men than bullying women into shouldering the burden of coping with them.
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I agree with most of what Gordon and the comments which follow say but I don’t think anyone has pointed out that it is not just biology which makes a person female (as I am) but also social condiioning from a very early age.. Most is done by parents but there are societal norms, though these can vary over time, which influence them, partly without their being conscious of it.
I was a child in the 40s and a teenager/young adut in the fifities and things were very different then. My poor mother had a struggle to get me to behave and dress in what she described as a ‘ladylike’ way. Wheras I struggled as everything ‘ladylike’ was constricting, limiting and, to me, pointless. One example was that it was very unusualthen for girls and women to wear trousers so, as I enjoyed clinmbing trees, I was continually criticised for showing my knickers!
It happened that there were few girls in my age group in the small country school I attended for a while so I mostly played with boys, including football. My mother’s ingenious solution was to make me a pair of trousers which I think were classed as jodhpurs and so acceptable and I was free, though not encouraged, to play football and climb trees while wearing them.
However, there were also strict behavioural norms and I got into trouble more than once for imitating male cousins a little bit older, mainly because of language and tone (which again were not ladylike). They got away with being quite disrespectful of adults, particularly older ones, and were allowed to leave a family party in a group and do their own thing while myself and a slightly younger female cousin were expected to sit quietly and answer with a smile if spoken to. Not smiling was the crime of being sulky, sullen or surly.
If this were not enough, puberty was a nightmare as the bodily changes were only mentioned in hushed whispers with little explanation and the whole experience gave me the impression that there was something shameful about the process. I can still remember having to buy sanitary towels when out shopping with my father, going to the chemist and having to say I had to get something my mother had told me to get. I couldn’t tell him what it was and my embarassment was increased when I had to ask a man in the shop for what I wanted.
Sorry this is a long winded way of explaining experiences which can affect young girls but which left deep feelings of insecurity, embarassmenr and shame.
This is why I completely disagee with whoever (I think a Green politician) said that he was perfectly fine with the idea that a committee or board with only male and trans-female members was ‘gender balanced’.In my opinion that would be quite wrong. I also think having a trans-woman working at a Rape crisis centre in whatever capacity is inappropriate. Only women know what it is like to be expected to live under a series of constraints which do not apply to men, though I acknoedge that there are constraints on men and boys too but as a female, i do not pretend to understand them and would not presume to speak for them.
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I really appreciate you posting this, arayner1936, and I think it will resonate with many people, as it does with me, the very grateful son of a second wave feminist who fought against these gender stereotypes for my sister and me and who left us in no doubt that women’s oppression, including the imposition of these stereotypes, was founded on female biology. How depressing it is that the reintroduction of gender stereotypes, on which the entire trans cult is based, is now touted as “progressive”, and the history of women’s oppression because of their biology is elided.
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Many thanks for this, Morag. I agree with all of it.
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Well said, Morag
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Morag, as a qualified vet, you had a licence to castrate defenceless animals, and you must have castrated thousands of them during your career.
You have turned countless males into eunuchs in your lifetime.
You changed or rather removed the sex of countless defenceless animals against their will.
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Sadscot, as far as I was aware, Craig Murray stood aside (as part of AFI) for Alba, but I don’t remember him being particularly supportive, lukewarm at best, of Alba. Craig does have particular views on many subjects that don’t seem well thought out, and are not necessarily very popular, but he can be persuaded to change his mind. I think he lacks a certain amount of empathy, or a lack of interest in looking deeply into some subjects he takes an opinion on.
He is obviously not persuaded by ‘women’s rights’, but that he doesn’t see the injustices in Iran, on how transitioning is used to convert homosexuality, as a warning that his support of trans activists is going to result in societal oppression, is a bit bewildering. Craig’s linking of Alba to being trans-exclusionary is quite bizarre (I don’t remember any exclusion myself, just not the presumption that anyone can be a woman). Anyway, I’m not going to read much into it just now, Craig is very stressed at the moment.
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Craig Murray has always been a typical Liberal Democrat opportunist and will always remain one.
He had jumped on to the SNP bandwagon, then the pro independence List parties bandwagon, then ALBA which I won’t call a bandwagon, for his own interests more than anything else.
The SNP framed him and was in the process of jailing him and he was advocating voting SNP.
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Thanks Gordon.
This is one of the problems i have with the issue. The other being of course the real harm to women.
As i see it the whole of science and reason is based on facts. The whole of the Enlightenment was based on observation and analysis, which involved naming and classifying as a basic step. Of course that naming and defining process is being continually corrected and refined but always on the basis of more recent facts.
Maybe i am being paranoid but as i see it when that process is reversed then we are starting a descent into the dark ages. This has already become a problem in medical college where the definition of male and female are confused.
In the inner world there is a part to play in dissolving boundaries. That is the basis of all mysticism, the dissolving of the parts into the whole. The Donovan song First there is a Mountain is based on a Zen quote. He paraphrased it to ‘First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, there is.’ Reality can never be ignored. The metaphor of the mountain is probably no accident. Mountains tend not to budge easily.
In the east they have spent thousands of years trying to understand the ‘relationship’ or ‘balance’ between the inner and outer. In the west it has been since the Enlightenment (that again).
Excuse my amateur philosophy but as i understand it both in the east and west the advocate of the ‘world is an illusion’ which is what Queer Theory amounts to, is always confronted and demolished by the realist who comes along and gives the dreamer a good kick on the shins and asks ‘what is that then’?
To impose by force a belief of the inner world on another is tyranny and at the point of a sword, which is often the case with regard to women’s rights even if one of them is a millionaire, is like something from the dark ages or at best Monty Python.
Incidentally in the maddest twist of all trans-fanatics want us to believe that gender is fluid and lacks boundaries whilst at the same time reinforcing the most regressive sexual stereotypes. It doesn’t matter to them as long as they control the belief system. It is a dogmatic religion where the dogma changes .
https://thetattooedbuddha.com/2015/11/16/first-there-is-a-mountain-realizing-the-oneness-of-things/
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Like you, anandprasad, I’m an Enlightenment guy and I don’t think it’s paranoid at all to fear that the way in which poststructuralist dogma is being imposed in schools and universities is taking us into a new Dark Age of irrationality. I was a graduate student in the English Department of a University of California campus for most of the decade of 1997 to 2007 and I saw at first hand how the cult operates, and how it captured almost my entire cohort of bright, ambitious postgraduate students. It was just accepted, as it is in any religion, that this was what you believed if you wanted to progress in the field and, as in any religion, you just kept any doubts to yourself rather than be labelled a heretic.
Naively, I still thought then that it would be contained for the most part within the bounds of self-regarding, narcissistic academia and would be just a quickly discarded rite of passage for most students, like being a socialist used to be. Of course that has proved to be false. Honestly, if I hear one more pundit or politician on the BBC all pleased with themselves because they’ve just learned to talk about “binaries”, I may need a new TV. I’m just waiting for the first ones to discover “always already” or “differance” or, Lord help us, The Panopticon.
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‘“always already” or “differance” or, Lord help us, The Panopticon’
Wow, had to look those up.
My only glimpse into Queer Theory is from some excellent videos from Graham Linehan and some youtube clips of Noam Chomsky who doesn’t think much of French intellectuals.
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woops meant
‘It is a dogmatic religion where the dogma changes to suite the occasion’
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Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female.
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Thanks Gordon. This stuff is scaring the hell out of me.
Sometimes I see people, who I always thought intelligent and sensible, agreeing with it and think “Am i the one who is wrong”. At other times I talk to folks – loyal SNP supporters – who don’t even seem to know that any of this is going on and when you tell them they will say “We’ll sort if out after independence”. They can’t seem to see the damage that could be done in the next five years – and still no indy at the end of it.
I just listened to clips of some radio shows on For Women Scotland and I was appalled at the obfuscation by MSPs over the question “What is a woman?” Not one was brave enough to say “An adult human female”. I truly despair.
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It scares me too, Wee Chid. Trying to argue rationally with people who have been captured by this is like trying to argue with Scientologists or Christian fundamentalists or members of any other cult. “The Earth is only five thousand years old,” they say. “Well,” you say, “What about the dinosaur fossils?” “Oh,” they say, “God put them there to test our faith.” Similarly, once you’ve decided that men just ARE women, there’s no rational argument about women’s rights that can reach you.
(I should also say in fairness as a lifelong atheist leftie that I used to find the same thing many years ago in the days when I bothered to argue with members of the various Marxist cults. Everything that conformed to Marxist doctrine showed that Karl was right and everything that contradicted it was down to the false consciousness of the workers, so every argument was covered and there was never any need to think critically about anything.)
It is indeed hard not to despair but we must keep speaking up.
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Another answer would be “a human being with XX sex chromosomes” or does that rely too much on a basic scientific knowledge?
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It’s not quite that simple, and that’s where the obfuscation around people with congenital abnormalities of sex development comes in. The cultists use this tiny number of people with genuine medical problems to validate the idea that sex “isn’t binary” or is in some way a spectrum. In reality every single human being is either male or female, but some have chromosomal and/or developmental abnormalities that (very rarely) mean that complicated medical investigation is required to determine which they are.
In terms of chromosomes, it’s not XX that makes a woman, it’s the absence of a functional SRY gene, or (again very rarely) the absence of functional androgen receptors.
Normally, for >99% of the population, people are either XX or XY, and the Y chromosome carries a functional SRY gene that makes that person male while the absence of a functional SRY chromosome makes that person female. You can narrow it down a lot by saying that anyone with a Y chromosome is male and anyone without one is female – that accounts for such conditions as XXY (Klinefelter’s syndrome, male) and XO (Turner’s syndrome, female).
Nevertheless sometimes someone has a Y chromosome which doesn’t have an SRY gene on it, or the SRY gene isn’t functional (e.g. Swyer’s syndrome). That person will be female, because it’s the SRY gene that counts, not the Y chromosome. Conversely, sometimes the SRY gene gets moved to a different chromosome and appears in someone with XX sex chromosomes, either on an X chromosome or somewhere else. That person will be male. So you could say, anyone with a functioning SRY gene is male and anyone without one is female. That covers nearly everyone, including the occasional person who is a mosaic or a chimera and has different types of cells in different parts of their bodies. If there’s a functioning SRY gene in there somewhere, they’re male, whereas an SRY gene which isn’t functioning, or if there isn’t one at all, makes the person female.
There is still an exception though, and that’s cases where in spite of the person having normal XY chromosomes with a functioning SRY gene, they develop more down the female pathway than the male, because their cells have no functioning androgen receptors. This is complete androgen insensitivity syndrome or CAIS, and no matter how these women may be defined medically they are absolutely definitely no question girls and women.
At the end of all these complexities we can in fact derive a good definition of male and female which is applicable in pretty much all cases, though.
Male, man = someone who has a functional SRY chromosome and finctioning androgen receptors.
Female, woman = someone who lacks a functional SRY chromosome or who lacks functioning androgen receptors.
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Good question, cirsium, and brilliant answer, Morag. You’re doing a real service to readers of the blog with these highly informative comments.
My own academic interest is in the formation and development of human concepts and language, which we’re already doing in the womb so that we can construct our world of Kantian “things for us” as humans. Among the many overdetermined “things for us” are the concepts of male and female, girl and boy, man and woman. These foundational concepts are no more mysterious to us — and no more require “experts” to define them for us — than the concepts of tree or table or house, which have no scientific meaning but which are instantly recognisable to us on a tiny amount of experience from the earliest age. No-one, including Judith Butler herself, can live a single day of their lives without total reliance on these innate, and incredibly rich and nuanced, concepts.
I intend to write a full post on this whenever I can get around to it but I think it’s important to note that advanced science only CONFIRMS what we already know about the ontology of what it is to be a man or a woman, male or female, from the merest common sense. One of the many alarming things about the various poststructuralist cults, including “queer theory”, is that the charlatans who pose as “experts” have persuaded so many gullible types that they can’t trust the common sense they were born with when it comes to these absolutely straightforward matters of human perception.
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Morag will know better than me what the mechanisms are behind very rare developmental problems. Where seeming girls develop into boys at puberty – I can’t remember if this is a genetic condition or purely environmental. Development into male needs certain hormones triggering at certain points in time – primarily testosterone, once in the womb, second at puberty and third late teenage early 20s (the classic ‘growth spurt’ many boys experience later on – girls effectively stop growing upwards at about 16 yrs and bone development goes into hips and stuff). If something interrupts the womb testosterone – either receptors failure or non production – the child can have all the characteristics of a girl (or the absence of male characteristics) but the changes can still occur at puberty, so is a seeming ‘changing sex’ event. The child was always a boy, genetically, though. It won’t happen if you don’t have those genes as Morag outlines above.
It is all besides the point in a way though – you can’t ‘change gender’ unless there is something to change to, if gender was a spectrum – you could argue ‘we are all individuals and shouldn’t have any gender stereotypes’ but that’s not what the activists argue, without being aware that to change gender they need the other one – be it a stereotype or physical characteristics – so there must be that binary choice. There are two sexes, and also a range of individuals that don’t feel they fit into whatever stereotype. TRAs in fact emphasise stereotypes – I feel threatened by the implication I need to start wearing lippy and high heels to ‘prove’ I’m a woman. Having avoided that stereotype my entire life and happily assumed I can still be a woman, I find the emphasis of stereotypes very disturbing, and somewhat distressing. It’s like we are being wrenched back into the dark ages where to be ‘woman’ we must comply with Mrs Beaton’s ideal of womanhood.
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Contrary, the condition you’re referring to is 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which is an odd one. There’s no question at all that these people are male, but in societies without comprehensive medical care they are often misidentified as girls when they are children. Oddly enough, despite being socialised as girls in the way that arayner1936 explained above, they almost always settle down as men once puberty has given them their adult male bodies. I imagine this is helped by the fact that most of these people are brought up in societies with a high prevalence of the condition, so it’s something that’s recognised and dealt with.
We can see another situation where misidentification of a male infant with ambiguous genitalia as female at birth has had very serious ramifications in the case of Caster Semenya. (She has something different, I’m not sure what.)
Of course in all these cases proper neonatal investigation and diagnosis is capable of identifying the actual sex of the infant and allowing sensible, compassionate decisions to be taken about how to bring them up. This happens in developed countries and Erik Schinneger (look him up, similar situation to Caster Semenya but handled differently) wouldn’t happen in Europe these days, or you’d hope not. He was born before we even knew what DNA was. But on the other hand we see the International Olympic Committee now allowing misidentified males to compete as female (which wasn’t happening in Schinneger’s day), so there is evidence that some countries are deliberately looking for such children in order to wim more medals.
Well, they can stop bothering with that now, all they have to do is “persuade” their second-rank male ahtletes to identify as female, and job done. A lot easier than looking for the next Caster Semenya in the poorer inner-city areas or isolated villages.
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Thanks Morag. The thing is, of course, is that there are millions of genetic problems throughout the population, and many of them can be devastating for any child. Being misgendered actually sounds fairly mild in the grand scheme of things, if we are talking about rare conditions. I find it distasteful for the trans activists to use unfortunate genetic conditions as an excuse to try and justify their feeling that biology doesn’t exist.
And yes, underperforming men wanting to compete in women’s sport is unbelievable – after years of women getting testing to make sure they aren’t too masculine, they just let men compete anyway? That it’s already happening is bizarre,,, along with everything else, like rapists being put in women’s prisons, it’s all been implemented without the general public getting to know about it – huge societal changes made as a fait accompli, and now (or will be) leaving everyone bemused.
On sport – has this highlighted an issue with the type of testing that’s used for women – their testosterone levels – for ability to compete in that class? It sounds like some changes are needed there, perhaps?
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Weechid – MSPs not brave enough to say what a women is and we are expected to believe these same people will free Scotland from Westminster rule. Bravehearts they are not.
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What would I do if I saw a person with full beard coming out of the ladies toilet when I am in one. Do I scream? Shout help, or wallop? I don’t mind jail at my old age…free tv, free meals, plenty of company and a bit of publicity! Just asking?
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I think I’d be tempted to laugh. Apparently, according to Margaret Attwood, author of the Handmaid’s Tale, Men fear women laughing at them – women fear men killing them. I’m all for women going to loos in groups, pointing and laughing at one of these infiltrators and saying “Aye, we can see why you wanted to transition. it’s no much, is it?”
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June – the plan is not to have ladies toilets.
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Ach well, at least our FM has found something to truly believe in at last.
A person of ill will, with political power, acting locally. The only ingredient not immediately available to the creators and their grand schemes – ‘the destruction of social cohesion amongst the common folk of planet earth’.
What are the odds of finding person of ill will in politics?
They are clever the money men I’ll gie them that.
What are the odds of our parliament waking up to this and at least trying to temper it?
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I’ve said that before here or something similar I think but I want the truth to come out and Scottish people to have the facts. The punters deserve that and in matters where the truth and the facts are in dispute then an honest debate held openly and reported on accurately. We are miles away from this in Scotland. Its depressing me actually. People of ill will and liars of great variety are in power here.
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As always AB, I think knowing that there are other people out there who haven’t been brainwashed is huge. Reading your comments and the others here certainly cheers me up!
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AB
I agree but during the lead up to the election the media didn’t even attempt to challenge Sturgeon on the proposed reforms. So I honestly think that a lot of people aren’t aware of the detail. I did see Harvie being given a very tough time in a Sky interview. He insisted that basically a man in a dress absolutely is a woman. Sturgeon was very much shielded from this. So, really, the media is failing to challenge.
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Thank you Gordon for this bravely assertive and highly relevant blog post. Of course the Gender Recognition Act will be duly enforced by the Hate Crime Act. Thus arises an intriguing “binary” relationship between extreme individualistic subjectivism and extreme state authoritarianism. Assertion of non-negotiable pseudo-sacrosanct narcissistic power is common to both. Objective law as irreducible sphere of reality is subverted by arbitrary personalism. Might determines right. Autocracy of self-ID is mirrored by autocracy on high.
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I can’t put it any better than that, Fearghas. To you and me and other believers in rational thought, the ludicrous paradoxes show there’s something deeply wrong here. To the poststructuralist gurus who validate these ways of thinking and behaving, the paradoxes just show how deep and sophisticated it all is. It’s Big Brother’s dream come true.
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Speaking (sotto voce) of Big Brother, I happened just now on an Orwell “Doublethink” quote (heading up current article by able young Northern Irish historian Fergal McCluskey). The punchline is:
“If the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently – then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” (George Orwell, 1984)
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Good day Gordon.
The lunatics are in charge of the asylum and the drunks are in charge of the brewery.
We are trapped in the asylum and soon you will all join them,slowly they are draining your intelligence, time to leave or be doomed.
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Maybe so Allan, but I’ll go down fighting.
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Legal definitions of gender can’t change how people feel about themselves inside, not should they. Anyone is free to think what they will about themselves. It’s about how people are treated by others, and most of the time I’ve no worrries about people being treated as they wish to be treated. I know one trans person, and, both to their face and in discussion at home, I can’t help but use their prerferred pronoun – the other one just sounds wrong.
What gives me pause is first that there could in future be people who are motivated to get a GRC for evil reasons, such as wanting to be in traditionally female spaces, or wanting to win in competitive sports.
Secondly, there are child abuse aspects of doing anything permanent to childre, whther it’s tattoos, puberty blockers, or FGM. Consent needs to be informed, and I’m not convinced that children can give informed consent. [As an aside, I’d welcome a robust study into the long-term outcomes for those undergoing pubery blocker treatment.]
For the record, I voted ALBA, not Green, on their approach to independence, not on their trans stances.
As an aside, changing birth certificates isn’t a solution – it’s educating people not the care whether someone has changed gender. I may be embarrassed about being born in Aberdeen, but I don’t get to change my place of birth on my birth certificate. And being against discrimination on the basis of age shouldn’t lead to an ability to chage the date on the birth certificate.
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Thee are all sorts of reasons for not treating people ‘as they wish to be treated.’ e. g is it harms the person expected to perform the act or deed, if it would harm the one who wishes the treatment, if is bad for society at large or if it is mad.
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I agree completely, S. As I say in the post, the issue is one of the most basic ontology and epistemology — i.e. what is real for us as humans and what isn’t? If reality is whatever any one individual thinks it is, then what happens when mine and yours conflict? What if you’re my child, for example, and you’re dangerously anorexic? Should I try to save your life (my reality) or validate yours and agree you’re still too fat?
I know my answer of course.
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Gordon I don’t know where you read that I support the GRA reforms. Please remove any details you happen to have showing that I support these reforms. Please also note that I most certainly do not. Regards Alan
Sent from my iPad
>
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Nice one, Alan. I promise you’re not the friend I was writing to.
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Of course, one of the biggest problems with just affirming a false reality, is that medical treatment will also be false – and the wrong treatment can have seriously detrimental effects. There are other traumatic effects when it comes to some intimate medical treatments too. Etc etc. The list of wrongness is endless.
I messaged a friend recently, saying ‘Alba support women’s rights,,’ blah blah
She replied ‘I have decided trans rights are,,,’ blah blah,
I replied, ‘What have trans rights got to do with it? I was talking about women, I didn’t mention trans.’ Blah blah.
And there we have it – ‘women’ no longer exist in many people’s consciousness, we cannot talk about ‘women’, of being a ‘woman’ or having rights as a ‘woman’, I am now officially an unperson if I think I belong to a ‘special’ class of person that happens to be ‘woman’, because that name belongs to a different class of person now – a class that is renaming all the womanly body parts so we cannot even name the bits we once had. I wonder how many women will stop going for medical screening soon through fear of not knowing what to expect, and fear of being called a bigot if they even ask, I know I will.
Your friend, and my friend (that believes women don’t need rights anymore because she’s ‘met lots of lovely trans people’, and isn’t self-aware enough to realise, of course they are all lovely, they are busy stealing her identity and confidence tricksters don’t win a trick by being nasty), both appear to be unaware of the great harm their beliefs will have.
—————-
Good to see you back at the blog Gordon! I hope you’ve had a good rest, because we appear to have exactly the status quo from pre-election days; but, also, will we get to see Leslie Evans prosecuted soon?
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Thanks, Contrary — great to have you back commenting too!
I think you’re spot on with the point about medical screening and it generalises to all kinds of areas. I was arguing with a couple in their twenties who were telling me about the unisex toilets (they used the nonsense term “gender neutral”, of course) on their campus when they were at Uni together and how everyone got on great with it. All I could think of were all the young women (and, I’m sure, quite a few young men) who just resigned themselves from the start to not being able to use those toilets. I’ll bet any money that a truly confidential survey would reveal the numbers of unisex toilet avoiders to be on a scale that would shock my oblivious young friends to their core.
I agree too about the Orwellian reclassification of “women”. It seems that the category “women” now has two subcategories — “trans women” and “cis women”. Women (now to be known as “cis women”) thus become a subcategory of their own sex. It’s utterly extraordinary.
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I’m not actually against unisex public toilets for adults to any great degree – probably because I dislike public toilets at the best of times, so they just become that little bit more horrible and uncomfortable for everyone – men don’t want to share toilets with strangers as much as women. For young people that are still learning about how to respect other people’s space and privacy and have very little concept of the proper boundaries, mixed toilets are madness – I can’t believe anyone thought that was a good idea & it’s just going to cause massive amounts of distress all round. The point about children and young people – they are still LEARNING, that’s why they need guardians and restrictions placed on them – if they knew it all already then they should be treated as adults along with those same freedoms afforded adults.
But then we come to the general point – if we are to have unisex toilets to make a very, very small portion of the population more comfortable, why aren’t they making them all disabled access unisex private cubicles? I believe we have a higher proportion of disabled people in this country than we have people transitioning their gender – so why aren’t the laws and regulations changing that so every single public toilet is a disabled access one? That resolves the unisex issue, and provides for the majority of society.
An even more general point – there are many things in life that make me uncomfortable, and I’m sure I could find a couple of thousand people in Scotland that would agree with me on any one thing. Say it was open plan offices, and I say it is distressing for me to work in one and an infringement of my human rights because of the noise and traffic – so I want the law changed so that all offices have to accommodate me and my needs: I’m sure I could get a fair few people join in with that. So – should society change against the needs of the many, just to accommodate the few? We are usually brought up to realise that life is just one big compromise, and that we shouldn’t selfishly impose our own personal needs when it affects the majority of people in a negative way.
The question is, why does one very small group of people need such wide ranging, disruptive changes to society, to be comfortable? They don’t of course, and true trans folk are genuinely trying to fit into society, not change it. It’s the sexual fetishists that are wanting to disrupt society. If I saw that our parliament had brought in laws and made the changes needed to accommodate physically disabled people, then I might have thought they genuinely had good intentions – but they haven’t, have they – physically disabled people still suffer from massive amounts of discrimination – including difficulty with access. The Scottish Parliament does not have good intentions, they’ve jumped on a bandwagon that’s going to harm society for a very long time to come.
And going back to the ‘woman’ subject – if you look at the hate crime act, nearly the only group excluded is ‘woman’, unless you are a trans woman. But then, if trans women are women, how can they be included, but ‘women’ are not – unless they are not really women? And I just think: make up your mind, if you want to be women, you get all the discrimination that comes with it, or, you just aren’t really. I hate when there is no logic!
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During the election campaign I was called a bigot, a transphobe, a TERF & a whole lot more because I do not believe humans can change sex & women’s rights are quite separate from trans rights & need protecting.
I was told repeatedly to wheesht for Indy, any rights I’ve lost before then can be sorted after & if I didn’t agree I was either not a true supporter of Indy or not even Scottish.
I’m old enough for it all to be water off a ducks back, especially when it’s some 18 year old boy wet behind the ears telling me I’m literally killing trans people by refusing to believe.
Women in Scotland are being written out of law, the Gender Representation on Public Boards being a prime example, which is being challenged in court by For Women Scotland. So when it comes to the Gender Recognition reforms we cannot afford to be complacent. In the UK, & Scotland:
– Men are already being given lighter sentences if they claim to be trans, even for violent & sexual crimes against women.
– Men are already being housed in female prisons if they say they are trans.
– Women are being told in court to use female pronouns for their attackers if the men say they are women.
– Women are losing jobs because they don’t believe humans can change sex or want single sex toilets or forget to use the right pronouns for a trans colleague.
– Stonewall et al are actively misleading private, public & third sector organisations on the law & basically erasing women’s rights.
– Lesbians & gay men are being told they are being transphobic if they do not accept trans people in their dating pool, which basically means lesbians must accept fully intact males as over 80% of transwomen do not have gender reassignment surgery.
The list goes on & on, but I’ll stop there as I’m sure you get my drift.
The other problem is the cancel culture that runs alongside all of this. People are becoming too intimidated by the threat of being cancelled for wrong think. When JKR Rowling spoke up in favour of Maya Forstater they tried to cancel her, & even though they failed the abuse she received has probably put a lot of people off speaking up for truth & reality. They have learned that if they want a quiet life they must remain silent.
If any of your readers are interest in finding out more about what is really going on I can recommend the following for excellent analysis & of course facts & truth:
https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/
https://forwomen.scot/
https://sex-matters.org/
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I agree with everything you say, TrinKats, and many thanks for the links, which I think a lot of readers will find helpful.
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As the old saying goes; You can call a pig a greyhound if you like, but it won’t outrun a hare, and only an idiot would bet on it.
What I find hilarious on one level, and horrific on another, is that some of these self-identifying “women” turn out all along to have been “lesbians” I.E. They are men who fancy women. So far, so ‘normal’
Except now they have access to exclusive female areas.
When I was a young man (or woman) take your pick, Guys dressed in women’s clothing, gown into women’s toilets would have been lifted by the polis and done.
Now these perverts will have a certificate that says black is white, night is day and a man is a woman.
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Thank you for this, and sad to say, but in today’s world, your article amounts to an act of bravery.
I am deeply dissapointed in CM – but I know good old fashioned sexism when I see it. Womens rights are human rights until men decide to appropriate them. Women should shut up, put up and be kind.
Anyway, the Olympics are coming up – trans cheating will have the biggest audience in the world.
And where there is a will, there is a way. Womens prisons should house all self identifying trans ‘women’ together in the same wing, well away from all ‘cis’ women (I really hate the word cis by the way – talk about ‘othering’).
The transwomen will hate it, but in order to register an official complaint they will have to highlight in some legal form that transwomen are not the same as cis women.
Likewise Police searches – the officers involved should exercise their legal right to self identify for the duration of the search, then self identify back.
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Thanks, Daisy. At this point women’s and girls’ sport probably does represent the best chance of showing to a wider audience what is going on here. Once you accept — as any reasonable person has to accept — that male-bodied persons will always have an advantage over female-bodied persons in any sport at any level after puberty, the whole ontological facade starts to crumble and we’re back to the usual arguments about girls just having to be nice to the boy cheats who are stealing their scholarships and medals.
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Actually research now shows that pre pubertal boys also have an advantage over girls. So even mixed sex sport before puberty can be bad for girls which could put them off future participation.
There is also a strong possibility of New Zealand sending a transwomen to the Tokyo Olympics in weight lifting. He is middle aged, before transition he was not ranked, won no titles or medals but since transition has won both & could now deny a woman a place she has trained her while life for.
If this does happen, yet to be announced but it is looking increasingly likely to happen, it will hopefully open many peoples eyes the world over and we will finally begin to have much needed debate about it.
Or it might just demonstrate to countries that don’t generally do well at the Olympics how easy it is to cheat your way to medals & women’s sport will be consigned to the history books.
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No. The wing for men who identify as women should be within the men’s prison estate, if it isn’t an entirely separate establishment which is probably preferable. They shouldn’t even be in an annexe to a women’s prison.
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I agree with you Morag – ‘should’ being the operative word. However, looking ahead and preparing for the worst, while at the same time trying to avert it… if forced (and its looking likely) to incarcerate trans’women’ within female prisons, then I suggest them being incarcerated together in a separate ‘womens wing’ – away from natal women.
It would be using their own arguments against them. In order to legally complain they were being ‘discriminated’ against – they would have to overturn their own argument that – transwomen are women – in addition to ‘dead naming’ their fellow inmates (not sure I’m still allowed to use the word fellow – hey ho). it would keep the real women safe at the same time.
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It’s always refreshing to know I’m not the only one who finds this all quite terrifying and cult-like.
I like in Australia and politicians here also seem to be captured like in Scotland, the UK and other western countries, the trans ideology is very well supported it seems.
I also work in adult mental health and expect to come in conflict with this ideology more and more, I’ve privately spoke with psychiatrists who know it’s nonsense but are still scared to take a public stance against it for fear of being called transphobic and losing their jobs, truely terrifying.
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Live*
although I like it also
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Great to hear from you, Efflorescence. The more we can connect with each other and show how many of us there are, the more chance that the people you mention will be encouraged to find a bit of backbone themselves and the less chance our different governments have of telling us, as they do, “This is best practice in Australia/Norway/Ireland/Canada/Scotland and no-one there has any problem with it…”
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Gordon. OT I note your avoidance of Contrary’s question. I too have been keeping an eye open for a resumption of a very Scottish coup.
Have you been suffering from an injunction or has it become matter of judicious timing ?
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Just indolence mainly, I’m afraid, TOC, although Liz and I were acting for ALBA during the campaign so I thought it best to lay off the blog for the duration. The remaining parts of AVSC will appear at some point, I promise. I’m genuinely grateful that you and others are still interested.
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Yes, we are still interested. I check the blog every day or two just to see if anything else has appeared.
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Not wanting to burden you, Gordon, for indolence is also a fantastic hobby, but I was thinking there: that a nice wee summary of where we got to with a VSC would be good, as an intro to the next episodes – with the long, eventful, gap we’ve had, much will be forgotten – perhaps you’ve forgotten exactly where you were going with it too?!
– John Somers’ involvement still bewilders me a bit, and did Sturgeon ever really sign off the Procedure in 2017, and how did Leslie Evans manage to take so much power & control over a seemingly dry, boring procedure, in fact did it really come into being on the 7th Nov 2017 – was it invented later, hastily before the general civil service guidance was published, or planned earlier – or invented as soon as Ms B went to Barbara Allison with her complaint – I think her’s might have been one of the complaints never heard in the criminal court?
– why the lack of evidence and the general obfuscation over certain key dates when major things were happening – and then, we could ask why all the people involved think everything was right and proper when so many of them needed to correct or only reveal the correct version of events (or, as close as) when information got out that exposed their coordinating misremembering – why no questions on the coaching given to the civil servants either
– did the committee ever answer the question on why the FM wouldn’t have been informed of the two, or 3, complaints before the Procedure was signed off? – why was the third complaint still obliquely referred to but all evidence pertaining to it suppressed?
– and the extraordinarily poor investigation of complaints, that should have never been carried out, with the investigating officer throwing out any semblance of good practice and Leslie Evans just blatantly lying about her involvement – and meeting the complainers before contacting the subject of the complaints – and her ridiculous excuses about going against the wishes of the complainers by going to the police – claiming to care while dismissing them as people as irrelevant – as clearly evidenced by the fact that Evans and the government provided zero support after the complaints were handed over…
And yet all we’ve heard from the First Minister is that she’s been exonerated, and fully backs Leslie Evans,,, and everyone happily goes along with that!
Not one head has rolled after the committee report, despite it clearly condemning Evans.
Can we assume that the FM’s and her private secretary’s careers are intrinsically linked? If one goes,,,
Hah, I don’t need your summary now Gordon, I’ve remembered some of the outstanding questions that were left hanging – did I miss anything though? Will this parliament ever do anything about it, or are they going to be part of the under the rug sweeping?
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Oops sorry, I meant, are Nicola Sturgeon and Leslie Evans (not private secretary) careers intrinsically linked – it would seen so.
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Yes, of course we are still interested, Gordon, you’ve left us with lots of loose threads, and many cliff-hangers – we need the coclusions! It’s cruel to keep us hanging and waiting on a very Scottish coup finalé.
On a related matter. Craig’s sentencing – extraordinary, truly perplexing, 8 months jail time? I saw a comment somewhere – in fact I’ve seen a few good ones making many good points – that says jigsaw identification is just hypothetical, it’s an assumption that someone somewhere may perhaps, somehow, make a link in their own head – and Craig is effectively being jailed for a thought crime.
Then on the radio this morning, we have Andrew Tickell allowed air time to comment on this obscene sentencing – and he agrees wholeheatedly with the conclusion of Lady Dorrian – which is the most shocking thing about the sentence – that Craig wrote blogs with ‘relish’ and the ‘intention’ of revealing identities. He told other lies too, but the biggest one was to NOT EVEN MENTIONING the actual articles that have been written that do identify complainers. If the identification is the issue then those articles need taken down immediately – just because those articles support the prosecution case and claim the allegations were not false is neither here nor there, if the entire subject is purely on anonymity.
But then we find that Andrew T has a vested interest – he and his college group are actively seeking to change the law so that anonymity is automatically afforded to complainers – no mention of the accused, of course, because there is no fairness in thought or behaviour in our new alternate reality world. When, in fact, assuring the anonymity of the accused makes it more likely the anonymity of the complainer is assured.
Everywhere I turn, every unfair event I see, I see there is someone with a vested interest in using a high profile sexual assault case to further their cause – and have a vested interest in ensuring no one finds out the allegations were all false – and in some cases maliciously brought forward. One wonders at the morality of such people that they’d see the life of an innocent man ruined just for the sake of their own pet projects. And if their morality can be questioned, then the cause they are trying to promote must also be.
Lady Dorrian waited until after the elections – we can only assume she wasn’t certain of the outcome – before sentencing; and that just looks like she waiting to see how secure she could feel in her own pet project, and if the cover up could be perpetuated. We have a political status quo, so those in power will continue throwing everything at the cover up, and she felt confident in condemning Craig with words like ‘relish’. I wish this case would go outside the uk and be soundly condemned as injustice – and questions on Lady Dorrian’s reason brought up.
I’m with Alex Salmond on the case – it’s over with, done, let’s leave it in the past – but the powers that be want to keep it going and perpetuating the case and the false allegations. So what are we to do, except pass judgement on the allegations themselves, and ask how they can still condemn a man found innocent based on false allegations? I still don’t want to question the motivations of the complainers – everyone should have the RIGHT to complain, it is up to the authorities to ensure they are reasonable – but it turns out the authorities are NOT reasonable, so where does that leave us? By condemning Craig, the only journalist that made comment on the defence case, they are suppressing reality and using a false reality to pressurise the population into agreeing to things that may – or may not – be a poor solution to parts of our justice system. How can we tell when we are not allowed to know what reality is any more?
Hitching their wagons to a high profile case was a gamble, and to perpetuate it under false pretences leaves a very sour taste behind.
Let’s start at the beginning, and see how these allegations should have never been brought to criminal trial in the first place?
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This is reverting to the original topic, Gordon:
There is another biological fact that is frequently mis-stated on birth certificates, and that is the name of a baby’s father. Sometimes this is by genuine mistake, but it’s generally thought to often be a deliberate deception. And, of course,, the truth or falsity of the statement could easily be determined with certainty (and discreetly).
Your letter highlights the serious harm (can we call it ‘philosophical’ harm?) that you say arises from making it simple to mis-state sex on a birth certificate. Does the same harm arise from the trivial ease with which paternity can be mis-stated?
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I am halfway through the final volume of an excellent trilogy by eminent Irish-language novelist Liam Mac Cóil. One of the characters has just said:
“Againne atá an fhírinne ach tá muid ar uireasa cumhachta. An fhírinne gan chumhacht taobh thiar di, maireann sí faoi scáth, i bpoll dorcha. An chumhacht gan an fhírinne, scriosann sí na mílte. Scriosann sí an saol.”
[“We have the truth but we lack power. Truth without power behind it exists in a shadow, in a dark pit. Power without truth destroys thousands. It destroys the world.”
(‘Bealach na Spáinneach’ by Liam Mac Cóil, Leabhar Breac 2019, p 294)
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“Indeed, their grasp on reality is actually at a level far below that of climate change deniers”
This line really is stupid. Anyone who has bothered to keep up with the ‘settled science’ (a more unscientific term I have yet to encounter), knows that there are many problems with the AGW theory and the climate emergency hysteria that is being stirred up around it. Data is being tampered with, models are not fit for purpose and many of the underlying assumptions of the theory and models have been shown to be wrong.
Please refrain from using brainless propaganda terns that include the word denier. They only reduce your own credibility in the eyes of informed and rational people.
Other than that, a good article.
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“climate change denier” – brainless propaganda!
“climate emergency hysteria” – oh well, don’t hold me to my own standards… puh-lease!
other than that, utter drivel
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Gordon,
Going back to the discussion some of us had on the not proven verdict, this blog on the origins of the verdict is interesting:
https://www.scottishlegal.com/article/blog-no-not-proven-did-not-come-first
I disagree somewhat with the author; that this means ‘not proven’ didn’t come first, not exactly – he argues that some form of ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’ verdict was used before this, though there doesn’t seem to have been much formality behind it – though I do understand the distinctions made. The use of not proven and proven as verdicts appears to have been a way to reduce the power of the jury (the judge ruled on the guilt after the jury ruled on the case). Anyway, I’ve come round to your way of thinking – that having it just lends an air of uncertainty to a verdict, rather than force an absolute decision. And who cares if a case was proven or not, juries aren’t there for academic interest, they are there to pass judgement on someone’s guilt.
How is Mark Hirst’s case coming along? (Yeah yeah, can’t talk about it) The political prosecutions are fairly stacking up these days – it would be nice if we could all get away from (expensive) legal matters (though it appears to be the MO of ScotGov). On constitutional matters, I see Martin Keatings s30 case has failed – I did back it, at both stages – due to the SNP government’s malicious interference – what hypocrites. It appears Mr Keatings has a plan B that they won’t enjoy, though it’s ,,, secret. Oh well.
Maybe you should write some of those blogs about music or culture, or whatever it was you’d planned, to distract us from the grim realities for a short while?
Here’s a question though – does anyone know if it is normal for the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General to stand down at the same time? And what of the timing? I suppose Mr Wolffe has been in post for a while, and will likely be awaiting his rewards. However much we might hope it would be in anticipation of scandals breaking lose, the tight little team in gov’t appears to be far too smug and self satisfied by half, and I doubt any scandal will be scratching their shiny exterior.
I see cracks appearing in their mysoginistic and anti-democratic legislative policies though, and hope the public become more aware of just how harmful they will be to society – it’s a slow process when the MSM are on the SNP gov’ts side, but it will get there I think.
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Ah Gordon this is magical thinking and it’s absolutely wonderful.
To change your sex all you have to do is think about it, a few magical incantations and boy become girl or girl becomes boy. Job done. But how will anyone know from the outside when X looks like, is genetically constructed as X but is actually why – sorry Y.
And the acid trip become even more exiting. Why stop at X being why – Y. Maybe by the same magical incantation we could create other entities. Instead of having trained to be a solicitor advocate, why couldn’t you just not think you were one, and three months later., hey presto. Ditto a doctor or a nurse or whatever. It would sort the skill shortage at a stroke.
Mind you there is a sort of precedent in hereditary queens and kings who make as much sense as hereditary physicians who make as much sense as self ID sex changers. And then you can, like Prince Harry say you dinnae want to be Royal, and the royalty is gone. Oh it all makes me so happy. A new world order.No longer a topsy turvy muddle£ up mixed up world now when we can all be what we want to be.
What joy awaits us al. Praise be to Saint Nicola.
Otherwise, off for my moon walk now, with my space dog Blaster. Air is a bit fresher up there.
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Gordon is going to be on the Scottish Prism on Sunday 30th May – tomorrow while I’m writing this – starting at 12pm, usually accessible through BarrheadBoy’s YouTube channel. Mark Hirst too, so it might be an interesting one on the current state of affairs on our prosecution services, or views on some such.
I’m looking forward to it Gordon!
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Braveheart: “FREEDOM!”
ScotGov (GRA): “QUEERDOM!”
ScotGov (HCA): “FEARDOM!”
ScotGov (Schools): “CREED’EM!”
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SNP (NEC): “SALEM”
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Test comment
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The Woke Paradox:
Any society racist enough to warrant woke policies is too racist to implement them. And any society woke enough to implement them is not racist enough to warrant them. A society that implements them is systemically woke, not systemically racist, and is deluded.
Where is Scotland in that mix?
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Anyone – Gordon? – understand what part the Lord Advocate plays in the Keatings case? Has he discretion in seeking costs? And who’s costs? His costs? Everyone’s costs?
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Interesting question Robert, I’m not sure about the Lord Advocate’s role there – obviously he has lots of roles, maybe as head of COPFS? Keatings wanted an agreement at the start of the case that everyone paid their own way – but the court refused that request – so I guess the losing party can be asked to foot the whole bill at the end of it. Yes it’s for the costs of the entire court case – including the Scottish government (bunch of right b*stards if you ask me) costs – but they don’t have to ask for it.
Gordon appears to have gone off grid eh, last I heard he didn’t appear in the Scottish Prism show “due to technical difficulties” (steam driven computing machines come to mind). I’m not sure if things hotting up will make him more busy in the real world or enthuse him into conjuring a new blog for the baying mob (that’s us).
A semi-interesting article (well, it’s from the daily record, so not exactly that informative, but they quote bits) on emails between MacKinnon and the police during her ‘investigation’ being revealed in an FOI – a bit weird how they can appear in an FOI request but the committee didn’t seem to have been interested in them (maybe they’d have had more luck just submitting FOIs rather than asking the gov’t for the evidence?). Shock horror: she didn’t have a clue what she was doing and the police were getting uncomfortable with her questions.
https://archive.is/2021.06.20-111609/https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/hr-boss-told-police-being-24356162%23ICID=Android_DailyRecordNewsApp_AppShare
I didn’t realise Ms Mackinnon was that old, she doesn’t look it. Or act it.
I saw another article too – in the herald I think – saying that the Sturgeon is going to revise the complaints procedure for civil servants… What can one say to that? … I didn’t read all the article though – it had stuff about how some people made complaints – really? We hadn’t noticed – and that it’s terribly important all of a sudden. What a vile, hypocritical, creature she is.
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Coming back to the original subject of this post, this week’s Economist has an article about Stonewall. They suggest following the money; Stonewall’s business plan is mostly to charge fees for auditing companies and governments departments for correct ideology. It’s worth a read.
As an aside, while the Economist thinks Scottish independence would be a bad thing, they do seem to think that it is likely to happen.
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You mention climate change deniers. I wonder what you know about climate science? Or are you simply parroting the mainstream propaganda? This short video looks at some of the many problems with the pseudo-science of climate change. You should watch it as it may cure you of your anti-rationalist use of empty propaganda terms such as ‘climate change denier’.
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My mother found herself left a widow with no skills and a small child to bring up. This was in the late forties and early fifties. She had to take a job in a factory working alongside men who were paid twice the wages that she received for doing the same job. In effect she was paid pin money, as the man of the house was regarded as the bread winner, a wife’s wage only providing a supplement to his income.
I suppose today she could have self identified as a man and instantly doubled her wage. What a crazy world this is.
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Scots had a reputation for being socialist minded fearless straight talkers.
What a shower of selfish cowards they have become.
All this and the numerous crimes by the SNP and they can’t be bothered.
What will they do when their mothers, wives, sisters or daughters are raped by the pervert males who have legally identified themselves as women for the purpose?
Surely, there will also be a clause in the law which will make it impossible for legally classified women to be prosecuted for the rape of women?
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