(Photo: KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images)
![](https://unherd.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/debbiehayton-100x100.jpg)
The butterfly effect describes how the flapping of tiny wings in China may cause a hurricane in the Caribbean a couple of weeks later. The hurricane tearing through social policy in Scotland at the moment also had small beginnings: not in China 14 days ago but in Yogyakarta, Indonesia 14 years ago. This, however, was no accident of chaos — it was deliberate and planned.
Future historians may marvel how that meeting of human rights groups in Yogyakarta established gender identity as an innate human quality and decided that it must be protected in law. At the time, in 2006, political commentators at home were more concerned with the so-called Granita Pact, and whether Tony Blair would ever resign in Gordon Brown’s favour. But Yogyakarta triggered a chain of events that would eventually challenge the use of biological sex to divide humanity. While the definition of gender identity was vague — how can you define what is in essence a feeling in our heads? — the vision was grand.
Fast forwards to 2015 and attention in the UK was turning towards our membership of the EU. However, it was the Council of Europe — the organisation that we are not leaving — that drove the agenda in Europe when it passed Resolution 2048 and called on all member states to enshrine gender identity in national law, and thereby displace biological sex. Without the democratic scrutiny that surrounded prime ministerial succession and Brexit, Resolution 2048 shook the very foundations of human society — what it means to be a man or a woman.
The impact on society is profound. At this very moment, Scotland is considering a change to the law that would allow people to change their legal sex without producing evidence of a psychological need. While they are not protecting gender identity — that would require a change to the Equality Act, which is not a devolved matter — it will have much the same effect.
“The Scottish Government seem bent on pushing badly written and poorly defined legislative change,” the Scottish campaigning group forwomen.scot tells me, “without due consideration for the potentially massive implications for the social and legal position of women in Scotland.”
Legislative change that has been planned in the dark. According to recent guidance for activists uncovered by the legal website Roll on Friday, secrecy is crucial: “Avoid excessive press coverage and exposure,” it urged. If society had been aware of the implications, those campaigners may not have been given such a free run as they lobbied governments to adopt Resolution 2048.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI’ve never really understood the fuss about transgender as a protected characteristic until now. I’m a pretty masculine bloke, big, hairy, muscles etc. I routinely discomfort women just by existing. I usually have to be quite careful about body language and adopt a studied “neutral” social posture.
It suddenly occurres to me that I could just self-identity as a woman tomorrow, if I wanted. Back in the 80’s when “vicars and tarts” parties were a staple of student life I would regularly do drag. It was fun, and I was, oddly, not very self conscious about it.
So I could, if I wanted, channel my student self, claim to be a woman and hang out in ladies toilets, changing rooms or, as mentioned above, rape crisis centers. This fills me with a creeping sense of horror. It’s simply ridiculous on so many levels. But also, a profound breach of trust and deeply disturbing to those who suffer from male sexual violence. And safeguarding; hello! I’ve run out of words to describe how wrong that would be. It feels like a visceral injustice that such a thing is not only allowed but in fact a protected behaviour in law, in some places now.
I big hairy bloke, in an absurd outfit, hoofing around spaces in which I very much do not belong, terrifying every woman present. And my behaviour is to be applauded.
This cannot be right. If I can think it, you can be pretty sure there’s some gobshite, planning to do exactly that.
Tell me I’m wrong please. I really need to know that I’m wrong.
Sounds like this should not be a devolved matter because it has implications for the rest of the UK.
Westminster should take back control in this area.
should not be a devolved matter because it has implications for the rest of the UK.
https://www.rollonfriday.com/feature-content/exclusive-ince-boss-john-biles-resigns-after-restaurant-allegations