The political divisions are profound. On one side are the arguments that we trans people have a difficult time, and simplifying gender recognition makes our lives a little easier. But this is about more than trans individuals, it is about society.
Allowing male people to declare themselves female for reasons known only to themselves is open to abuse, and any law that relies on well-meaning people declaring that (abusive) men wouldn’t do that, would they? is questionable at best.
Women’s spaces are not protected because all men present a hazard, but a few do. In the same way, we don’t lock our doors at night because all passers-by are a hazard. But in both cases, some people will abuse trust and women need to take precautions just like householders need to take precautions.
The inconvenient truth is that transwomen are male, and — as a group — we present the same hazard that men present. Women can no more differentiate nice trans from nasty trans than they can distinguish nice men from nasty men. Allowing us to declare ourselves to be trans and then immediately self-identify into women’s spaces makes the boundaries meaningless. It is a safeguarding nightmare.
This matters for Scotland. Gender recognition is a devolved matter and it is for Scotland to decide how to progress, but if they are wise they will consider what is happening across the world. In Canada, for example, where the transwoman Jessica Yaniv is making a mockery of a 2016 amendment to the British Columbia Human Rights Code that protects self-declared gender identity. Yaniv took action (later dismissed) against female beauticians for refusing to wax what would in more normal times have been considered to be male genitals.
While the Scottish government may claim in their consultation (Para 3.20) that they do “not wish trans people to go through procedures which are demeaning, intrusive, distressing and stressful”, it’s a matter of debate whether being asked to provide medical evidence of a need to change your legal sex is demeaning. I don’t think it is, though like many trans people I have never felt the need to change the sex on my birth certificate in any case. We shouldn’t need to lie about the past in order to live in the present.
But this matters for more than Scotland. Fourteen years after Yogyakarta the policy juggernaut has paused in the UK, but it has not gone away. The pressure from transgender activists is incessant.
While the Westminster Government may be less sympathetic to reform, how long would someone need to be resident in Scotland in order to qualify in Scotland? England and Wales would no doubt recognise Scottish paperwork — even ‘Gretna Green’ paperwork — as equivalent to our own, and come under pressure to mirror Scottish legislation. The juggernaut would spring back to life, putting three vulnerable groups at risk.
- Women, who lose control of their own boundaries. If any male person can declare themselves to be a female person, those boundaries become meaningless. While few men would call themselves women just to access women’s spaces, those that would are the reason those boundaries are needed.
- Children, who are told that they can choose their gender and — if they believe their body to be wrong — may end up railroaded into medical and surgical interventions. Children young enough to believe in the tooth fairy are not old enough to be put on a path that can lead to infertility, loss of sexual function, and medication for life.
- Trans people who risk losing the goodwill we rely on. Attempts to change the law to our advantage by policing the words — and even the thoughts — of others will not end well for us. If the Scottish Government doesn’t see the problem, others will and those people may find popular support and rebuild society in a way that is genuinely unkind to us.
Consultations are not referenda. They are opportunities for people to pass on their wisdom and experience to inform decisions made by policy makers.
There is a debate, even among trans people. While Owl Fisher, for example, has spoken about a moral panic over transwomen using women-only services, Kristina Harrison empathised with women when she wrote: “Perhaps you can begin to understand the concerns of many women when it is increasingly being asserted in practice, if not fully in law, that simply identifying as a woman means being able to access women’s and girls’ private, formerly single-sex, spaces — toilets, rape-crisis centres and so on.”
Decisions need to take place in openness and transparency, and following widespread consultation. We can all have an opinion on something as fundamental as what it means to be a man or a woman. Is it determined by our sex, or is it a feeling in our heads? The consultation is open until 17 March, and it’s vital that we all have our say to ensure Scotland gets this right. If Scotland revises the law to allow anyone to change their legal sex, just because they want to, women, children and trans people all become hostages to fortune.
Meanwhile, 14 years after Yogyakarta, policymakers across the world will be watching Scotland weather the storm.
This article first appeared on 22 January, 2020
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.
SubscribeThis really is the best of 2020. Debbie Hayton continues to be the reasoned voice of the trans majority.
Yes indeed but sadly her voice is drowned out by the woke minority.
HIS voice. He is MALE.
‘Yaniv took action (later dismissed) against female beauticians for refusing to wax what would in more normal times have been considered to be male genitals.’
I believe the ultra-woke Justin Trudeau stepped up and waxed Yaniv’s genitals.
Wearing blackface, I presume
Perhaps he was practiced…
Thank you for a brief (semi-hysterical) outburst of laughter. The vision too, too, repugnant to be deemed other than ‘black’!
I worked supporting trans men and woman for around 10 years and after reading several of your articles your thoughts resonate with mine precisely. Trans activists groups are getting far too powerful for their own good and eventually it’ll come back to haunt them; the only, or at least the majority of, respondents to this important consultation will be the trans activist (i.e. most of them) community. It’s all getting a bit out of hand now I fear but who has the guts to stand up to them in these days of social media hauntings and lynchings?. Well said.
If any male person can declare themselves to be a female person, those boundaries become meaningless.
Is it not reasonable to suggest that eliminating boundaries is the whole point. When ‘being a woman’ is treated as a social construct rather than a biological reality, womanhood itself faces an existential threat.
If someone goes through the drugs and surgery and all the rest, and wants to be called Susie, I’ll be polite enough to do that. But when some obvious man suddenly demands that, plus the pronouns, that’s a different story.
Some one pointed out that you can be banished from certain “polite” societies for raising a stink because your daughter does not like showering with the hairy, biologically male woman at school.
I recently started hormone therapy to transition, and I just want to say thank you. The second part is exactly how I feel, and as a trans person, these “trans because I said so” people are pretty insulting. I recently read an article praising “trans people who choose not to transition.” Given how gender dysphoria has affected me, I don’t appreciate this fad because it makes light of it. For me, not getting HRT turns out to have been like not cutting a burst appendix out of my body.
“Being a woman” isn’t the social construct though. “Women must be housewives and let men handle business” is, because some men suck at business and are better at the more “womanly” duties, while the woman I was prior to realizing I was trans was always much better at career and finances than cleaning and ironing. Nurturing children is the responsibility of both. Arguing against gender roles is nowhere near the same as arguing whether that big hairy being with a p***s counts in the same way as that other being with the breasts and vagina.
Good article, but misses the point. The roots of this whole debacle is not some random “rights” group, though they may have taken advantage.
The main driver is the insistence of feminists that a. men and women have no biological differences and b. any differences in outcome (sports, physics PHDs, income levels for age groups > 40 yrs) is entirely due to evil misogynistic white males somehow convincing women to run less fast or take less interest in football. Of course, only when the outcomes are unfavourable for their groups so female teachers or black sportsmen are ok.
Anybody who has a young daughter like I do could tell you this was nonsense: smart and feisty girl, but clear difference versus her best friends (all boys) in everything ranging from verbal skills or affinity for dolls.
But, those same ladies also weaponised and legitimised “mean girls” tactics of shaming, bullying and slandering to get their way. The irony is, the trans activists the feminists are badmouthing today, are saying exactly the same thing those women have been saying all these years and using exactly the same tactics.
This is a battle that should have been fought when they came for the Boy scouts, single sex golfing clubs, or men’s sports. Now, may be too late.
Well, the “affinity for dolls” is certainly a social construct. That cannot be conflated with differences in outcome in sports.
Income level differences is/was a big problem, but again, not much to do with “affinity for dolls”.
Why do Cambridge University women undergraduates get worse classes of degree than men? Is that a “social construct” too (you presumably mean “construction”)?
Do you mean that male students at Cambridge are more likely than female students to attain first-class degrees? I do note the lack of outrage in your message about the fact that women are more likely than men to achieve 2:i degrees and less likely than men to achieve 2:ii and ‘third’ degrees.
Men more likely to get Maths PHDs (because we stay in a misogynistic society, as women are exactly the same as men, with no biological differences) or get arrested and jailed (well, men, they are more prone to violence and criminal tendencies dontcha know.).
No, that’s not quite what they show. The 2016 results – the most recent they’ve published – are here:
https://www.prao.admin.cam….
Th summary table is on page 16.
What it shows is that in that year 31.6% of the men got a First but only 22.7% of the women. You’d think the Thirds would be similarly distributed, but although they sort of are, they aren’t really. Only 2.9% of the men and 1.7% of the women got one. While this is indeed fewer female Thirds, it’s not fewer by enough to offset the 10x larger number of male Firsts.
In the mid-table, where degrees are split into 2.i, 2, and 2.ii – there being still a handful of “pure” Seconds, apparently – 49.1% of men and 59.2% of women got a 2.i and the other two types are much the same, although women did get slightly more 2.iis.
So you can see that this is not a case of the often-seen closer female clustering around the same mean as men. If you assumed that, you’d predict they’d get many fewer Thirds too, and that all those who got neither First nor Third must have got a Second. It’s not so. Those who didn’t get a First got a 2.i, and the distribution of genders into the classes beneath 2.i are all about the same as each other.
The ineluctable conclusion is that women cluster all right, but about a lower average.
Isn’t that interesting?
Not so sure that the “affinity for dolls” is really a social construct. I’ve always been fascinated by the way male and feale apes and monkeys’ behaviour mirrors that of humans, in terms of toy preference: https://www.researchgate.ne…
There’s an income level difference between my wife and me: I chose to continue with the professional career that she chose to abandon because it left her in tears every night. Women *choose* their career paths. Watch Jordan Petersen explain this to Channel 4’s Cathy Newman, on YouTube.
income level differences are the result of personal choices, not a society that’s hostile to women.
Society determines the pay scale and devalues some work while valuing other work more highly, usually male dominated. My daugher is an engineer, most of the commenters here couldn’t become one, including the males. Biomedical is female dominated and paid less than more male dominated engineering, such as petroleum. The males already call her field, chemical engineering, fem-e because many women are going into the field. Then there is the child care, paid shit to bring up the next generation of workers if you go into the field, or no pay if you are at home raising your own children in a proletariat household. Throughout material reality and history, women and children, foreign workers, etc.. and in the US even former slaves were paid LESS by employers and displaced grown male (nativist to a particular country) workers. Nothing has changed. The denial included.
Yes, the dolls bit (or our daughter announcing at age four that she wants five kids, preferably three boys) has to be a social construct. There can be no biological or genetic basis for the gender that is created with the wonderful ability of being pregnant, and responsible for childcare duties for hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, being relatively more attached to small human baby like toys.
Incidentally, I was one of those parents who refused to buy dolls for his daughter, not because feminism but I just find them boring. Hence, loads of books and stem toys. She still really likes dolls, but at the same time only girl in her nursery who took interest in stem and building block activities.
Perhaps, but we don’t live in a bubble. Informazioni is gathered from everywhere.
To say that “gilrs like dolls” is akin to agreeing with statement that “girls like pink”, which is clearly a falsehood.
If anything, we like to conform, especially at an early age.
Damn the genetics-full speed ahead!
No, they’re not akin at all. Declaring which sex goes with which color is certainly a result of our society – it could be the opposite and make as much sense. But little girls preferring toys which are representations of the babies they want to have and nurture when they are women – that clearly has a strong biological element to it.
Hardly so. Get a small child and ask “it” to pick up a toy, “it” will pick up any old thing.
Things will start to change as they grow up.
Take small girl into a toy shop. She will gravitate towards the dolls, the fluffy, the pink and the cuddly. Mostly.
She is too old and been “compromised”.
Once they are aged 2-3 children know what is expected of them, and so do the manufacturers.
Brilliantly put. Entirely encapsulates my own feelings.
Well you obviously know nothing whatsoever about feminism. Your definition of feminism exists entirely in your own head!
As does yours, mine, and everyone else-we share what we think or “know” as you put it-I think that he may know a little something, and I imagine that you may also…
I don’t think feminists did that; none that I have ever heard of. The only people trying to persuade us all that there are no biological differences between male and female are TRAs – hotly contradicted by every feminist I know. Feminists don’t deny material reality; they are not the ones who decided that sex was “assigned”; they were not the ones insisting that TWAW; they are not the ones pretending that it is possible to be borrn in the wrong body; no, no, it’s the TRAs who are trying to curtail free speech in introduce compelled speech, who are no-platforming left right and centre, who are threatening anyone who questions them no matter how politely, who have got politicians and many institutions (who should know better) too scared to do anything other than comply with their ridiculous demands.
Andrea Dworkin – this is a quote from a Guardian article, Dworkin’s words: “On romance: “In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of
wine.” On sexual intercourse: “Intercourse remains a means, or the
means, of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her,
cell by cell, her own inferior status … pushing and thrusting until
she gives in.”
SOME feminists have used exactly the same kind of emotive, extremist language and arguments than the trans-activists do today. The “Patriarchy” for example might have meant something real when women had no rights to property or their own bodies; that is simply not the case today and it seems just to be a slogan.
Equality of opportunity has never ever resulted in equality of outcome and never ever will. Nature has battered and upended the nurture argument inside out and upside down and yet, identity politics and its pseudo brand of divisive and harmful politics prevails. I believe the cathedral of woke and the vile people that peddle it’s wears are actually starting to eat themselves and quite frankly it can’t happen soon enough. I still marvel at the lack of feminine concern and outrage at the thousands of girls abused at every level by predominately Muslim men. I’ll bet these same virtue signal liberal ideologues along with their fraternity in the press , would have brought the world to a standstill had the victims been perceived as members of a different identity convenient to the culture wars they continue to peddle…
Out here in the sleepy (unwoke) rural area, the inconvenient truth is that there are no trans dogs, cats, mice, horses, cattle, goats, hawks, ducks, chickens…cue the outrage!
The great thing about Unherd is that you can express a totally mainstream view such as this and not immediately be banned. If you were on “liberal” The Guardian “comment is free” you’d get banned for this.
My dog thinks he is a cat though.
My cat thinks he’s a dog, but only when it suits him.
There are also no cities, technologies, literatures, millennia of philosophies, or other advanced achievements made by dogs, cats, mice, horses, etc. Unless you’re proposing that you’re a “pet psychologist” and that animals can think and self-perceive as intricately as humans, this is a silly comparison. There are good arguments against transgenderism/transsexuality, but reducing human reasoning (even if you think it’s faulty) to the level of animals that eat their own feces is not one of them.
Hang on. This is an OLD article. It was originally published in January. @Unherd, you should really make it clear at the start. I say this because the article contains out of date information, like the consultation in Scotland. I thought there was a NEW one, but no… it is just the old one the writer is referring to.
@Unherd, you gave me a fright!!
‘Best of 2020’ series, it says
Yes, but it is dated today.
maybe they should include when it was originally published
Which they have done today 😉
Although some might like to think otherwise, human beings are simply another part of the earth’s flora and fauna. The prime directive and driver of all living things on the planet is to perpetuate their species. They do this in virtually all cases by having two sexes both of which have a role in producing the next generation. Each party has ab initio a biological sex which determines their role in producing offspring. This used to be called ‘natural’ birth.
Now sadly we have aberration in our racial and genetic makeup which has decided to ignore thousands of years of ‘natural’ evolution. I’m personally impartial to the question of whether this is a good or bad thing, but what I do know is it shouldn’t be regarded as a natural state of affairs instead of an aberration.
The Continuous Mortality Investigation which produces population projections for the Government some years ago produced a projection showing that if 40% of the population became ‘gay’ (now including ‘Trans’ ?) ie did not take part in producing offspring, the human race would die out. That must imply that by encouraging or deliberately moving towards that scenario must by definition be unnatural.
Agreed except for the “virtually all cases by having two sexes” part. There are quite a few means of perpetuating a species, sexual reproduction being just one of them. All of the higher animals do it that way, yes. But there are several recognized kingdoms of life now, and the others may outnumber animals in number of individuals, total weight, and perhaps number of species as well.
‘There are quite a few means of perpetuating a species, sexual reproduction being just one of them.’ Do enlighten us as to ‘other’ methods of reproduction apart from cloning and artificial insemination.
Asexual reproduction – mainly occurs in plants.
Is that strictly reproduction though?
My clivia miniata can be propagated by offset. Yes you get apparently two plants thereby, but strictly it’s the same plant twice. Bananas same thing. So is there any reproduction going on or is it just self-extension?
And several animals, like starfish or worms.
Some species will also change biological sex if the population of one sex is too low to propagate (I mean, this was in Jurassic Park, guys replying to Joyce!).
Any power that exists will be used, and eventually abused.
It is why we do not allow the police to examine emails without warrant. The “why care if you have nothing to hide?” argument is bogus.
Any power that exists will be used, and eventually abused.
If men can declare themselves women at the stroke of their own pen, it will be used, and it will be abused.
Any power that exists will be used, and eventually abused.
Abusive men will declare themselves women, and women will be assaulted, avoidably.
Men have finally figured out a way to prevent women from being recognized as tops in their sport.
Dont be downhearted, you will always come top in the fairly liquid bottle squeeze, the ironing category and pressing trousers. Always top billing for having a cry after a “hard” day and that Olympian Gold winning phrase “Not tonight love, United are at home”. Now go and make us a nice cuppa Annette, theres a good girl. A woman’s lot is quite an easy load. You just need a man in your life to show you where you are going wrong.
If you’re not good enough to win playing against the guys Paul, there’s always winning by playing the girls.
Unfortunately, playing the girls isn’t always much of a challenge:
Australian women’s national team lose 7-0 to team of 15-year-old boys
https://www.standard.co.uk/…
Thanks for another interesting Unherd article. But is it really necessary to include SIX “Suggested Readings”, supposedly by six different authors but all with the same title “The inconvenient truth about transwomen”, and all linking back to this article? And this is a regular occurrence on Unherd.
Yes, I was hoping to read an article with the same title by Douglas Murray, but of course it doesn’t exist.
Thank goodness for Liz Truss and the conservative government starting to see sense. We need to have the equalities act replaced and leave the ECHR and ECJ.
Yes, yes, yes. A sensible woman indeed.
It’s a good article, but I do wish that journalists, people who earn a living from the use of words and language, would learn the difference between “might” and “may”.
“If they were able to launch the lifeboats, they may have survived.” Then we’d better get looking for those lifeboats before it’s too late.
“If they’d been able to launch the lifeboats, they might have survived.” It’s tragic that they were not able to launch the lifeboats, and so did not survive.
“If they were able to launch the lifeboats, they might have survived.” Please clarify which of the above you mean.
“If it weren’t for Scotland, that may have been the end of it.” It is a possibility that that was the end of it, except that the start the sentence makes that interpretation untenable.
If Debbie Hayton couldn’t get that right, an editor should have corrected it, and another instance of it in paragraph six of the same article, before publication.
Might is the past tense of may, is it not?