by Democrat reporter
February is LGBT+ History Month, and Equality Network and Scottish Trans are encouraging LGBTQIA+ people and their friends, families and allies to ask the Scottish Government how it wants history to remember them – As standing up, or as standing by when trans rights were at risk across the UK?
The charity is clear that misogyny fuelled hate experienced by women and girls must be rooted out of Scottish society. They strongly supported the now indefinitely delayed Misogyny Bill and agree that women must be protected from the disproportionate harm they face.
Having dropped the Misogyny Bill, the Scottish Government instead laid a Scottish Statutory Instrument (SSI) last week to add ‘sex’ as a characteristic to hate crime legislation.
Within this, the Scottish Government have, for the first time anywhere in the UK, defined sex as ‘biological sex at birth’, explicitly denying gender recognition for trans people in this piece of legislation.
The Scottish Government’s justification for this action is alignment with April’s UK Supreme Court judgment. When the Supreme Court ruled on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act, they were clear that this ruling applied to that Act alone.
To use the Supreme Court’s own words ‘it is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex’.
Equality Network and Scottish Trans are extremely concerned about the use of this definition by the Scottish Government. Since last year’s Supreme Court ruling, there has been widespread uncertainty and fear about the future for trans people’s equality and human rights across the UK.
International human rights actors have sounded the alarm about the direction of travel the UK is taking. Trans people are already facing increased exclusion, harassment and discrimination, as they’re shut out of spaces and services they need to go about their daily lives.
This decision will make Scotland’s the first government in the UK to write this definition into legislation. Equality Network and Scottish Trans believe that this will have a further detrimental impact on the trans community in Scotland, not least by furthering the reach of the Supreme Court ruling into areas of devolved legislation that are in no way related to the Equality Act or reserved matters.
While trans women will still be protected from any sexist hate crime that they experience, as hate crime prosecutions are based on perception, writing this ‘biological sex at birth’ definition into Scottish law undermines effective legal gender recognition and creates a dangerous precedent for further erosion of trans people’s rights.
Vic Valentine, Manager of Scottish Trans, said: “Since April’s Supreme Court ruling, trans people the length and breadth of Scotland have been feeling scared and anxious about what exactly it means for how we go about our daily lives. Things that most people take for granted – like trying on clothes or using the toilet in a cafe – have suddenly become moments of worry.
Against this backdrop, it’s incredibly hard to understand why the Scottish Government has chosen to copy and paste the definition of “sex” used by the Supreme Court into Scottish hate crime law – a choice that seems to us to be completely unnecessary. For a government that has often described itself as a leader on LGBT+ equality, this decision seems to stand in contrast to that.”
Rebecca Don Kennedy, CEO of the Equality Network, said: “Despite messaging to the contrary, the Scottish Government seem to be placing the trans community and their rights in Scotland in further question – does the Scottish Government wish to champion progress for trans rights, or do they not?
“Do they want to ensure there is not an overreach and further harm caused by this ruling or do they not? This recent choice begs the question. They were not required to do this. We don’t think they should have been as these actions feel counter to their promise to do what they can to protect.
“Not only that, but they may also likely have created technical problems within this Act by doing so.”
Does this interminable trans woke woo woo never end.
Truly it seems to dominate every aspect of our life. Do we not have other, better things, to focus and spend our time on.
I don’t want to be hurtful to the woo woo biological man with the tackle who wants to dress as a woman, but quite frankly, people like them should not, and I repeat not, be in woman only spaces.