Scotland’s women face a choice on self-ID in this election

Women in Scotland have a difficult choice to make in this election. Those whoomen, that is, who are concerned about a return of any version of the infamous Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and the policy of allowing transgender people to self-identify as another sex. It looks very much as if only the Conservative party is serious about abandoning self-ID, protecting women’s rights and asserting the primacy of biological sex, not least in what is taught in schools. Yet, very few Scottish women, and even fewer feminists, are natural Tory voters. Indeed, Scots of all genders tend to shun the party. 

But women across the UK have a particular interest in this election too, because its outcome could affect their sexual and social identity, as well as their safety in single sex spaces. What do they do? What does JK Rowling do? We know who she won’t vote for. The world’s most prominent critic of gender ideology says Labour has ‘abandoned women’. She’s certainly not going to vote for the Liberal Democrats who are even woker than the SNP responsible for trying to enshrine self-ID in law. 

It was Nicola Sturgeon’s policy of self-ID that led to a double rapist, Isla Bryson, being placed on remand in Cornton Vale women’s prison. Other male-bodied sex offenders had already been incarcerated there.

Most women probably thought they had seen the end of this reckless policy after that scandal. Allowing 16-year-olds to change their legal sex without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria has been hugely unpopular in Scotland and across the UK. Indeed, most women probably thought JK Rowling had been vindicated in her insistence that biological sex matters and that self-ID is an invitation for predatory males to threaten women and girls. Surely no one would again try to frame in statute the quasi-religious belief that people can be born in the wrong body? Well watch out, because some gender critical women believe the Labour party is bent on getting self-ID back on the road.

The Shadow Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, says she intends to review the current UK guidelines on the teaching of gender ideology in schools. This requires teachers to state clearly that there are only two sexes and removes from them the requirement to address children by their preferred pronouns. Phillipson believe this is ‘partisan’ language and doesn’t show care for transgender children. Parents clearly do not get a look-in here. 

Similarly, with the abandonment by Labour of so-called ‘spousal consent’, it is the interest of the trans person rather than his bewildered and betrayed wife (or husband) that takes precedence. Nor do children apparently have any rights when they face the humiliation and psychological stress of losing a father and acquiring two legal mothers. 

The Labour party has, however, made some progress. After being lectured on human biology by Tony Blair, Keir Starmer now accepts that men have penises and women have vaginas. That I need to write that sentence shows how far politics has strayed from the path of reason. But only four years ago, Labour’s then equalities spokeswoman, Dawn Butler, told BBC radio that ‘a child is born without sex’. She is still around, of course, as are many ‘trans allies’ on the Labour benches who believe that ‘transwomen are women’ in a literal sense. 

Labour says they will retain some form of medical intervention, though the medical panel that currently assesses the diagnosis of gender dysphoria has gone. In Scotland, however, there appears to be no medical intervention required at all according to the Scottish Labour manifesto. Anas Sarwar’s intention is clear. The Scottish Labour leader says he is determined to simplify and ‘demedicalise’ the process of gender transition. This looks very like GRR 2.0. 

The question is: can there be two routes to gender recognition in one country? Are we back to the situation where someone could change their legal sex in Scotland only to be told they are still their old sex when they cross the border? If medical diagnosis is required in England under Labour’s plans how can a Scottish gender recognition certificate (GRC) be valid?

In 2022, Sarwar whipped Labour MSPs into voting for Sturgeon’s self-ID bill. He has never atoned for that and clearly intends to revisit the matter after the election. The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill remains an act of the Scottish parliament. It was halted by the Conservative government in Westminster under Section 35 of the Scorland Act. Keir Starmer says he won’t unblock the bill to allow it to become law. But Sarwar hasn’t ruled out supporting an amended version of the bill.

Labour is also saying that they agree with the ‘gender critical’ interpretation of the 2010 Equality Act that it already protects single sex spaces. This remains hugely controversial. The Equality and Human Rights Commissioner, Baroness Faulkner, ruled two years ago that transwomen can be excluded from women-only groups as ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, as the law puts it. This is regarded as offensive by many LGBT advocates, such as the Good Law Project’s Jolyon Maugham, since it implies that even transwomen with a gender recognition certificate are still biological men. Or else how could they be excluded? They may have passports and birth certificates saying they are female but if this interpretation is correct, they are still male for ‘legitimate’ aims – such as women-only support groups for victims of sexual violence. It seems clear from what Keir Starmer says about the right of trans people to be ‘recognised and accepted’ that the presumption will be that transwomen are indeed female in law. 

The main risk to women’s sex-based rights, however, comes not from manifestos and what leaders say but from Labour’s possible super-majority. With another 200 Labour MPs on the backbenches, a number of whom are supporters of Stonewall, it seems highly likely that the weight of opinion in the new parliamentary Labour party will be with the likes of Dawn Butler and Lisa Nandy, who is on record as saying that trans prisoners should be placed in the establishment that confirms to their assumed gender. 

So again what do women do? Do they hold their noses and vote for the gender-critical Rishi. Or do they hope for the best with Keir? It looks like the Tories are already a lost cause so in a sense the issue is academic. But the consequences for women of an epic Labour majority could be anything but.