Women in Scotland risk having their rights virtue-signalled away

By Josephine Bartosch, The Critic:

It isn’t just the English who don’t like to talk about “sex”, it seems the Scots are also somewhat reluctant to be honest about what’s under their sporrans. We live in relatively liberal times, and whether someone identifies their gender as transman, transwoman or non-binary haggis is a matter of personal choice. But whether we like it or not, society is still divided by sex and as such it is sometimes necessary to know whether someone is male or female.

The word “gender” is where the woke and the puritans converge; used by those who are either too prudish to say “sex” or keen to obfuscate its meaning, “gender” has displaced the category of “sex” on application forms and increasingly in law.

Finally, last Thursday during discussion of the Forensic Medical Services Bill in Holyrood, Johann Lamont MSP, a former leader of the Scottish Labour Party, spelled out the practical implications of what might seem to be semantic pedantry when she tabled an amendment that read “for the word gender substitute sex”.

Responding to those who questioned the need to differentiate between “sex” and “gender”, Lamont asked, “If they are interchangeable, why resist an amendment that uses a term that is defined in law? If it does not matter, why fear clarity?” The bill, which gained cross-party support, gives rape victims the right to have a forensic medical examination before deciding whether to report an assault to the police. The amendment secured the right of women in Scotland to be examined by a woman, rather than by a man who identifies as a woman.

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