I WOULD like to add some thoughts to Joanna Cherry’s column (Critical voices must be heard in the debate on GRA reform, June 3).
She mentions that the Holyrood committee taking evidence on the gender self-ID bill on the subject of womens’ sport only heard from two men. Sharron Davies also noticed this, and added that they were both administrators rather than competitors. I think it’s safe to say that from an administrative point of view, trans inclusion really doesn’t matter much either way. From women competitors’ point of view it’s obviously a very different matter.
If anyone is interested to follow this up, you can find interviews on YouTube with Dr Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist at Manchester University, who co-authored a review with Tommy Lundberg, an eminent sports scientist at the renowned Karolinska institute in Sweden. They specifically looked at all the data they could find on male sports advantage and the effect of testosterone suppression. They found a host of features that gave male advantage, almost none of which are affected by testosterone suppression, apart from a marginal reduction of muscle strength, nowhere near the advantage the male body starts with. As Dr Hilton puts is, you can’t unboil an egg – the advantages are created during male puberty, and after that they’re baked in.
READ MORE: Self-ID will not cause 'huge widening up' of those seeking to change gender, MSPs told
Two other speakers worth looking for on YouTube are Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce. They are both very intelligent, thoughtful, calm and considerate speakers on gender issues.
Another concern I have is that inclusivity for transwomen means exclusion for others. There used to be a women-only swim session at a local high school here, and a number of Muslim women took part. Their religious and modesty requirements are, I would certainly hope, protected under the Equality Act. Obviously if a trans woman chose to insist on their right to join in, those women would be excluded. It’s a bit like when all through the Brexit debate I was thinking “when is someone going to mention Northern Ireland?” but nobody ever did till it was too late.
I am also worried at the lack of truth and honesty in the pro-trans campaigning. I recently chanced upon a YouTube clip from a debate a few years ago on STV’s Scotland Tonight, with Maggie Chapman and Joan McAlpine, and I was deeply disturbed when Maggie Chapman turned to Joan McAlpine and said, as if to a small child, “You do know biological sex isn’t binary?” This was either appalling ignorance or deliberate gaslighting. Biological sex is one of the most binary things in nature!
Then more recently in a Holyrood debate – I think on Women’s Day, when everyone was all too aware of the Sarah Everard case – Shona Robison stated, as I heard it, that no man needs to pretend to be something he isn’t in order to harm women. I refuse to believe that she was unaware of the Everard murder, so I can only interpret this comment as a conscious untruth.
And as for self-ID, I can’t see why there should not be some form of gatekeeping. Previous rights campaigns – on race, women’s and gay and lesbian rights – never asked anyone to give up anything. The trans “rights” activists are asking women to give way to accommodate them. As I’ve heard it put, you can’t have a human right to impinge on other people’s rights.
Finally, Stonewall are too often treated as if they are an authority on gender issues. They are not. They are a lobbying group with a particular agenda that we should treat with great caution. Their mantra “No debate” only suggests to me that they have no case to make, and probably know it.
Robert Moffat
Penicuik
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