THAT was the week that was! A week with an outpouring of the experiences of ordinary women detailing just how many avoidance tactics they feel obliged to adopt when trying to protect their personal space and safety.
A week where a horrible kidnapping and murder brought these fears once more to the surface; not a very long journey! A week where the media overdosed on the interview with an American who married a Prince; cue a raft of male media commentators lining up to trash her account.
And, not at all least, a week where an already controversial Hate Crimes Bill, did not extend the protections listed therein to the half of the population who are female. That too provoked a storm on social media, much of it from independence supporting, utterly dismayed women now pondering aloud about where they planned to plight their troth on May 6.
The new law does, inter alia, provide protected status for men who have an intermittent fancy for wearing frocks. Each to their own and all that, but I doubt they represent 52% of the population.
READ MORE: Hate Crime Bill: Freedom of expression amendments added at Holyrood
But not to worry little ladeez, there is a working group led by a celebrated QC to examine issues of misogyny. As it happens I’m a fan and a friend of Helena Kennedy. In fact I have a shelf full of her books including the splendid Eve Was Framed, and its later companion piece Eve Was Shamed. Along with Misjustice, they cover in, some detail, everyday misogyny and how the law is complicit in it.
And you know what, Humza, they have been around so long that you can get them for around a tenner each in paperback. Or I can lend you my copies? Either way would save a lot of time and expense mining a subject already so comprehensively explored.
Truth to tell, this is not the first time our government has contrived to scunner women normally well intentioned to them. At times in the last couple of years it has seemed as if the political world has been consumed by the trans debate (sometimes spelled debacle).
A lot of folk (guilty as charged) have been reluctant to dip a toe in these particular waters, because dare to make the mildest observation about sexual characteristics and you get your head in your hands (if you’re lucky).
There are a number of people in this particular parish who are, let’s be charitable, strangers to honest debate. In their book, anyone not signed up to their world view is a transphobe and therefore to be cast into the outer political darkness.
Thing is cherubs, most of us, ahem, mature women don’t have a transphobic bone in our bodies. We are just a mite weary of transmania, when there are so many urgent women’s issues needing focus and attention.
Were it possible to stand on an elector’s doorstep, I can guarantee that this is not what most troubles your average voter. Guarantee too that the average voter may have no little trouble discerning what you’re on about.
READ MORE: Joanna Cherry: How it’s possible to support rights of trans people AND women
This is often portrayed as a generational divide; folks north of their 40s just fail to understand the modern world and the new complexities of the gender spectrum. Not guilty as charged. Many a wet towel has been wrapped round the head, as I read up everything I could lay my hands on in a genuine attempt to reflect on my own and the world’s prejudices.
And my conclusion is this is not an age thing, but an age old thing. That age old thing about women’s daily battle with casual misogyny, and age old fears about being, in a physical sense only, very much the weaker sex. Any assault on any woman of any age is always a catchweight contest.
This last week’s debate, and the defeat of women from both SNP and Labour camps who tried to argue the need for sex to be a protected category, reminded me forcibly of the other age old debate over rape. Because both are classic cases of victim blaming.
IT took Jess Phillips MP four solid minutes in the Commons to read out the names of women killed by men in the last 12 months. 118 of them. In the wake of that came a litany of advice about how women should be super careful about where they walk and when. Pardon? Are these not our streets too? How about some overdue action on the assailants rather than the assailed?
Similarly we have a pathetic record on rape convictions because there lingers that same tradition of victim blaming.
SHE had had a drink. SHE had had sex before. HER clothing was titillating. SHE should have known better. Always SHE should have known better. As if men found a glimpse of “stocking” not so much simply shocking as a cast iron invitation to have unsolicited sex.
And yes, yes, most men are decent and non violent. I know all that. I married one of them. Lovely man. Fully paid up feminist with it. Yet the reaction to this last week’s parliamentary exchanges suggests that most of these decent men have never given much of a thought to the fact that women go about too much of their lives in a state of suppressed panic about risk.
READ MORE: Joanna Cherry: If ever there was a group living in fear, then it is women
Largely because very few blokes have ever needed to make any calculations about how to stay safe going home.
All this matters in the pursuit of natural justice. But it matters too in the pursuit of a parliamentary majority prepared to go all out to achieve independence.
Three things have to happen: enough pro indy MSP’s need to be returned, enough voters have not to be pissed off before polling day, and the new government has to accept that a significant part of its support will do its snow off a dyke impersonation if it gets a sniff of more delay.
Turnout will matter. Not just in terms of getting the pro-indy majority for which so many people have waited and worked so long and so hard. For a pro-indy parliament elected on a shilpit vote will give the Unionists yet another excuse to diss the mandate.
THE recent ructions have already offered too many hostages to political fortune. Already left many natural supporters dismayed and confused.
The next few weeks will be important in giving them solid reasons to vote for independence. And no reason to suppose the campaign will obsess over issues they don’t recognise as remotely important in their already stress-filled lives.
There’s a second constituency who may not be natural SNP supporters but are independence inclined. For them any new SNP administration is in the last chance saloon as far as progressing a referendum is concerned. This weekend Boris Johnson re-iterated to the Scottish Tory faithful that an indyref will happen over his dead body. Presumably provided he can locate the right ditch this time.
So whether section 30 is a gold standard, a silver standard or just made of brass neck, it ain’t gonna be available. Hopefully a new government will not be the last folk to recognise a truth again underscored by the PM.
AND all the while, as we indulge in the celebrated Scottish tradition of starting punch ups in empty rooms, the UK cabinet are busy cultivating existing pro UK groups, removing Holyrood’s powers brick by brick, and, most insultingly of all, using the Holyrood money they’ve purloined post Brexit to invest in projects in Scotland festooned with union flags.
They seem to believe all we subsidy junkie jocks will then fall to our knees in open mouthed gratitude.
Alternatively, we can get up off them and get serious, properly serious, about breaking free from this shoddy Westminster Tory crew.
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