I HAD to read Alyn Smith’s piece twice, so disbelieving was I that a Scottish MP, and a member of the current SNP administration, had written such a skewed piece (Eternal vigilance is the price to pay for freedom, July 7). But of course I should not have been surprised given the direction of travel of this government – which has never been in the direction of independence, but always in the direction of eliminating women’s hard-won gains.

“Progress is not permanent, and rights can be reversed”, says Alyn Smith. You got that right, Alyn, because women’s and girls’ rights are being rolled back as we speak. Laurel Hubbard is not the only trans woman who is encroaching on female sports, not by a long shot. Women fought long and hard to have female sports introduced into the Olympics in the first place, and lazy, entitled parasitism is not a good look: it so often kills the host, figuratively speaking in this case. Maybe that’s the intention? It certainly looks like it.

“Sixty-nine countries worldwide criminalise being gay…” Yes, we all agree – deplorable. Yes, it was very bad here, too, but no gay or trans person is prosecuted or jailed today for being gay or trans, are they? That is progress. And just what does that former legal oppression have to do with women?

Women didn’t beat up gay or trans people or force them to transition; women still don’t do that, so why do women have to shoulder the fall-out from patriarchy’s injustice? We are not in charge in those countries. God knows, women are fighting their own battles in many of those countries just to be recognised as human beings. It is men who have rejected gay men; it is men who reject trans women. Women are not a ”get out of jail free” card, sir. What about your female constituents? You don’t believe women should object to incursions into female spaces and rights by trans women because they are exactly the same? Biology says NO.

“I don’t see that the two are in conflict…” Look again, Alyn. They are most definitely in conflict. How could they not be? Why do you think self-ID men are all going to be paragons of virtue and fair play? Are you naive? Are all those opposing self-ID right-wing bigots, while you march to the beat of the virtue-signalling drum of the absurd ultra-left that never fails to open the door to the right in its endless and boke-inducing self-righteousness, flitting from one common-sense-evading issue to the next in search of canonisation? It is not trendy and liberal to eradicate one group’s human rights in favour of another, especially when that other is miniscule in numbers and already has all its rights. Perhaps you haven’t read the 2004 GRA or the Equality Act 2010? Perhaps you should? Or would that spoil the narrative?

Self-ID without any gate-keeping will open up women’s spaces and rights to paraphiliac and fetishistic men at best, and predators at worst. That is the reality. Women and girl children don’t count against the self-interest of the men of the trans lobby (mainly Stonewall and its ilk), which itself is funded largely by predatory capitalist, multinational corporations and gullible governments. That is not disinformation. That is fact. Always follow the money. A cliché, but true.

Women are going to stop being nice. Women want dignity, privacy and respect. We want our own spaces and rights. Women are half the human race. Don’t you dare equate women’s worldwide subjugation, oppression, rape, murder and torture at the hands of men to gay or trans oppression. They are not on the same scale, and you insult every woman by trying to equate them. It is akin to saying that white working-class oppression was equal to black slavery. Both were/are horrendous, but they are simply not equivalent.

Women were not created to be the clean-up ladies of male rejection of other males who don’t fit the patriarchal stereotype. Here’s a really revolutionary idea, Alyn – why not fund third spaces for trans people? It would solve everything, so why not?

You say Scotland is “big-hearted and smart enough to come up with a legal framework that protects and respects everyone … and by proving we can be that example, build momentum to independence.” So, GRA reform first? So predictable, Alyn. How many dangly carrots has that been, in the past seven years? Thanks for confirming that there will be no independence until we agree to GRA reform. Women’s spaces and rights thrown out of the window for yet another dangly carrot – and still no independence, still no momentum? Aye, right! Methinks Alyn Smith speak with forked tongue – again. This SNP government has not the slightest intention of bringing us to independence, and if Scottish men vote for GRA reform because they are daft enough to believe that it is a fair price for independence, the women of this country will never forgive them. Never.

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