GIRLGUIDING’S decision to stop admitting boys who identify as girls is long overdue (Trans girls to be stopped from joining Girlguiding after UK Supreme Court ruling, Dec 3). The move strengthens safeguarding for girls.
Admission based on gender identity has reinforced the stereotype that a gentle boy, or one who prefers female company, must therefore be a girl. Recasting such ordinary non-conformity as a female “identity” has exposed vulnerable children to a belief system that too readily frames them as “born in the wrong body”, placing them on an unnecessary medical pathway. Yet without ideological interference, it is well established that many such children simply grow into well-adjusted homosexual adults.
Some of your online commentators decrying this decision may wish to reflect on whether their objections reveal a degree of internalised homophobia.
Brian Forsyth
Edinburgh
I HAVE lived most of my life with eczema, unaware it made me “different” until school. My first taste of prejudice came from a student teacher, the second from the headmistress. She insisted that physical difference meant mental deficiency, pulled me from the line to “prove” I couldn’t read, and urged my parents to “send” me to a residential special school.
Those schools were abusive and prone to mistreat children, as my mother knew. Thanks to my parents, not the school, I read well. The headmistress was later awarded an MBE.
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Prejudice was the norm in the early to mid 70s. Primary school was better, but the walk home meant passing children from another school who kept up the bullying and name-calling. I chose a different route. Things have changed, though today the bullying is more subversive.
Prejudice takes many forms, often unnoticed. People join in without realising the harm. It isn’t only racism, antisemitism or sectarianism. The next time you’re about to say something “funny” about someone who’s different, pause. Take a moment. Think. Ask yourself: who’s laughing – and who’s crying?
Judith Campbell
Portree
21 YEARS ago this month, the students of Glasgow University elected Mordechai Vanunu to be rector of the University. Vanunu had come to the UK with clear evidence that Israel had nuclear weapons. The campaign to get him elected was led by Mick Napier, who continues to vigorously campaign to this day.
The story of how Vanunu was eventually “kidnapped” by Israel, taken back to Israel, tried in a military court and held in solitary confinement for years is little known today.
The Israelis refused to allow him to leave Israel, even for his installation as rector.
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Vanunu is still living today in Israel under all sort of restrictions, barred from meeting with foreigners etc, and perhaps Glasgow University Students’ Representative Council could find a way to get word to him that at least we in Glasgow recognise the sacrifice he made in exposing Israel and its nuclear arsenal.
I met Mordechai on a few occasions. Indeed one of these occasions was in the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem when sitting at the next table was Tony Blair, with whom I had a word to ask him to help get Vanunu his freedom.
Vanunu has supporters all around the world who still honour him, but Glasgow should remain proud of what it uniquely did 21 years ago.
Nick Dekker
via email
AS the Caribbean is my ancestral neck of the woods, I’m interested to see when politicians here will condemn the extra-judicial killings against Venezuelan vessels in Caribbean waters perpetrated by deranged Donald Trump and his “Secretary for War”, ex-weekend Fox host Pete Hegseth, a guy accused of multiple sexual assaults and financial corruption.
These multiple killings, the latest attempt to distract from the Epstein scandal, involve dozens of killings of people on small boats. No interception, no capture, no trial and no identification – just blown out of the water. The Venezuelan government claim many were fishermen – but we’ll never know, as no normal protocols were followed.
As there is no declared war between the US or any part of the Caribbean or mainland South America these are simply murders on the part of Trump and Hegseth rather than war crimes.
Obviously in light of Starmer’s ease with and complicity in the genocide in Gaza I’m not holding my breath on that score.
However, Scotland, also has a stained history when it comes to slavery and wealth in this country that emanates from that terrible trade (you’ve only got to note the ugly monument to slavers in St Andrew’s square). So I’m waiting. For the loud, public, unequivocal condemnation from Holyrood. As I’d expect if any other country did this...
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh
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