BRIAN Forsyth (Letters, Dec 27) explains why he thinks that Girlguiding should exclude trans girls. But he gives no real-world examples, and there’s a reason for that.
Girlguiding has included trans girls for years. The only reason they have changed their policy now is that they were forced to do so by the threat of legal action. That was based on the Supreme Court judgment in April which says (contrary to the clear intention of parliament in passing the Act) that “sex”, as used in the Equality Act 2010, means only “sex registered at birth”.
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In making the change to their previous policy of inclusion, Girlguiding’s leadership said publicly: “The board of trustees for Girlguiding has made the difficult decision that Girlguiding must change, following the Supreme Court’s ruling. From today, December 2, it is with a heavy heart that we are announcing trans girls and young women will no longer be able to join Girlguiding. This is a decision we would have preferred not to make, and we know that this may be upsetting for members of our community.”
It is questionable whether the Supreme Court judgment actually does require such exclusion. Only future court cases will decide that. But on the question of whether it is otherwise positive to include trans girls, who are we to believe: Brian Forsyth, or Girlguiding itself?
Tim Hopkins
Edinburgh
HAVING spent 20 minutes dissecting and distilling the substance of Ron Lumiere’s long letter of December 29 from his signature labyrinthine web of impressive but ultimately unenlightening semantic and conceptual webs, my brain hurts a bit.
I am a devotee of his impassioned and often informative letters but in this one in particular, where he critiques how “complex questions” regarding the inclusion/exclusion of trans children in traditional single-sex groups that are biologically defined are considered, I found the various arguments he presented to be – however philosophically erudite – coming from an over-intellectual and a somewhat sentimentally impoverished place.
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He is a very able advocate for marginalised groups but I respectfully draw his attention to the words of our national wordsmith Robert Burns, who insisted that “the heart is aye the part that maks us right or wrang”.
Can I cast aside the ideological and politically correct aspects of this vexed subject to express my profound sadness and alarm for those of our children born into a “battle of the sexes” and the “battle of genders”.
I do not honestly ken infallibly what is ultimately best for the Girlguiding organisation or the dysphoric little boy who wants to join and the distress of his parents who simply want the best for him or her.
While this storm of existential dysphoria passes, as pass it will, my biggest personal challenge will be to sublimate the anger I feel towards those who have made political, academic and medical careers that – whether knowingly or not – have fostered the social and ideological roots of what at the end of the day has only increased the sum total of suffering for a generation of innocents.
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Hope springs eternal and I already feel the refreshing winds of change abroad that will bring healing to our increasingly distressed bairns. We do not need more jiggery wokery, far less religious fundamentalism of any stripe, but a simple dedication to truth as it reveals itself within our individual consciousness, however uncomfortable this may feel temporarily when first encountered.
When complexity perplexes, “clarity begins at home”. This is popular sovereignty, and has in addition consequences for the commonweal and the national constitution.
A guid New Year to all.
Dr Andrew Docherty
Selkirk
MAGGIE Chapman writes that the Nurse Peggie tribunal “entrenched the legal right for people to use the facilities that match their lived-in identities” (2026 must be year we halt the roll-back of trans rights, Dec 27). The tribunal did not frame the issue as an unqualified right of employees to choose facilities. Rather, it considered whether an employer’s decision to permit a trans-identifying male employee to use a women’s workplace changing room is lawful in particular circumstances, and emphasised that such decisions require objective justification on the facts.
Ms Chapman’s portrayal of the legal rights of trans-identifying people is consistent with the rest of her piece, the “equality” she invites progressives and socialists to rally around is one which excludes sex-based rights. Dr Beth Upton is praised, yet Nurse Sandie Peggie is not mentioned. Women as a sex class are absent altogether. Same-sex-attracted people are referred to only as “LGBTQIA+ people”, bundling lesbians, gay men and bisexuals into contested propositions about gender identity that many do not share and, in some cases, regard as antithetical to their interests.
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On the back of such propositions, lesbians and gay men are told they must be open to dating people who are not of the same sex (Stonewall having defined “homosexual” to include attraction to trans-identifying people of the opposite sex); and children who would otherwise grow up same-sex attracted are medically transitioned (the Cass Report noting that the clinical model used did not properly factor in sexual orientation). Some detect homophobia at play.
There is nothing progressive – still less socialist – about Ms Chapman’s hyper-individualist, non-materialist, strategically divisive politics, where society must organise around self-declared identity.
Brian Forsyth
Edinburgh
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