PROGRESSIVE politics starts from the premise that material reality matters. Bodies matter. Work, pay, housing, violence, health, and care are not abstractions; they are lived conditions shaped by power. The best traditions of the Scottish left – trade unionism, feminism, gay liberation, anti-racism, disability rights – have insisted that liberation is achieved by changing structures, not words.
That is why the sometimes expectation, including in these pages, that progressives should endorse gender identity as determinative – decisive in law, policy, and contested spaces – deserves scrutiny. It is a case for distinguishing between protecting people from discrimination and elevating an internal identity claim above sex whenever the state and public services have to draw a line.
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A useful contrast is with same-sex attraction. The gay rights movement did not require society to deny observable categories; it asked society to stop punishing people for their relationships and to apply rules fairly. At its best, it expanded liberty: fewer prohibitions, fewer exclusions, more equal participation.
Endorsing gender identity as determinative often does something different. It is not just saying “let people live”; it introduces a rule for resolving conflicts. It asks for reclassification of sex-based categories as identity-based ones across sport, prisons, schools, healthcare, data, and single-sex services. It also too often turns a contested proposition into a moral litmus test: affirm or be called a bigot.
Pluralism is a progressive achievement. Disagreeing about definitions and policy is not harassment, and it should not be treated as such – especially when safeguarding, evidence, and competing rights are in play. When identity is treated as decisive, the pressure to police language and dissent grows, and the democratic space for balancing interests shrinks.
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There is an irony progressives should not miss: same-sex attraction depends upon sex being a meaningful category. When sex is replaced with self-declared gender identity in language and policy, it can make it harder to speak clearly about and address gay lives and boundaries, which can end up viewed as morally suspect. We see this when the Equality Network defines “sexual orientation” by reference only to “gender(s)”, enabling “lesbian” and “gay man” to include attraction between those of opposite sexes. We see it too when Stonewall’s CEO, responding to reports that lesbians refusing sex with trans-identifying men were being called transphobic, said: “There is no ‘right’ way to be a lesbian”, and “if you find that when dating, you are writing off entire groups of people, like … trans people, then it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions”.
“Conversion therapy” for gay people was rightly condemned because it treated same-sex attraction as a defect to be corrected. Progressives should be alert to the risk of re-medicalising non-conformity. Many gay and lesbian people – especially as children – are gender non-conforming. A progressive approach is to widen the space for boys to be feminine and girls to be masculine. It is not progressive to treat non-conformity as evidence of a hidden identity to be affirmed, with social and sometimes medical pathways following. Caution here is not cruelty; it is respect for complexity and for young people’s future autonomy.
A progressive settlement is available. Protect trans-identifying people robustly from discrimination and violence. Provide high-quality, evidence-led healthcare with rigorous consent and follow-up. Maintain clear, lawful sex-based rules where privacy, dignity, or safety require them, while resourcing humane alternatives so nobody is left without support. Collect accurate data by sex, while recording gender identity where relevant. And defend open debate: solidarity cannot be built on compelled speech.
Brian Forsyth
Edinburgh
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