ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK

Politicians who spoke this week about Scotland returning to 1950s values need educated and replaced forthwith for they are either clueless or uncaring about the rights of women in Scotland and how those have developed over decades but remain insecure.

1950s battered wives had no place to find refuge unless family could provide this; there were no safe houses, no benefits available for women fleeing violence and no protective orders for courts to grant. The oft repeated phrase was ‘you’ve made your bed’ – you know the awful rest.

1950s women struggled to open a bank account let alone find paid work where their wages could be made over directly to them as individuals. Child care was non existent. Maternity leave and pay likewise. Menopause support not yet invented, much like pain relief in childbirth. 

Whilst the 1960s brought the liberation of The Pill and abortion, in limited circumstances, where medically necessary, women remained second class citizens unlikely to have their names on a rent book let alone a title deed or a mortgage. Some still had their pockets stitched up, survived on paltry housekeeping and recalled grannies whose teeth were removed before marriage to save husbands the cost of dental treatment.

The 1970s saw Scots women find work in mills and garment factories, they started to get to college and Uni and some became cops, prison officers, doctors and lawyers in greater numbers than the few sisters of earlier decades.

Thankfully, as the result of efforts of a handful of brave women, by the 1980s there began to be Rape Crisis Centres and Women’s Aid refuges – lifesaving and providing welcome solace beyond the gaze of the male abuser, the bruising fist, cruel tongue and worse.

1982 saw the criminalisation – at last – of rape within marriage.

The following three decades confirmed Scotland as a trailblazer with opportunities for women and girls, action on the pay gap, childcare provided by the State, attempts to get girls into studying STEM subjects, political representation for both sexes, women slowly but surely breaking into the top jobs.

Then – boom – as if Thatcher hadn’t made the image of women leaders sufficiently poisonous, Scotland went one better with leadership by a woman who decided to redefine the very meaning. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory once more. 

We’ve got men in women’s prisons, women’s wards, women’s changing rooms, women’s refuges; boys in girls toilets, sports teams and hobbies. There’s an epidemic of girls seeking trans health care as the result of social contagion and dodgy proclamations from politicians who shouldn’t have the care of a hamster let alone the ear of the nation. Women who have been abused and raped told to leave their trauma at the door and excluded from vital services if they won’t pander to men who express a desire to participate in what were designed to be safe spaces for women only.

Women didn’t wheesht and women of Scotland never will. Scotland’s women have conquered and overcome every obstacle put before us and we will continue so to do. 

Regardless of any legal fiction, there is no escaping biological scientific reality. Telling the truth in Scotland today may be a revolutionary act, but it is not bigoted or false. 

I do hope that our new FM is able to be honest about what  legal fiction comprises and that we can reset our country to become one where we are proud of the progress made so far, honest enough to roll back the errors and determined to see that future progress is fair to all. 

We don’t need retrograde steps, simply recognition that there are, and will always be, only two sexes. Services and protections can be provided by sex or by gender where those are male, female and gender neutral. What we can have no longer is a pretence that a man can become a woman and gain access to female spaces by dint of self identification, surgery or delusion. Everyone in Scotland deserves better than this. We’ve come far, but have a distance to go – that will be achieved when there’s a common understanding as to what we wish to achieve and why. It won’t occur as the result of bullying and deluded attempts to shame those with genuinely held views of what comprises decency and respect. 

Gender ideology divided the Scottish Independence movement. Its removal from the political agenda can contribute to the resurgence and success of a united campaign towards self-determination; necessary as clearly the majority of Scotland desires our country’s independence. Let’s make that happen. All of us, together.