YESTERDAY'S Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman overturned twenty years of understanding of the legal significance of a Gender Recognition Certificate, and moreover did so without hearing a single submission from those most immediately and personally affected – trans people themselves.
The Supreme Court took submissions from various so-called gender critical organisations, but none from trans advocacy groups. It also reached its decision without appearing to consider the implications for one of the most over-looked and marginalised groups in this entire toxic debate, trans men.
By ruling that sex is immutable and determined at birth, the ruling also ignores the existence of intersex individuals whose natural biology means that their true gender may not be immediately apparent at birth. Reality is messy and blurred and cannot always be neatly slotted into binary boxes.
There are cases of individuals who are born with no visible testes or penis and what appears to be a vagina. Throughout early childhood they are physically indistinguishable from girls. It is only when they approach puberty that their penis grows and testicles descend.
This genetic condition, which is caused by a deficiency in the production of an enzyme necessary for the metabolism of testosterone, has been reported from the Dominican Republic, Turkey, and Papua New Guinea. These individuals grow up with fully functional genitalia and can and do go on to have children of their own. In the Dominican Republic this condition is so well known that it has a popular name, güevedoce, a contraction of the phrase “güevos a los doce” which literally means “balls at twelve” in Spanish. Amongst the Sambia people of Papua New Guinea, amongst whom it is not uncommon, it is called “kwolu-aatmwol” which means “female changing into male”.
There is now no legal means in the UK by which an individual who was determined to be female at birth can legally be recognised as male for all purposes. Individuals who present as male and who may have functioning male genitalia, but who were registered female at birth can now not be legally prevented from accessing women's only spaces.
This is what happens when legal judgements are made without the judges taking into account all the evidence and facts and when judges hear submissions solely from one side in a highly partisan and polarised debate. It's all very well asserting that a person's legal gender is based on their biological sex, but in the real world a person's biological sex is not always apparent when their legal gender is determined, and the law now contains no provision for changing it.
The argument could be made that such cases only affect a tiny number of people, but the exact same argument also applies to trans people, who are less than 0.5% of the population.
The new interpretation of the law also opens up gender non-conforming women to abuse and harassment. There have already been instances of cisgender women whose presence in women's toilets has been challenged on the supposed grounds that they don't look girly enough. We can now expect more reports of this kind of harassment.
Entirely predictably, Labour's Scottish branch manager is now claiming that he has "always" called for the protection of single sex spaces based on biology, despite previously whipping Scottish Labour MSPs to back the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill.
Sarwar had already U-turned on his position, stating in February that he "regretted" supporting the bill and that Labour "would not have supported the bill" had it came through Holyrood now. In a post on Twitter on Wednesday evening, Sarwar rewrote history and said: "I've always called for the protection of single sex spaces on the basis of biological sex.
"This judgment gives clarity to women and service users about the protections in the Equality Act.
"The SNP Government must provide clear guidance for Scottish public services so they can implement the Equality Act properly to uphold dignity for all."
He's hoping no one remembers his previous position, just like he hopes no one remembers that he also urged Scots to vote Labour to save the jobs at Grangemouth and told us to read his lips when he claimed there would be no austerity under Labour.
If nothing else, this Supreme Court ruling has offered Anas Sarwar another chance to display his duplicity and political opportunism. One of the very few certainties in Scottish politics is that you cannot believe a single word Anas Sarwar says. He is a man bereft of principle and integrity. He's a perfect fit in Keir Starmer's Labour party.
The same old cronyism and incompetence
Labour has selected its candidate for the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse Holyrood by-election, which is being held on June 5 after the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie from breast cancer. The Labour candidate will be David Russell, a close friend and associate of senior Labour figures in the previous Labour administration of Glasgow City Council.
Russell, a former business partner of Rangers supremo Barry Ferguson and Anas Sarwar's brother Asim, worked as the council's head of operational services which included responsibility for the city’s roads and bins. In a condemnation with faint praise, a Labour source told The National that that complaints about the services Russell oversaw were no more than usual – usual being a lot – and that any claims they were higher than normal were “fake news”.
Russell is a good friend of Frank McAveety, former Labour MSP and minister for tourism, culture and sport between 2003 and 2004. Under Jack McConnell, McAveety's career was almost ended by a pie after he told parliament he had been detained by government business when in fact he had been eating a pie for lunch. The incident was dubbed porky-pie gate. McAveety survived the scandal but was overheard making lewd and borderline racist comments about a female audience member when he was Convenor of the Scottish Parliament's Public Petitions Committee in 2010. McAveety became a councillor in Glasgow after he lost his Holyrood seat in 2011.
McAveety is now facing charges of electoral fraud, having been accused of giving a false address when he ran for a seat on the local authority in 2022.
Having dropped its "change" slogan since Starmer made it laughable, Labour's new slogan is the equally risible "New Direction", which sounds like the name of a boy band which was eliminated in the early audition rounds of Britain's Got Talent.
Labour's new direction is the same old cronyism and incompetence. You don't need a long memory to remember just how inept the last Labour government at Holyrood was.
