A group of senior lawyers recently wrote this letter in response to the TIE letter which was printed in the National and the Herald earlier this month. We believe it is vital that the misrepresentations of the legal position as expressed in the TIE letter are corrected, and are pleased to be able to publish this rebuttal.
Continue readingThis image of our leaflet was posted on Peyton Rose’s (now deleted) tweet on the 15th of March 2019:
Continue readingIt is not ‘nasty’ to stand up for women’s rights
by Laura Rimmer
It didn’t bode well. From the off – the very first sentence, no less – Dani Garavelli’s piece in the Scotsman, ‘Time to call a ceasefire as gender debate gets nasty’, draws a parallel between ‘the rights of two historically oppressed groups in society – cis (non trans) women and trans women.’
Continue readingEngender, who describe themselves as Scotland’s feminist organization, have published an open letter following criticism of themselves and other officially funded women’s groups by MSP Joan McAlpine.
Engender’s opening gambit is to announce that they “neither ‘represent women and girls’, nor make any claim to.” This is quite an admission from a supposedly feminist group and rather begs the question what purpose Engender serves. They state that their “expertise comes from feminist scholarship, evidence drawn from delivery of services and programmes, and work with women and a wide range of women’s groups.” It would appear that Engender’s rather rarified expertise is from a rather narrow version of third wave feminist scholarship, while their “wide range” of women’s groups excludes all those who disagree on points of policy. We should note here that Forwomen.Scot members include those with decades of front line feminist activism – including at Greenham and Faslane and those who campaigned for gay rights when the stigma of AIDS overshadowed the community – as well as lawyers, academics, medics and those involved at the coal face of women’s services.
Continue readingSaving this here because we think it’s so good!
Joan McAlpine MSP
https://twitter.com/JoanMcAlpine/status/1101251118611525633
Thread: Re Sex and the Census. For many individuals identity is very personal and important and the 2021 census will allow those people to express a trans identity for the first time. All good so far…
Continue readingAhead of the census debate we are concerned that the definitions of male and female in Scots Law and practice need to be robust and that appropriate protections can also be put in place for the trans community through proper data gathering. But conflating sex and gender serves no-one and hurts many.
Continue readingBriefing Notes: Stage One Debate on the Census (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill
Background
For Women Scotland was delighted to have had the opportunity to give evidence at committee stage regarding proposed changes to the 2021 census.
We fully support the proposal to gather data with regard to gender identity and sexual orientation and, due to the sensitive nature of these questions, that this should be done on a voluntary basis. The census is an ideal way to gather detail on small populations to better enable provisions.
The committee also considered calls to conflate sex and gender identity within the compulsory M/F question or to add the category “other”. The Stage 1 report was clear in recommending that these characteristics should remain distinct and that a non-binary option should not be added.
Continue readingSunday
Women’s March London have decided to call women ‘menstruators’ and have a handy chart telling us to replace ‘women’s health’ with ‘reproductive health, and ‘mothers and daughters’ with ‘parents and children’. This is inclusive, apparently – yet they fail to notice the glaringly obvious in that women have just been excluded from (almost) all the language they use. I have no idea why they are not the People’s March!
https://twitter.com/womensmarchlon/status/1087104151123906561
The following was published by our Twitter account @ForwomenScot on 22nd January.
https://twitter.com/ForwomenScot/status/1087834571780120578
It appears that Patrick Harvie MSP, in his enthusiasm to bring a Motion which, increasingly, appears to be motivated by personal animosity, may have overlooked the rules governing Member’s Business Motions.
http://www.parliament.scot/S5ChamberOffice/20180126_Guidance_on_Motions.pdf
Sunday
The Times reports on the independent investigation into the Green party which found that Aimee Challenor, a transgender activist and candidate for the Greens’ deputy leadership, committed a “serious error of judgment” by appointing her father, David, as her agent at two elections even as he faced trial for kidnapping, raping and torturing a 10-year-old girl.
http://archive.fo/XJymD