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Women are fed up shouting... now Sturgeon needs to listen

Emma Cowing

THANK goodness for women like Alexandra Darroch. Earlier this week at a Zero Tolerance event in Edinburgh, she stood up and told the First Minister what many of us have been thinking for months.

A feminist, she has watched with growing concern as the Gender Recognition Reform Bill making its way through parliament erases the rights of women and girls.

‘Shame on you,’ she said to Nicola Sturgeon. ‘You’ve fomented this culture in Scotland that basically tells women they are bigoted for standing up for women’s rights. I see you, and thousands of women around Scotland see you.’

She’s right. We do. Not long afterwards, Ms Darroch, pictured, was, inevitably, escorted from the room, while a flustered Sturgeon was left to apologise, although what for, I’m not quite clear. Finally being held to account? Being forced to listen to someone who doesn’t agree with her?

Let’s face it, it doesn’t happen often in the ‘Yes, First Minister’ world she has carefully built for herself.

Part of what got Ms Darroch’s hackles up in the first place was that at an event for a charity that campaigns to end violence against women and girls, guests had been warned off raising the issue of women’s rights and gender identity. Because heaven forfend anyone actually talk about the stonking great elephant in the room.

Elsewhere, however, it turns out there are some organisations who wish to face the elephant head on. Like the United Nations. UN special rapporteur Reem Alsalem has warned the SNP Government that their plans to make it easier for people to get Gender Recognition Certificates by removing medical involvement and reducing the age limit could be abused by violent men.

In a letter to the Government she wrote: ‘This presents potential risks to the safety of women in all their diversity.’ Sturgeon’s response? ‘We take seriously the comments of the special rapporteur. Respectfully, though, we do not believe that those criticisms are well founded.’ Respectfully, though, you really should. Sturgeon has a long track record of not listening to people who don’t agree with her grand schemes (remember the named person legislation?) but she reached new heights at this week’s Zero Tolerance event. Because now it appears that she has actually stopped listening to herself.

In the same room where a woman was escorted out for telling Sturgeon what she really needed to hear, the First Minister did, in fact, acknowledge there was a problem.

I know. My flabber was well and truly ghasted. But, quoth she: ‘In my long experience, most men who commit violence against women don’t feel the need to change gender to do that.

‘Those who do, my argument is, we should focus on them because they are men abusing a system to attack women.’

Men abusing a system to attack women? Why yes, Nicola. That’s what Scotland’s women have been trying to tell you for months. Admittedly she tucked it in there amongst a self-aggrandising squawk about her ‘long experience’, but still, she said it.

Even she believes we should be focusing on men who abuse a system to attack women. How could we do that, I wonder? Maybe, by, oh, I don’t know, not handing out gender recognition certificates like sweeties?

Ultimately though, the only thing this statement by the First Minister does is prove how utterly confused the Scottish Government is on the whole issue.

They have become tangled up in a web of their own making, and no longer seem to understand their own reasoning, mainly because it simply does not stand up to scrutiny. It is a rancid flank steak of an argument that needs to be consigned to the rubbish bin of terrible SNP policy ideas as soon as humanly possible.

It won’t be, of course. The First Minister will continue to dance on the head of a pin while the rest of us stare up in awe at the ludicrousness of it all.

Like Ms Darroch, thousands of Scottish women have seen Sturgeon and her wrongheaded bill for what it is for a long time. So when will the First Minister start listening? To the women of Scotland, to the United Nations, and most importantly, to herself?

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2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://mailonline.pressreader.com/article/281861532529644

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