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Male violence (and the threat of male violence) still shapes women’s lives here in 21st century.  We have not advanced past the stage of needing female only spaces and strong rules regarding the safeguarding of women and children from predatory men.  The transgender idea of self – identification inserts a gigantic loophole into conventional safeguarding techniques thus rending safeguarding untenable and unsafe for women. Human beings cannot change sex and we should not as a society entertain legislation and legal fictions that promote this dangerous idea.

 

 

“I learned that predators don’t have ‘PREDATOR’ tattooed on their foreheads. They tend, at least to begin with, to resemble your next door neighbour or friendly uncle. They don’t announce themselves as perverted.They seem friendly, helpful and ever so keen to please, the kind of people who go out of their way to befriend, perhaps proffer little gifts, some pocket money, tell a few jokes, until there’s an uneasy reliance upon them, by which time it’s too late to back out because the hooks are in so far that they can’t be released without more damage, destruction, public shame and deep personal regret. Those men supplant themselves into the empty spaces previously occupied by ex partners or fathers or brothers, bringing salvation, which soon turns to coercion and pain, gaslighting and deflection. Some such men are upright citizens, not just famous disc jockeys and musicians, but teachers, foster carers, priests, Scout leaders, lawyers, judges, doctors, each and every walk of life in fact has predators with disordered minds. They encourage the keeping of secrets, for that secrecy, darkness and shade are essential to achieving their ends. They are not to be questioned in their motives, required to justify or explain what they do.

Some men frighten women; some men bully women; some men kill women; some men belittle and humiliate women and some men harm little girls. Some men get to little girls via their vulnerable mothers; some men get kicks prowling where they can and ambush women or their daughters. That is why women and girls have single-sex spaces, for safety, respect and dignity.

Men who batter or molest or terrorise their stepdaughters into silence don’t grass themselves off – they refer to the falls, the accidents, the self-inflicted injuries occurring strangely in odd circumstances as they babysat. And, offended, do the ‘who, me?’routine, indignant.

Women who are vulnerable and see their children abused by new partners don’t always manage to recognise or speak of what is right under their noses, they’re weakened, isolated, and scared – for some in such circumstances, escape, refuge or justice are for the birds – and were they to pluck up the courage to seek such aid, what they need are soothing understanding female voices who know the terror which comes from having the lighter, weaker, more vulnerable body, unable to fend off attack. Women fleeing violence, abuse, domestic terror inflicted upon them by men don’t deserve to be greeted at the door of a refuge by an intact male telling them to leave their ‘trans bigotry’ outside on the doorstep.

And women who have been brutalised might try to find a quiet cool breathing space in a public toilet in a supermarket where they can take a deep breath and stare into space for a few precious moments whilst fearing what lies ahead, moments to check a noticeboard for a helpline or just to sit in peace away from a boorish leering unwelcome advance.

Mothers in emergency treatment rooms getting shards of glass tweezered from the backs of their heads, or their cheeks, or having their lips or eyebrows decorated with butterfly strips don’t want those administrations provided by fat male fingers – those resemble the hard hands which punched and slapped hell into them.

Grannies in their twilight, scared and alone in hospital wards with varicose veins, hip replacements or hysterectomies don’t desire to wobble onto a bedpan in a nightgown in full view of a male bodied patient.

Teenage girls shouldn’t hide at home for embarrassment of having to use school toilets as boys listen to them rustling next door – we’re sending money to charities building toilets in Africa, for girls, so that girls can get educated, yet here in Scotland we are tearing those girls’ toilets down. Feminist to our fingertips we Scots are. Indeed, but perhaps only upon the international stage, not at the domestic hearth.

We know that the majority of female prisoners in Scotland are not locked up because of their violence, most having suffered trauma in childhood, usually at the hands of abusive men – yet these days women are required to share with transwomen – intact male bodies – with scant if any risk assessment and no regard to the views of the women – retraumatisation comprising cruel and degrading treatment – condoned by a female First Minister in a country whose justice system was once allegedly the envy of the civilised world.

So today in 2021 I am no longer a safeguarder – I left that job a few years ago. In the meantime though, there has been a new training regime instigated when safeguarders learn how to interview children and have to compete the ‘Enhanced Disclosure’ check – you fill in a form which I learned last week no longer asks for the applicant’s sex, but for the applicant’s gender – I don’t know why that is but I do know this – one day in Scotland we will see, as self-identification erodes the safe spaces and safe places women and girls need, that predators will access those places and lives of women and girls will be harmed and their safety jeopardised. Dignity, respect, choice, sex, not gender -‘these will all be tossed into the abyss by the SNP/Green government as they take ‘a leap of faith’ , in the name of progress. Back to the future and the loss of the gains our great grannies won 100 years ago. It is to Scotland’s shame, and my conscience won’t allow it. Will yours?”