Transgender debate: Police Scotland must not turn a blind eye to attack on gender critical protester – Susan Dalgety

Last Sunday, a group of mostly middle-aged women gathered in Aberdeen’s Duthie Park under the banner Women Won’t Wheesht, just as thousands of women have gathered across Scotland over the last five years. They had come together to speak out against the Scottish Government’s determination to fight the UK ban on the SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which the women – and the Scottish Secretary, Alister Jack – believe will have an adverse impact on UK-wide equality laws.

But more than their opposition to gender self-ID – the core component of the controversial bill which would allow Scots, from as young as 16, to change their legal sex without a medical diagnosis – the women met to stand up for their rights. While some politicians, activists and sections of the media have caricatured this new women’s movement as nothing more than a few bitter old ‘hags’ on Twitter, in the last five years it has matured into something much more than a protest group. It is a new wave of feminism, very Scottish in its character and its roots.

Back to Duthie Park. As is usual at these meetings, the women were joined by ‘counter protestors’, organised this time by a leading Scottish Green party activist, Esme Houston. About 20 trans allies turned up to express their opposition to the women. Nothing wrong with that, debate in a democracy is healthy. Except this time, one of the women, Julie Marshall, 54, was attacked. A male (apparently) – half Julie’s age – tried to snatch the Women Won’t Wheesht banner, and while attempting to wrest it back, Julie says she was punched in the arm and shoulder and the banner hit her face, leaving her bruised and with a black eye.

The police intervened, but only to issue a 26-year-old ‘individual’ with a recorded police warning. It seems a violent attack on a middle-aged woman requires no more robust a response from Police Scotland than a polite ticking off. Julie is making an official complaint about how the incident was handled, and campaign group For Women Scotland and policy collective MBM have each written to the Chief Constable, Sir Iain Livingstone, expressing their concern.

For Women Scotland pointed out that there was now a very real fear among women that the police have effectively given the green light to further physical assaults on women “just because some people disagree with their opinion”. Sir Iain, who earlier this year admitted that Police Scotland was sexist and misogynist, has still to respond.

Then on Monday, after a high-level policy meeting which Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie attended, Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s Shadow Secretary for Women and Equalities, announced that the UK party could no longer support self-ID, and that any future reform of gender recognition laws must include a medical diagnosis.

With views like that, Dodds – Aberdeen born and bred – would have been warmly welcomed at last Sunday’s rally in Duthie Park. Even Labour’s leader, Sir Keir Starmer, who has struggled to define a woman in the past, may have been invited. In an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live on Thursday, he said the party had reflected on what had happened in Scotland around gender reform and the SNP’s “cavalier” approach to the issue. And he agreed that a woman was an “adult female”.

But the leadership of Scottish Labour disagrees. In what can only be described as a snub to women across Scotland, as well as a direct challenge to Sir Keir Starmer, the party’s social justice spokesperson issued a blunt statement insisting that Scottish Labour remains wedded to the principle of self-ID.

“Scottish Labour continues to support the de-medicalisation of the process in Scotland,” said Paul O’Kane, 35. His leader, Anas Sarwar, remains silent on the subject. Scottish Labour women members are less reticent, angry that their leader continues to ignore their concerns. The party is alive with stories of women, some very senior and close to Sarwar, who have tried to explain their concerns to him and his leadership team, only to be met with stony-faced disdain and an exhortation to keep quiet.

Women in the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, even a few in the Scottish Greens, have also been advised to shut up, told by young party apparatchiks that their feminism is the wrong kind. Prominent politicians, like SNP’s Joanna Cherry and former Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont, have been dismissed as out-of-touch bigots for expressing their belief in material reality. The former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, even sneered that women’s views on self-ID were “not valid”.

And now it seems Police Scotland are prepared to turn a blind eye when a woman is attacked in broad daylight for daring to speak her mind. Middle-aged women are invisible in contemporary Scotland, it seems. Except when it comes to caring for the elderly, holding up the NHS, or breaking their backs to keep supermarket shelves stocked.

There are books to be written, academic papers to be researched, even political speeches to be made about how, in Scotland over recent years, women’s authentic voices were ignored by the political and civil society elite that now runs our country. But just as Julie Marshall will not be silenced by a violent counter-protest, so the women of Scotland will not be told to “wheesht” when it comes to standing up for their rights. Particularly not by men half their age.