For Women Scotland - the book

The notion that it is wrong to debate trans rights has foundered in Edinburgh

Note: This post was originally published on June 18, 2024, under the headline: “No debate - how’s that working for ya, US Democrats?” It is mainly about the book by For Women Scotland, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht. There were very few reviews of the book at the time - nothing at all that I can see in the London Review of Books, the TLS or the FT. I don’t think that was because these publications didn’t think it would be of interest to their readers but because of the “No Debate” mantra which held that discussing whether or not it is possible to change sex is in itself an act of discrimination. I have never subscribed to that idea. Anyway, apologies if you have already seen this but I am sending it out again for those who haven’t read the book but may be interested in this primer.

I am a mere onlooker in the US election campaign - but given the consequences for Europe and Ukraine if Trump gets another term, I reserve the right to be nervous and to pass comment. At the moment what is making me twitch is the failure of US Democrats and their organs to grasp the nettle of trans issues, in particular the furore surrounding the nomination of Sarah Netburn to the federal court of New York. 

Footage of Ted Cruz questioning Netburn over her recommendation that a transwoman convicted of rape should be transferred into a women’s prison has gone contagiously viral on social media - it even appeared on my Twitter feed translated into French.  No doubt it is geeing up supporters of National Rally, who love to hate ‘le wokisme’. Yet you won’t find a paragraph about this controversy in the New York Times on either the news or the comment pages - although it is right in their patch. 

I can only imagine this is because of the “No Debate” position which argues that questioning whether people can change biological sex is akin to discussing the merits of a racial slur. Although I regard myself as something of a trans ally I have never really understood this and I think, in this instance particularly,  it is a gift to the populist right. 

In Edinburgh, “No Debate” is all but over. Bookshops across the city are stacked with piles of a new collection of essays by some local authors - among them JK Rowling, Joanna Cherry MP, and lesbian prison governor Rhona Hotchkiss. “The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht’ tells the story of how they got together to form a group “For Women Scotland” which opposes allowing transwomen into single-sex spaces. (The name is a deliberate pun as the first meeting had only four attendees).

It is an interesting read although, like many of these things, patchy in quality. I laughed out loud reading the contribution of “muffragette” Elaine Miller, who lifted her skirt to reveal a fake merkin, or pubic wig, in the Scottish Parliament on December 22, 2022 when the Gender Recognition Reform Act was passed. ‘Anasyrma’, exposure of the genitals, is apparently a form of protest dating back to Ancient Greece. Miller hand-embroidered a dozen of these  - hers had a pocket at the back in which she placed a folded copy of a poem by Belfast poet Sharon Owens:

Dangerous Coats

Someone clever once said
Women were not allowed pockets
In case they carried leaflets
To spread sedition
Which means unrest
To you & me
A grandiose word
For commonsense
Fairness
Kindness
Equality
So ladies, start sewing
Dangerous coats
Made of pockets & sedition

Miller was supposed to be one of a group but when most dropped out, she was understanding: “Even hardcore feminists can not always escape the wifework and emotional load of Christmas.” One other protestor showed up on the day but her merkin fell off so it was only Miller who made the gesture in the end.

Standing up in the public gallery she recalls: “Fury made me loud. I shouted…’If you will not be decent, then I will be indecent’. I lifted my skirt and a bit of Glasgow vernacular slipped out. ‘Get it right up yas, you terrible, terrible people.’ I did not know that an MSP would record me on his phone or that the video would have upwards of 150 million views on social media. Christmas in my house was a bit awkward as my family tried to figure out if they were horrified by my behaviour, concerned that I had lost my mind or both.”

Muffragette Miller at Holyrood - or Holyrude as the Sun called it

Has the National Museum of Scotland taken steps to secure the merkin for the nation? I feel they should  - perhaps they can display a sample next to Jenney Geddes’ stool.

The substance of the book concerns the effect of cancellation, which many of the contributors experienced. Poet and spoken word artist Jeny Lindsay writes of sending a tweet after a couple of glasses of wine one evening, in response to a threat of violence against “Terfs” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). The stance she took changed her life - she lost work, was dropped by friends and festivals and had to leave Edinburgh, as she could no longer afford her rent. But joy cometh in the morning - not only is she included in this best-selling book but her own account of her experience “Hounded” is due out in October.

JK Rowling’s essay is also largely about the furore surrounding her decision to share her views, which exposed her initially to a great deal of public opprobrium. She mentions receiving a handwritten note from a young actress - she doesn’t name her but I guess it was probably Emma Watson - saying she was sorry for everything JK was going through. That doesn’t make Watson a hypocrite of course - it is perfectly possible for her not to share Rowling’s views while still regretting the public monstering of the author. 

One of the Scottish government’s reference points on gender recognition law was Ireland, where similar legislation had apparently passed without opposition. In TWWWW, Iseult White, the great-granddaughter of Maud Gonne, the Irish revolutionary and unrequited love of WB Yeats, writes that this was never the case, but that “no Irish politician with an eye on their career is prepared to challenge the gender orthodoxy in public” and that the legacy media does not cover it either. White reports having her computer hacked and being “doxxed” - where private information is published the internet. But she writes: “If my family could face house raids, imprisonment and execution by firing squad, without wanting to be a drama queen about it, I could face down a tranche of tech-savvy and potentially unhinged trans activists”.

Poet Magi Gibson was struck off a funding register after refusing to sign a Code of Conduct sent out by the Scottish Book Trust. Most of her contribution takes the form of a poem: “we sang our woman truth/ On high cliff edges we sang, in thickening mists of confusion, we sang/ We sang/ Of unintended consequences”.

One of the most interesting essays is by Johann Lamont, former leader of the Scottish Labour Party. She points out that women’s rights were not won on a platform of refusing to debate the fundamental questions. In fact, quite the reverse, they have been furthered by rational dispute over many generations. Lamont writes as someone with a background of arguing with sexist trade union leaders in smoky pubs and working men's clubs in the late 1970s and 80s, pushing for better representation and support for the sisterhood. Women have always had to make their case in the Union movement, and still do. But Lamont writes: “Dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists understood then what seems to have gone over the heads of many young, emboldened male activists - women have the absolute right to speak up and challenge, drawing on their own experience as women.” Aggressive protests outside For Women Scotland’s meetings and events have not helped the trans rights movement - to most people, they seem like bullying. 

But when it comes to the central issue of trans rights, most of the book’s contributors take the easy option of setting up straw men to knock down. Rowling quotes a letter she received from a female teacher who writes: “I will not teach young girls that if they like playing with toy cars they are really boys”. Is anyone actually advocating that? 

Most do not appear to be able to see the world the way that trans people do. Put yourself in the position of a shy, trans teenager who finds it difficult to socialise and is being encouraged to cheer themselves up by going for a swim or to the gym. It is all very well to say that people are free to express themselves however they want and gender doesn’t matter - but when you enter a leisure facility or a health club you do have to choose which locker room to go into. I imagine this could seem like an ordeal which makes the whole excursion impossible. 

I got a tiny insight into how this might feel when my kids were young. We went along to the Commonwealth Pool, which at the time had a sign on the women’s changing rooms saying “no boys over 6’’. One of my young associates was about that age and could lisp his letters so he insisted on obeying the rule. It was all fine on the way into the pool but on the way out he vanished for absolutely ages. After waiting for him at the exit,  I left my 8-year-old daughter on sentry duty and made my way back to the poolside to go in that way to look for him, holding the baby on my hip.  

The male attendant bustled out carrying his broom like a knobkerrie and told me sternly “You cannae come in here!” I tried to explain that I wasn’t trying to get a keek at men in a state of undress. Eventually,  he grumpily went to look for the child, who turned out to have tied the string of his swimming trunks into some kind of Gordian knot. The attendant chucked him out with a “you’re barred” look, not really accepting my explanation that we were trying to obey the rules. It was just a fraction of the awkwardness that a trans person might have to deal with. 

And back to the rapist-in-female prison controversy bedevilling Sarah Netbrun’s accession to a federal judgeship in New York - what strikes me here is that this seems to be the only aspect of prisoners’ rights that concerns people like Ted Cruz. The US, like Scotland, has a very high rate of incarceration. Many women end up in jail because of problems related to trauma and poverty - drug addiction, unpaid fines that escalate. Imprisonment also affects the rights of their children who may end up being taken into care, perpetuating generational trauma and making it much more likely they too will end up in jail. One of the scandals of the US justice system is women being forced to give birth while in chains. Has Cruz ever spoken out about that? 

Sarah Netburn had a case for her initial recommendation that the transwoman in question be transferred to a women’s facility. That should be examined by the fine minds of the New York Times comment team. The silence of the paper means that an NYT reader arguing politics with the doorman or the cab driver or the guy at the diner where they have their morning coffee is going to know less than they do about this case. That is not how you bring the people with you in a democracy. 

Note - the headline of this article was altered in April 2025