As SNP government contradicts itself over ‘pregnant men’, the real gender scandal goes unnoticed

In his best Rev IM Jolly deadpan delivery, he replied simply: “No, I don’t.” In a normal democracy that would have been the end of the matter, but for the last seven or so years, Scotland’s political and civil society elite has been in the grip of an ideology that argues that men can in fact give birth, are lesbians if they say they are, and swapping one’s pronouns is akin to a sex change.

Indeed, at the very moment Swinney was being asked the ‘pregnant man’ question in Edinburgh, one of Scotland’s finest lawyers was in London, arguing on behalf of the Scottish Government that humans can change their sex. That men can become pregnant. She even admitted she needed a flow chart to work out when a man is man or a woman.

A failure of devolution

Has your head exploded yet? Mine did, several years ago when Swinney’s predecessor and the woman largely responsible for the Scottish Government ending up in the Supreme Court, insisted that humans can change their sex and that they should be allowed to do so simply by filling in a form.

As well as making life easier for “one of the most stigmatised minorities in our society”, Nicola Sturgeon told MSPs in September 2021 that her gender recognition reforms would not “remove any of the legal protections that women currently have”. Early next year, the Supreme Court will decide whether this is indeed the case. But no matter the judges’ decision, what the last few years have revealed is a complete failure of devolution, and a chasm between Scotland’s political elite and the rest of us, as wide and as deep as the North Sea.

It wasn’t just the SNP leadership who dismissed voters asking serious and heartfelt questions about self-ID as bigots. I remember a fraught 45-minute conversation with Scottish Labour’s Pam Duncan Glancy, a woman for whom I have huge respect, when I tried to explain my concerns. She made it clear she thought that somewhere between 2015, when I worked for the Labour party, and 2022, I had metamorphosed into a raving homophobe.

And thanks in large part to Nicola Sturgeon and her handmaids in civil society, gender identity theory has become so embedded in our culture that last year I found myself explaining to my ten-year-old-granddaughter that her cousin – a 13-year-old boy – could not have a baby, even if he became “trans”, as she argued. In Scotland, the facts of life had become myths.

‘A man’s a man’

Policy analyst Lucy Hunter Blackburn, one of the most astute observers of this whole crazy period, said earlier this week that she wished Robert Burns was still alive to write up the Supreme Court’s proceedings. She even offered some words to be sung to the tune of A Man’s A Man. She wrote: “Is there a flowchart close to hand? Wi' every hour that passes I struggle more and more tae write, About the lads and lasses. For a' that, an' a' that. The words obscured an' a' that, When sex is but a rubber stamp, The man's a man for a' that.”

But gentle satire masks the terrible reality of the state of Scottish politics as we approach the final weeks of Holyrood’s 25th anniversary year. As the parliament indulged itself in the pantomime of identity politics, and wearing colourful lanyards replaced making tough policy decisions, life became much harsher for the average Scot. As city after city declared a housing emergency, the economy stagnated and inflation ran rampant, all the Scottish Government had to offer was pronouns and placards.

The real scandal

Earlier this week, a study by Aberdeen University revealed that women are treated far less well than men following a heart attack. Dr Tiberiu Pana, who led the study, said it confirms the “important sex differences” between male and female heart attack patients. Note he used sex, not gender.

He went on: "The current system is failing women who consistently receive less preventative treatment than men. We know that this is happening and we know the consequences are stark – we now need to focus on why and what we can do about it.”

This is real scandal, lurking behind the scenes of the Scottish Government’s gender horror show. A 60-something grandmother living in a council estate on the edge of Edinburgh, denied proper treatment for her heart disease because she is female, doesn’t need the Supreme Court to confirm that she is a woman. Her whole life has been shaped by her sex, decided at conception and observed at birth.

She has earned less than a man. Her pension is smaller. Her health less of a concern to the NHS. Why? Because of her sex. But Sturgeon did not risk her political career to fight for women like her. Instead, she threw it all away – including, arguably, her party’s chances of ever securing its one true goal, independence – to defend the right of double rapists to pretend they are female.

Sturgeon’s friend Swinney has been left to clean up the mess created by her obsession with identify politics. A trio of doughty women – campaign group For Women Scotland – has forced the highest court in the land to consider, once and for all, the legal definition of a woman. The lanyards are fraying now, the slogans less catchy, fashion changing. But women are still dying prematurely because of their sex. That is Nicola Sturgeon’s enduring legacy.