SNP politician's 'Groundhog Day' comment on gender identity wars speaks for so many

So determined to ignore the ruling, the Government has recently confirmed they’re willing to use even more taxpayers’ money to go back to court against FWS, who’ve initiated a legal challenge against their five-month-long intransigence.

The Scottish Government has failed to withdraw unlawful guidance regarding ‘self-ID’ policies in prisons and schools, which advise biological sex is overridden by an individual’s ‘gender identity’. The practical reality of this means male rapists and murderers being housed in women’s prisons – as they continue to be – flying in the face of the Government’s claim they accept the SC ruling.

“I’m tired of being stuck in a groundhog day loop” fighting this, Ms Thomson said. She speaks for many.

Most decent people recognise women shouldn’t have to repeatedly relate their intimately traumatic experiences in order to secure their rights. The reality of all campaigns for women throughout history, of course, is this is something many have to do, indeed they must. For women without privilege or existing platforms, their voices and stories are often readily ignored. That’s when women with both feel compelled to step up.

“I’ve always been so wary about using traumatic events in my life to draw attention to myself,” Ms Thomson continued. “But I feel the lack of action from the Scottish Government deeply personally.”

Ms Thompson is a survivor of male sexual violence. This became widely-known after a 2016 speech she gave as an MP in the House of Commons. She spoke of how, aged 14, she was violated by someone known to her.

Describing the horror of such early introduction to the reality of male violence; coming to terms with knowledge of that darkness while determined it wouldn’t stop her having loving relationships with men subsequently, her story resonated with many who’ve similar experiences.

During the passage of the ill-fated Gender Recognition Reform Bill in Scotland, as an MSP in 2022, Ms Thomson felt compelled to repeat her story. In doing so, she spoke for survivors ignored by those pushing for that ludicrous, dangerous Bill.

For unfathomable reasons, the Scottish Parliament sat into the small hours over several days running up to Christmas 2022, urgently passing a non-emergency Bill allowing men to legally identify as women very easily. This was thankfully blocked by a Section 35 order from the UK government a month later. An averted disaster doesn’t negate the trauma caused by the tomfoolery and cruelty.

The stated intention of the loudest male activists who identify as women, regardless of whatever was going on in the minds of legislators, was to take all of women’s rights for themselves, leaving women with nothing truly ‘female-only’. Not even the word ‘woman’ could be permitted to be based on sex.

When women say the ‘gender wars’ have been traumatic, they mean it.

“Having to continually press the Scottish Government to do the right thing is constantly triggering,” Ms Thomson said, speaking of the physical repercussions. This includes “acute anxiety, inflammation, a tingling in my face”.

A majority of women I’ve met over the years, fighting an ideology whose root demand involves women downplaying our knowledge of male violence, are those who’ve experienced its worst excesses. When Ms Thomson said “I am not alone. I’m actually fairly typical”, she was correct.

Regardless of how a woman responds to her experience of male sexual violence, however, there’s a double-edged sword ever present; a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t metaphorical, bladed threat when you speak out about it.

In 2017, women worldwide were encouraged to join in the online #MeToo campaign, to highlight the overwhelming ubiquity of male sexual violence. I remember vividly first seeing the hashtag proliferate across my newsfeeds. “Oh god. My Mum just posted #MeToo,” a shocked male friend posted, amongst other reactions.

My dominant emotion was fury. A conflicted anger, though. Like most women, I could join in. What was being asked of me, though? Two words to sum up something so enormous, so life-changing? That I’d never written about and few knew about? Like Ms Thomson, an experience aged 14.

I could readily blast out #MeToo about lesser incidents; the blurred-lines, voluntary-but-unwanted events of my hedonistic twenties. But the THAT that preceded them? No.

Ignoring the hashtag felt impossible. I didn’t realise until weeks later I was being retraumatised, also caught up in a mania. A poet at the time, I subsequently wrote a stage-show centred around that contradictory period, only to be accused – after initial critical acclaim – I’d ‘weaponised’ my own rape to ‘attack trans people by stealth’ by a man whose accusations were approvingly shared by many in Scottish literary circles.

It remains one of the ugliest incidents I’ve experienced in six years writing about the gender wars. It’d taken me 21 years to work out how to make art – entertainment, no less - out of that painful experience, while also saying something far wider than myself.

Some would insist, for reasons of self-preservation, Ms Thomson should refrain from sharing her experiences, for fear of similar backlash. They’re the same types who pontificate that FWS needn’t continue to fight back, despite winning already, but being responded to by the Scottish Government as if they hadn’t.

The rest of us recognise the role these courageous women are playing. We know our feminist history. What people should be saying to Michelle Thomson and For Women Scotland is thank you, for taking on a burden few can or are willing to. I know I am.