WOMAN: 2023’s WORD OF THE YEAR - ALREADY!
Beira’s Place is an essential beacon of hope in a truly dystopian Scotland where the word ‘woman’ has lost all meaning.
As the new year shuffles in it is customary to reminisce – about the year just ending and, occasionally, times long past. One of the main political issues of 2022 has been, ‘What is a woman ?’ To the average member of the public, this is not a difficult question but it stumped the vast majority of those politicians to whom it was posed last year. A personal historical reflection reveals just how bizarre the world has become.
I qualified as a solicitor in the mid 1980s and worked for many years for local authorities in the field of child protection. Whilst every day was different, a lot of the work possessed similar characteristics. However, having been in practice for over a decade I was sent out of the office one day to serve some papers on a mother who had been very reluctant to engage in the court process. This was not, in itself, unusual, but when I reached the address in question I was greeted by several people who reacted very strongly to my presence with a mixture of indignation, shock, fear, anger, disbelief and sheer outrage.
My (female) boss had sent me (a man) to a domestic abuse refuge. To this day I do not kknow why, but I still vivdly recall the reactions I engendered. The women in the refuge, the staff and clients, were understandably livid. In those days, the exact locations of such refuges were a closely guarded secret - abusive men stop at nothing to track down women who have the temetiry to leave them. Even the mail sent to refuges was collected from sorting offices to avoid the need for deliveries, which could both add to the risk of discovery and lead to another man attending the property. As much as possible was done to protect those safe spaces and the need for such caution was universally acknowledged. A failure in the system could be deadly, because men can be deadly.
Not much more than a generation has passed since that day and yet the world is a changed place. Men have managed to dismantle that protective environment almost completely. Refuges promote ‘inclusive’ policies that enable men to inhabit once female-only spaces, many rape crisis centres refuse to provide female-only groups, women who request such a service are told to ‘reframe their trauma’ and the philanthropic creation of a desperately-required service for female victims of sexual violence is portrayed as bigoted. If I had been told even as recently as the end of the noughties that JK Rowling would, less than 15 years later, have to use her own resources to open the sole female-only sexual violence support service in the Edinburgh region, I would have thought the speaker utterly crazy. And yet, here we are. A tweet from SNP Councillor Lauren Oxley , in which she criticised the claim on the Beira’s Place website to be the only such female-only service in the Edinburgh region as ‘insulting to other service providers’, is indicative of the political rsponse in Scotland. The fact that the organisations she quoted in her tweet actually do not provide single-sex services seems to have escaped her.
Men have always found a way to fight back against any progress that there has been in women’s rights, often supported in that fight by women. The current so-called ‘trans rights’ movement is merely the most recent manifestation of that phenomenon. This time, the battleground is language and science and the approach has been to colonise women’s spaces by seeking to redefine the very idea of womanhood to include men. In order to do so there has had to be a concomitant assault on biological reality and the very essence of scientific thinking.
Science can be tricky. At the cutting edge, many remarkably bright individuals are engaged in extraordinary work, making a positive contribution to progress in ways that the majority of us will never understand. However, not all science is as esoteric as, for example, the work that happens at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Some is much more straightforward and accessible to the average person. Of course, every scientific subject can have its specialist and complex elements, but quite often the basics are extremely simple. Despite attempts to muddy the waters by those with political and ideological motivations, biological sex is one such example.
Human beings are mammals and, like all mammals, we reproduce sexually. This requires two types of reproductive cells, large ones called eggs and much smaller and more mobile ones called sperm. Humans that produce eggs are female, those that produce sperm are male. This pattern applies across all species of mammals ; horses, foxes, red deer – name a mammal and up pops the same reproductive process. This is science that we all learn at school.
A person’s sex is determined at the moment of conception. Whilst the biological mechanics are complicated, the explanation of them is simple. The nature of the sex chromosomes (whether there is a Y chromosome present) and a combination of various biological processes place a baby on one of two ‘reproductive pathways’ – one towards the production of eggs (female sex), the other towards the production of sperm (male sex). Whilst biological sex isn’t just determined by chromosomes alone, the vast majority of babies are born with XX or XY chromosomes and are thus female or male respectively. There are only two possible types of reproductive cell (gametes) called aggs and sperm - there isn’t a third. Likewise, there are only two sexes, female and male – there isn’t a third. This is precisely what is meant when one says that biological sex is binary. There are only two gametes and two sexes.
Nature, though, isn’t perfect. Babies can be born with a variety of features that diiferentiate them from what might be considered typical – extra digits for example. And many human characteristics vary wildly from one individual to another – height, hair colour, eye colour etc. None of these differences mean that these people are not human. None of them defiines a different sub-species or affects a person’s biological sex. Thus there are female humans and male humans. Woman is the term that describes an adult who is a human female, in the same way that ‘hind’ is an adult female red deer, or mare an adult female horse.
There is a small minority for whom the above definition of ‘woman’ is unacceptable, because it isn’t ’inclusive’ enough and is, in their eyes, somehow ‘transphobic’. What they mean is that it excludes males from the definition, and boy do they want to redefine what it is to be a woman so that it does include men! Consequently, various approaches are used as a means of attacking the biological reality of sex. All of them are, at best, disingenuous. More often than not they are deliberately misleading.
One major claim is that to define ‘woman’ by relation to biology is, somehow, ‘reducing’ women to their biological functions only. The accusation is that to do so is to impose upon women in general some form of biological essentialism, which feminism has been fighting against for decades. This argument is, of course, absolute nonsense as it conflates two very different issues, as those who promote it know full well. That a woman is ‘defined’ by her biology in no way means that any individual woman has to be limited in her life because of that biology. What is, however, absolutely essential is the ability for women to define themselves in a way that recognises them as a distinct sex class because the oppression of women is entirely sex-based (and not gender-based). It is that very ability which is being attacked by the trans lobby. Indeed, for the whole ideological edifice to survive, trans activists have no choice but to seek to eradicate the concept of sex and replace it with gender, for only by doing so can the mantra ‘trans women are women’ have any life breathed into it at all. As Dr. Jane Claire Jones eloquently said in the recent documentary Adult Human Female,
‘The trans rights movement is asking for the rights of another class of people and then claiming that if we do not give them the rights of another class of people that they’re being oppressed, that’s unprecedented. And it turns out that the rights of the people they’re asking for are themselves members of an oppressed class. And the members of the group that are demanding those rights are members of the dominant class. So what we have is male people demanding female people’s rights.’
As part of the ideological onslought, activists often claim theat sex isn’t binary at all, that it is somewhow more complex and akin to a spectrum. In aid, they often highlight the fact that ‘intersex’ people exist – intersex being the ‘I’ in the LGBTIQ+ alphabet. Many organisations that represent intersex peop0le find this approach to be highly offensive – intersex is neither a sexual orientation nor an ‘identity’. Indeed, the word itself is outdated and is really a catch-all term for a collection of approximately 40+ developmental conditions, differences in sexual development (DSDs), that affect a very small number of individuals. None of these DSDs involve a third gamete or a third sex so do not invalidate the truth of the sex binary, and no one with, for example, Turner Syndrome (basically a lack of an X chromosome that only affects females) is less of a woman because of it.
The trans movement is very good at saying what things are not, as is noted above – biological sex is not binary, a woman is not an adult human female, but asking them for positive definitions of anything reveals the fallacies behing the ideology. Certainly, there is a wealth of definitive-sounding mantras that are repeated ad nauseam (‘trans women are women, trans men are men’ being the overwhelming favourite, followed closely by the utterly banal and fundamentally meaningless ‘trans rights are human rights’.) However, ask a trans rights activist to define the word female or what a woman is or what ‘living as a woman’ means and the responses one receives are farcical.
A woman, we are told, is whoever ‘identifies as a woman’. The fact that this is a completely circular definition that explains nothing is the actual point of why it is used. Ask what ‘identifying as a woman’ means and the response will be something along the lines of, ‘You know, someone who says they’re a woman and who lives as one.’ I have yet to see or hear anything more sophisticated as a response. Some activists know full well that they are spouting illogical nonsense ; others seem truly baffled by the idea that their ‘explanation’ is considered entirely risible. All are deeply invested in the ideological assertion that everyone has a ‘gender identity’, despite the fact that such a concept is neither definable nor (consequently) falsifiable.
The logical instability of the underlying principles are usually ignored by those activists who subscribe to the theory of gender identity. Put simply, they say, not only does everyone have a gender identity but such an identity is both 100% valid and 100% only determinable by the individual. It doesn’t take a degree in logic to realise that this is an unsustainable position. If one’s’gender identity’ is individually determined and validly so, then those who deny the existence of gender identity have a position that is equally valid. Thus, not everyone has a gender identity, which completely undermines the basic notion. And that’s before we even start down the path of trying to actually define the central concept itself.
This all feeds in to the question of ‘what is a woman ?’. As stated above, the only possible way to pursue an argument that trans women are women is to replace the notion of biological sex with the concept of gender identity.
Delve deeper and enquire as to what ‘living as a woman’ means and the true nature of the ideology is revealed in all its stark misogyny. For ‘living as a woman’, in trans speak, translates as some weird agglomeration of traits such as what a person wears, calling oneself a ‘girl’, being suitably equipped to hand out sanitary products in the nearest loos to any passing woman in need, adopting particularly stylised mannerisms (the hand gestures, the hair flicks, the head tilt, the walk, the poses), an obsession with cosmetics and/or fashion and a variety of other forms of expression that a man might consider to be typically ‘feminine’. Ah, but I am clearly confusing ‘gender expression’ with ‘gender identity’ the former being how one ‘expresses’ the latter – which is yet another nonsense word salad that means nothing, explains nothing, clarifies nothing.
At its core, therefore, to the idealogue, beng a woman is nothing more than wearing a costume and engaging in a heavily stereotype-laden performative art form. A woman is not an adult female human but merely an idea in the head made up from a collection of supposedly ‘feminine’ attributes. It is the most regressive concept of womanhood imaginable and the very antithesis of feminism. That the political home of this misogynistic ideology is the left is entirely baffling – that so many women in positions of political power and influence openly accept the occupation of womanhood by men is depressing. It is, perhaps, that true collectivism has been replaced by an individualistic identitarianism that has had to find a substitute for that lost socialist understanding of the collective. It has found it in the form of the concept of inclusivity and the idea that excluding someone from a group that they feel they belong in is somehow unkind, hateful and bigoted. Insisting that there may well be very good reasons why exclusion is appropriate has become the political equivalent of leprosy, with the shouts of, ‘Unclean, unclean,’ echoing ever louder.
Women’s sport is one prime example where the consequences of such thinking have led to enormous problems. Everybody knows, and I do mean everybody, that male puberty leads to male sporting advantage, particularly at the elite level but also as one travels down towards grass roots participation. One look at the male and female world records in athletics, swimming, cycling, rowing will demonstrate very precisely the said sporting advantage (hint, the male records are approximately 10+% superior to the female ones.) Add to that the fact that all of the scientific evidence available proves that testosterone suppression therapy has very little impact on that retained male advantage and the very obvious conclusion is that allowing male athletes who now identify as women into female sporting categories is completely unfair. And yet, with some notable exceptions, sporting bodies the world over from various diciplines and from the IOC down the hierarchy have been content to pass ‘inclusive’ regulations. When originally faced with the inclusivity question any regulator with an ounce of integrity and just a smidgen of scientific aptitude should have said no immediately: it is obviously unfair at first glance, which is why female only sports were created in the first place, and thus the onus is on those who wish to change the status quo to provide incontrovertible evidence that inclusivity can occur without unfairness and without safety being compromised.
The justice system is another area where women are greatly impacted by this ideological sleight of hand. In Scotland 2022 will be remembered as the year that the Scottish Parliament defeated an amendment to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill that would have prevented men accused of sexual offences from claiming to be women and obtaining a gender recognition certificate. As a consequence, a man accused of rape can claim to be a woman and his victim can be forced to address him as female in any court hearing. How can the sheer wickedness of that be ignored by any right-thinking person ? Where does one’s head have to be to consider such an outcome to be reasonable ? To an old leftie like me it is utterly unfathomable how the supposed rights of alleged sex offenders can be prioritised over the dignity and safety of women, the principal victims of these crimes, by a political alliance between the SNP, the Labour Party, the Greens and the Lib Dems.
And the consequences do not stop there. In the last few weeks the Daily Record has published a story about Daniel Eastwood. I call him Daniel because he is a man, even though he claims to be trans and goes by the name Sophie. He murdered a fellow prisoner in 2004 by strangling him with shoelaces. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 15 years. He has served that minimum tariff but has not been progressed through the system or released on licence because he fails to fully co-operate. He ‘came out’ as trans four years ago and has been incarcerated in women’s prisons since 2018 (albeit in secure units). Now he is saying he identifies as a baby and wants to wear nappies and eat baby food. He has already been given a dummy. A member of staff is quoted as saying he likes being the centre of attention! His story isn’t unique.
There is a thought experiment one can undertake which is perfectly illustrative of the ludicrous situation one lands in by accepting the suggestion that ‘trans women are women’. Imagine a secluded island where the 100 inhabitants are all biological males who ‘identify’ as women and as lesbians. They can be a mix of post-operative ‘trans women’ and others who have had neither surgery nor hormone therapy but all must accept the foundational ideas of the movement that trans women are women and sexual orientation is gender based and not sex-based. If the only resource denied to this group over 1000 years is any form of access to a biological female, what would be found on this island at the end of that period ? The answer is quite simple – 100 skeletons, and we wouldn’t have to wait 1000 years because, having produced no children, the community would die off very quickly. Each skeleton would be identifiable by forensic scientists, from a combination of its structure and remnant DNA, as male. Being a woman isn’t defined by one’s capacity to give birth (there are many women who can’t) but ONLY women can give birth and men cannot. Everyone knows what a woman is and it’s high time that our politicians and institutions stood up for sex-based rights and the survival of the word ‘woman’ as meaning ‘adult female human’.