Where Is The Intelligence?

Take nothing at face value.

In the past few weeks we have seen some horrendous things happen worldwide.

During prayers on Friday, 15 March, there were concerted mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50, and leaving another 50 injured.

On 18 April, rioting in Derry, Northern Ireland, resulted in 29-year-old writer and journalist Lyra McKee being shot dead by operatives of the New IRA.

On 21 April, Easter Sunday, concerted bombings of three churches in Sri Lanka, three bombings of luxury hotels in the capital, Colombo, and smaller explosions at a housing complex in the housing district of Dematagoda, and at a guest house in Dehiwala, killed 253 people, and injured 500.

On Friday, 26 April, Sri Lankan police attempted to raid a terror cell connected to the bombings, and the Islamist terrorists first returned fire, then set off explosives, killing 15, including six children.

On Saturday, 27 April, on the last day of Passover, a 19-year-old white, anti-Semitic man walked into the Chabab of Poway Synagogue in San Diego, USA, and opened fire with “an AR type weapon”, killing one woman, and wounding three others.

Now, at first glance, anyone can see that all of these incidents have one thing in common; religion.  But while religion must indeed be considered a factor in all of the above, to suggest that they were all because of religion is to attempt to present a false equivalence in my opinion.  There is something much deeper going on here.  A look around social media presents a hell of a lot of ignorance, and that is being perpetuated by a hell of a lot of people spreading hate-filled propaganda.  Sadly, there are far too many people willing to buy into that.

In the wake of the shooting of Lyra McKee, I saw posts of people glorifying Irish republican paramilitaries as some sort of heroes.  I even saw some trying to suggest that it was a false flag, some suggesting that the British armed forces actually shot her, and even some suggesting that the young journalist was actually a British or loyalist agent.  And had any of them actually known anything about Lyra McKee, they would have been aware that this young woman was a lesbian, which alone immediately would have seen her being vilified by the ultra-Protestants of the loyalist community, and she was an agnostic secular humanist who took neither side in the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland.  As a secular humanist myself, I had previously read and heard Lyra McKee, who was listed in Forbes “30 Under 30 in Media in Europe”, and I was left absolutely stunned and numbed by her brutal murder.  I first heard of Lyra in a TED talk she gave, “How uncomfortable conversations save lives”, in which she recounted her experience growing up a gay woman in Northern Ireland, he many fights with the Roman Catholic Church (she was brought up a Catholic – so much for the conspiracy theories), and of the prejudice she faced from all religions, including that in the USA.  She told in that talk how religion can actually be a positive voice against prejudice, but emphasised that it is religion, and those who follow religion, who have to change.  As a diehard, cynical atheist myself, that talk had a profound effect upon me, and I still find it hard to reconcile how the life of this wonderful young woman could be so senselessly snuffed out.

This article similarly aims to challenge perceptions.  It is an uncomfortable conversation, which may cause the reader to face some uncomfortable truths about themselves.  But in doing so, I don’t care whom I may offend.  If you are offended by my writings, then it may just be possible that you need to be offended.

Just as the killing of Lyra McKee brought out those with their own agendas, so did the other killings.  The Christchurch mosque shootings initially brought out some whom, without any evidence, automatically assumed and posted that it was possibly sectarian violence between opposing Islamic sects.  Then when the truth came out that it was Christian white supremacists, there were those (sometimes the same people) who played the No True Scotsman fallacy of saying they were “not true Christians”, and others who played “whataboutery” by pointing to atrocities against Christian churches, and trying to claim persecution and play the martyr.  Even among atheists, there were some still went on about Islam being inherently violent.  Anything but show some compassion and respect for the dead.

So it was when the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka took place, many were quick to jump upon it to vilify all Muslims.  Certainly, they Sri Lanka killings were indeed carried out by Islamist extremists, and I even predicted as much before it was confirmed, or before IS tried to claim responsibility.  But some of the same people claimed that this was an attack upon Christians, solely Christians, while ignoring the facts that a) the hotel bombings indiscriminately killed people without regard for their faith, and b) that at least one of the churches targeted was often frequented by Theravada Buddhists.  Recent years have seen a lot of conflict between Theravada Buddhists and Muslims in Sri Lanka, where actually it has been the Buddhists, believe it or not, who have been responsible for the murder of many Muslims.  But of course, those with an axe to grind were never going to admit to that; they merely saw Muslim extremist attacks upon churches, and were more than quick to paint that as exclusively Muslim persecution and slaughter of Christians.

Likewise, in the wake of the San Diego synagogue shooting, within two hours of the news hitting the Internet, I saw one comment, “Everyone’s sad when one Jew is killed but nobody’s saying anything about Israel’s massacre of Palestinians.”  Really.  Within two hours, someone immediately jumps the shark, and ties every single Jew on the face of the planet to the actions of the Likud regime in Israel.  No compassion for the dead woman, who bravely threw herself in front of the Rabbi to protect him, the wounded, or those psychologically scarred by the incident; only immediate condemnation of all Jews for the actions of Israel.  It disgusts me, but it does not at all surprise me.  It is a typical reaction that many seem incapable of differentiating between Jews around the world, and the state of Israel.  And sadly to say, a lot of this comes from the political left, right up to and including the UK Labour Party.  Their members who see ‘Jew’ and immediately think ‘Israel’, is precisely why Labour are riddled with anti-Semitism.  It’s not only unhelpful and uncaring; it actually drives anti-Semitic hatred, and drives incidents such as the attack in San Diego.  This is one area where the political extreme left are so far up the political horseshoe, that they are meeting the extreme right at the other end.

Looking at all the above incidents, it would be very easy to blame and castigate religion, or at the least, extreme interpretations of religions, for all of them.  But while such fundamentalist interpretations must indeed take some of the blame, and religion can indeed poison minds, that cannot be the full extent of what drives the extremist mindset that is all too prevalent today.

We in the developed and developing world are sadly living in time where extreme right politics are on the rise.  We have a low-intellect, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, anti-abortion, climate change denying, warlike President of the USA.  The UK voted to leave the EU, and there has been a disturbing rise in attacks upon immigrants, refugees, and ethnic minorities.  Brazil has a president who can only be described as a neo-Nazi, and I write this in the wake of the Spanish election, in which the Socialists only scraped home, and will have to seek help to form a minority government, while the extreme right Vox Party have gained 24 seats in the Spanish parliament – the first time that the extreme right have had seats in the Cortes since the death of the fascist dictator, Franco, in 1975.  Without a doubt, religion plays a part in all of these things, but to the lesser extent, and where it does it is usually a kneejerk reaction to Islam, and those who spread scare stories of “Islamification”.  This is where we will learn that propaganda is a powerful tool, and never more powerful when people are frightened.

A 2016 study by Columbia University and the French National Institute found that 59% of social media users would share a story without actually clicking on and reading the content.  This does not at all surprise me.  In fact, the only thing that does surprise me is that the figure is not much higher.  Playing into this, the satirical website, Science Post, posted an article on Facebook with the headline, “Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting.”  The article started with one paragraph repeating the headline, and the rest of the text was three paragraphs all in Latin, beginning “Lorem ipsum”; literally “dummy text”.  The article to date has had 120,000 shares on Facebook.  Okay, some may have shared it for the humour value, and it was indeed funny, but it makes the point that people read what they want to read, and they believe what they want to believe.  Very few will actually open and read an article.  Fewer still will actually go to the extent of digging deeper to confirm stories, or seek alternative opinions.  There are even those nowadays who dismiss Snopes and Hoax-Slayer, because they have made one or two mistakes, while at the same time ignoring the overwhelmingly majority of times that these excellent fact-checking sites are accurate and correct.

Media outlets are more than well aware of this phenomenon, and they deliberately word their headlines to influence public opinion.  Here’s a recent example:

”Fife-born SNP MP Natalie McGarry admits embezzling £25,600”

So on 24 April 2019 ranted the Dundee-based newspaper, The Courier, which is published by D.C. Thomson, who also publish the very conservative Sunday Post.  Shocking, eh?  Yes, Natalie McGarry was indeed elected as Scottish National Party Member of Parliament for Glasgow East in 2015.  Yes, she did indeed plead guilty in court to embezzling £21,000 from the group Women for Independence, and £4661 from the Glasgow and Regional SNP Association.  But what the SNP headline failed to mention that when the accusations against her broke in November 2015, she resigned the SNP party whip, was thereby automatically suspended from the party, and for the remainder of her time in office until the 2017 General Election, she fulfilled that role as an independent MP.  The Courier did subsequently change their headline to read “former SNP MP”, but not until several people, myself included, pointed this out.  And given that Natalie McGarry was for most of her time in office an independent, I would suggest that while not wholly inaccurate, the headline is still skewed.

Words are powerful, and you have to be careful what you do with them.  Anyone already biased against the SNP would immediately read the original headline, latch upon that, and share it, no doubt damning the SNP in doing so.  Others would read such posts, and would immediately jump to conclusions that the SNP are not to be trusted.

But the Natalie McGarry case is merely the thin end of the wedge, and a rather vanilla example.  Some can be much, much more disturbing and damaging.  In March 2019, the story broke of British-born Shemima Begum, who had left the UK to help Islamic State terrorists in Syria, wishing to come back to the UK to have her third child, her other two died, to give the baby a chance of survival, and a decent upbringing.  Needless to say, there was already a lot of hostility towards Shemima Begum, fed in no little part by the media posting front page headlines of the “Jihadi Bride”, and stories which stirred up some of the worst racism I have ever read.  But on 11 March 2019, after Shemima had actually given birth to a baby son, who sadly died, The Metro sank to a new low by running the front-page headline, “Too Risky to Rescue Jihadi Baby”.  And what’s wrong with that headline?  It castigates a baby, a dead baby, as being an Islamic extremist terrorist.  The lack of sympathy in that headline was staggering, and the gloating comments it elicited from racists, cheering that a baby had died, was downright disgusting.

When the media and / or those online use the Internet to push a bigoted agenda, it can be hugely damaging to certain sections of society, and this is never more true when it comes to sexual and gender identity.  Gender self-ID is soon to be legal in Scotland, and England (dragging their heels as usual) is currently debating such, has got a lot of people with their knickers in a knot, and using a minority of wrongdoings by transgender people – and some purporting to be transgender, it must be said – to smear every transgender person.  Sorry, I should say transgender women, as they rarely make any mention of transgender men (yet another example of prejudice and misinformation).  Sadly, one of the main proponents of this is a pro-Indy blogger, who on a daily basis fills his Twitter account with transphobic smear stories, and examples of where transgender people have been abusive, in an attempt to discredit an entire section of the community as all the same.

“Transgender Prisoner who Sexually Assaulted Inmates Jailed for Life”, thundered The Guardian, allegedly a left-wing, ‘liberal’ newspaper on 10 October 2018, covering the story of Karen White, a transgender prisoner at New Hall Prison, England, who sexually abused other inmates.  True, she did.  But the facts are that Karen White was already a known paedophile and rapist, whom the prison authorities put in with mainstream prisoners in a women’s prison.  The fault there lies with New Hall Prison, and certainly not the vast majority of law-abiding transgender women.  As Scotland is soon to introduce gender Self-ID, some opposed to the new legislation are very quick to point to the Karen White case, while they are either unaware, or are aware but choose not to mention, the fact that the Scottish Prison Service has been placing transgender inmates in prison spaces based upon self-ID, almost 10 years, with no reports of such sexually assaulting other inmates.

It is in the Scottish independence camp that we of all people should know better.  How often have fellow Nats seen loaded headlines and stories about “separatists”, “anti-English racists” (I wasn’t aware that English was a race, but the media seem to think so) and “cybernats”, accompanying stories surrounding the wrong doings of a tiny minority, to condemn the entire independence movement?  So it is I suggest that the said blogger, and others who use smear tactics against transgender women, are doing absolutely no different from the way the media treats Scots Nats.  Shame on you.

The Internet has given us all the power to fulfil that which Andy Warhol once predicted; we can all have our 15 minutes of fame – and then some.  Those with any particular agenda they wish to push, and they can be among some of the nastiest people in the world.  Many play upon the fears and emotions of others, in the full knowledge that most will not go further than the headline, and even if they do, will not question the validity of a story, and fewer still will bother to research it.

I recently removed a story from a group I run on Facebook, with the headline “Settlers Poison Well in Eastern Yatta”.  I was immediately dubious of this story, and in looking for a source, I could only find it on pro-Palestinian news sites, website that support them, and some blogs.  Not a word of it on the BBC, nothing on Reuters, and nothing on Associated Press.  There were two reasons I doubted this story.  Firstly, why would Israeli settlers in a desert region poison the only source of fresh water, which could only hurt them as well?  Secondly, and more importantly, I am aware of the historical context of such claims.  Such claims of Jews poisoning wells go right back to Medieval times, and are part of the anti-Semitic ‘blood libel’; that every Jewish man had to kill ‘non-believers’.  When the Black Death hit Europe, there were accusations of Jews spreading the disease by poisoning drinking wells, which saw a great many of them persecuted and killed.  The story has continued down the centuries in many forms, leading to further persecution, and even Joseph Stalin used it in 1953, when he alleged the “Doctor’s Plot” of Jewish physicians poisoning prominent Communist leaders (whom Stalin himself had in fact had killed), leading to many of the surgeons thrown in gulags, and some of them executed.

I could in fact give many other examples of photos, memes, and stories purporting to show Israeli brutality against Palestinians.  Look, we all know that the current regime in Israel is disgusting, and they do indeed carry out a great many atrocities.  Just be aware that not all of these stories and pictures are true, some are indeed anti-Israeli, and even anti-Semitic, propaganda.  Do your research and check the facts before sharing them.  Goodness knows, the Israeli regime is brutal enough without having to make up or share downright and utter lies about them.  Trust me, they do more than enough to condemn themselves, but when anyone shares a fake story, it has the potential to create a “boy who cried wolf” scenario, whereby people may not believe the genuine stories of Israeli atrocities.  And should anyone think I am an apologist for Israel, let me assure you that I have been boycotting Israeli goods since the early 1980s, which is longer than many reading this will have been politically aware, and before some were even an itch in their fathers underpants.

It was on 30 April 1993 that CERN made the World Wide Web available to the public.  This has created the single most powerful information tool which mankind has ever known, literally at our fingertips.  As a result, mankind should be becoming increasingly intelligent.  Instead, many of the public appear to have become more poorly informed than our species has ever been, which prompts me not only to ask “Where is the love?” but indeed, “Where is the intelligence?”  I can only put it down to mankind’s predilection towards tribalism, religious dogma, societal and cultural prejudices, but most of all, laziness.  People do not like change, and when someone already has ingrained perceptions of that which is familiar, they feel threatened and frightened by anything that challenges these perceptions.  Elvis Costello said as much, long before the Internet became public, in his song Pills and Soap; “Give us now our daily bread in individual slices.  And something in the daily rag to cancel every crisis.”

The media and others know this, and they feed it.  Firstly with loaded headlines, then with stories full of disinformation, half-truths, right-wing populism, downright lies, and increasingly – and this is something I really object to – articles on their websites which have the story in the form of an attached video attached to the top of the text.  That is encouraging people’s laziness not to read, which in turn will make them all the less likely to question or research a story.  Believe me, I have often seen comments on blogs others or I have written, or Internet posts, which read “TL:DR”  (“Too Long: Didn’t Read”).  So if you’ve made it this far in this article, well done you, because you are one of a dying breed.

Perhaps it’s the punk in me, perhaps it’s the atheist, perhaps it’s the sceptic, perhaps it’s merely my enquiring mind; perhaps it is all of the above.   But my watchword has always been “Question everything.  Because it’s only by asking questions that you get answers.”  Unless something can be proven or disproved, I take absolutely nothing at face value, and I keep asking questions until I get an honest answer, even if that answer is an uncomfortable truth that I do not like.

Your brain is the greatest friend you shall ever have, so please treat it well, and do not feed it garbage.  Whenever you come over a headline that may make your hackles raise, step back a minute, take a deep breath, and then read the article.  If it seems in the least spurious, search online for supporting stories, and facts that support it.  If you cannot find any such, or you find a reliable source refuting such, then disregard it, and above all, do not be afraid to speak out and show up fallacies for being just that, and those who spread malicious lies for the sort of people they are.

Not only will you be more intelligent and better informed for doing so, you will be a much better person, and you shall be having a positive impact that may improve the lives of others.

Gender Self-ID is happening - and it is important to Scotland

This year the Scottish Government shall implement changes to the Gender Recognition Act, 2004, under which transgender and non-binary people in Scotland shall be able to self-identify as transgender, and this right shall be extended to 16-17 year olds, who will be able to self-identify without parental consent.  This has been a long time coming.  The initial moves towards this began in 2016, and it has been progressing through the Scottish Parliament, where it had cross-party support, and has gone through the mandatory consultation period, where 60% agreed to the proposals.

Although the change to legislation has the support of many LGBT, family and youth organisations and charities, and other austere bodies, it has nonetheless come in for severe criticism from some others.  Many of those objecting are either at best misinformed, or at worst openly hostile towards transgender people.

Contrary to what many in society think, our gender is not determined by our biological sex; that is the sexual organs we are born with.  And what is more, as contradictory as this may seem, sexual genitalia in itself does not have a gender.  Most people identify as the gender they are assigned at birth, pertaining to their biological sex according to their sexual organs; these people are ‘cisgender’, from the Latin word cis, meaning “on this side of”.  However some others do not identify with the gender they are assigned at birth, but identify with the opposite side of the traditional gender binary, and are therefore ‘transgender’, from the Latin trans, meaning “on the opposite side of”.  Then there are people who can identify with both sides, and are thus ‘non-binary’, those who do not identify with any fixed gender and are thereby ‘genderfluid’, those who can identify with all genders who are ‘pangender’, and even those who do not identify with any gender, and are thereby ‘agender’.

I have only mentioned a few genders above, but the fact is, as absurd as some think it is, science is just discovering that there are a great plethora of genders.  This supports the science as we understand it, that biological sex does not and never has determined gender.   It is not yet known if we are born identifying with any particular gender, or whether it is environmental, emotional, and other factors which determine such, but there is one thing which is irrefutable; gender is decided by the mind.  As a transgender man friend of mine put it simply, “Sex occurs between the legs.  Gender occurs between the ears.”

Those who do not identify with their biological sex / birth gender are identified as having gender dysphoria; a recognised medial / psychological condition whereby “a person experiences discomfort or distress because there’s a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity.” (NHS).  This condition is most notable in transgender people, but is also often prevalent among non-binary and genderfluid people, as well as those of other genders.

Gender diversity is never easy to understand.  Far from it, it can be a minefield, and I may even make mistakes in this article.  But the facts remain that we are not all either male nor female, and certainly not determined by what dangly bits we may or may not have, and to identify with another gender is not an illness, it is not a crime, and it certainly does not invalidate anyone’s identity.

Under the law as it stands, if a transgender person wants to officially change their gender on official documentation, which starts with their birth certificate, then they must apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).  To do so is a lengthy process.  Firstly they must live under the gender they identify as for at least two years, and this is only recognised for those aged 18 or over.  The applicant then must undergo examinations by a (usually cisgender) medical professional to diagnose gender dysphoria, and must then make their application, including their diagnosis, to a (usually cisgender) panel in London for a GRC, along with their payment for a GRC.  This panel usually grants a GRC, but it is worth noting that it is equally within their power to refuse them.

The current system is thereby deemed by transgender people to be unfair and deeply intrusive into private lives, where government has absolutely no business being, and where cisgender people – mostly men – can rule over the gender of others, and charge for that privilege.  No wonder that some transgender people call the GRC a “Trans Tax”.  Where younger transgender people are concerned, we can immediately see how the law is deeply skewed against them, and that they cannot actually outwardly display their identified gender until at least the age of 20.  These faults with the GRC are precisely why self-ID is so badly needed, and why Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, has promoted it to bring Scotland into line with “international best practice”.

While the majority of respondents to the consultation period were in favour of self-ID, it has nonetheless had its detractors, some of whom have been very vocal in their opposition.  One of the greatest concerns is that self-ID may lead to sexually predatory men dressing as women to gain access to female “safe spaces”, such as public toilets and changing rooms.  I am not for one moment going to dismiss this, or pretend that it does not happen.  But I would ask those with such concerns to look at those countries that already have self-ID.   Canada, Ireland, Portugal, Malta Belgium, Norway, and Denmark have all had Self-ID for some time, and with no significant increase in sexual assaults.  This is because far from being just ‘men in dresses’, transgender women are to all intents and purposes women, and just like women, merely want to pee.  What is more, given that women’s toilets have stalls with locking doors, the chances are that many detractors probably have already shared a toilet with a transgender woman, and never known it.  Spare a thought for transgender men who have not had gender reassignment surgery, and who using a public toilet, will be faced with one locking stall, which could be occupied, and a row of urinals.

Add to this that the vast majority of sexual assaults in toilets are already carried out by cisgender men, and far from being carefully planned, are mostly on the spur of the moment.  Strange as it may seem, a little silhouetted sign of a figure in a dress (why is she bald?) is no deterrent to predatory men.  The men who carry out these attacks tend to be full of toxic masculinity – many are in fact downright misogynists with a pathological hatred of women – and to imagine that such ‘macho’ men would even consider dressing as women to gain entry to toilets is to stretch credulity to its limits.  So, while the vast majority of those carrying out sexual assaults upon women in toilets are cisgender men, who do you reckon make up the second highest offenders?  Other cisgender women, that’s who.  Are we then to allow only one woman into a public loo at a time?

The issue of changing rooms, particularly in schools and colleges, particularly in schools and colleges, is admittedly more complex, not least because not all have cubicles for changing.  According to the National Education Union (NEU), who advise educational establishments on transgender-inclusive policies, the best policy is to provide alternative or gender-neutral facilities when there are no cubicle facilities available, but that “It is not necessary to make all toilet facilities gender neutral however, because some students will prefer single-sex toilets.” and they add “The young person should not in any case be told that they must use the changing rooms that correspond with the gender they were assigned at birth.”  Should anyone think this unfair, then consider how you would react if you, or your child, were told you could not use a shared changing room because of some aspect of your personality.

Where there are still schools and colleges where changing rooms do not have cubicles, this therefore has to change.  Creating separate facilities for transgender and non-binary individuals is in itself not an answer, because that only further marginalises those use them, and identifies them as targets for attacks.  Likewise, making everything gender-neutral is not an answer either, as far from deterring predators, such facilities would only exacerbate the problem.  There are those who try to argue that refurbishing or rebuilding current changing rooms would be costly.  The simple answer to that is creating separate or gender-neutral facilities would cost even more.  Of course, there are some who will completely disregard the latter argument, because they simply don’t want to acknowledge the existence of transgender people.

Some who object to self-ID are quick to point to the case of Karen White, a transgender woman (and yes, she is transgender) sexually assaulted two women in New Hall Prison in England.  However, Karen White was already a known paedophile and rapist, who had been jailed for grievous bodily harm, multiple rapes, and other sexual assaults against women, and placing her with cisgender women was wholly the fault of the prison authorities.  White was moved to a men’s prison in Leeds, and underwent gender reassignment surgery.  So yes, Karen White is a transgender woman, who is also a sexual predator.  This no more makes all transgender people sexual predators than it makes all cisgender men such, despite the fact that cis men carry out the vast amount of sexual assaults.  But then compare that to Scotland, where the Scottish Prison Service already assign places according to self-ID, have done since 2010 – almost 10 years – and with no reported sexual assaults by men ‘pretending’ to be women.  Hmm.  I don’t hear the detractors being so loud about that little fact.

Therefore, one case in England of a transgender woman who is a known sexual predator that women and children are not safe from does not outweigh the many transgender prisoners in Scottish prisons who have never presented any problems.  The problem here is not with gender but rather with sexual assault, which is no respecter of gender boundaries.  There is not the room here to go into them in detail, but there are more than plenty case studies of homosexual assaults in prison by male cisgender prisoners, and indeed, by cisgender women prisoners on other prisoners.

Despite all these arguments, there are still people, mostly but not always women, who still stand against self-ID.  But then these same people seek to deny the very existence of transgender people in the first place.

The biggest mistake that most of them make is to wrongly equate gender with biological sex, when the two are clearly not one and the same thing.  Many are quick to state, “XX equals female, and XY equals male”, as if their high school biology is the be-all and end-all of gender identity, or even for that matter, of biology.  In fact, this “gender binary” is not always the case.  There are in fact many human beings who do not have the standard number of chromosomes.  Some have more, others have fewer.  “XXXY Syndrome”, otherwise known as “Third Gender” effects one in 50,000 males, whereby they are born with two extra X chromosomes. 

Some will go further and flatly state, “If you have a penis you are male, and you have a vagina, you are female.  It’s simple as that.”  Again, wrong, as the very existence of intersex individuals – those born with sexual organs of both sides of the gender binary – clearly illustrates.  A 2015 study by Eric Vilian of the Center for Gender Based Biology at UCLA found a great number of “Differences of Sexual Development” (DSD), which included a 46-year-old woman having her third child, whose cells were found to carry 50% male chromosomes, and a 70-year-old father of three, undergoing a hernia operation, who was found to have a uterus.  Dr Vilian’s study have estimated that those with DSDs could be as high as 1in every 100 people.

So much for the biology we all learned in school.  But even if the detractors were correct, this still does not get away from the fact that biological sex does not constitute gender.  And how do these transphobes – let’s call them what they are, as much as they deny it (in the same way some people say “I’m not a racist, but…”) – respond to these facts?  Some will state that those with less or more chromosomes are a “minority”.  So therefore they don’t count somehow?  And 1 in 100 is some “minority”.  Some will outright deny the science, some will reply – and I have actually more or less read this – “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”   And some will more or less shove their fingers in their ears and shout “LA, LA, LA, LA , LA!  I’M NOT LISTENING!”

Really?  Is that your reply to reams upon reams of peer-reviewed scientific research, now going back decades?  To deny it, say minorities don’t matter, make out it’s a conspiracy, and/or simply not listen?  If that’s your view, then you may as well go and join the young earth creationists who say their god created the Earth 6000 years ago, the evolution deniers, the anti-vaxxers, the climate change deniers, and the flat earthers, because you are demonstrating precisely the same level of wilful ignorance (aka “stupidity”) as all of the above do.

The main thing that worries me about the whole self-ID debate is the way it has been hijacked by outright transphobes, who not only do not want self-ID, but completely deny the very existence of transgender people.  I have seen Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) use a dictionary definition of “female” in a feeble attempt to back up their argument; “belonging or relating to the sex that gives birth to young, produces eggs, etc”.  Yet the same women using such a narrow definition conveniently ignore an alternative definition under the same heading in the dictionary; “belonging or relating to, or characteristic of, a woman”, and that definition could very easily pertain to transgender women.  But even then, in using the first definition, the TERFs automatically discount women who for medical reasons cannot give birth or produce eggs.  Are they not “real women”?   Or don’t they count because they are a minority?  Even if that were the case, such a definition must also discount every woman who reaches the age where they can no longer procreate.  Are even they, once they stop menstruating, no longer “female”?  See the dangers of attempting to define gender purely on biological sex?

A side note here.  I have been told that I should not use the term “TERF” nowadays, as it is apparently ‘derogatory’ (for… …reasons).  Well, tough titty.  The fact is that the term was started by women who self-identified as TERFs, and given that I am talking of people who show extreme prejudice towards one of the most vulnerable sections of society, do excuse me for not sparing a thought for their hurt feels.

I have made mention throughout this article to those opposed to transgender people, but one may notice that the emphasis has been upon transgender women.  There is a very good reason for this.  Mostly it is transgender women and girls which transphobes target.  Rarely you will find them making any reference to transgender men.  There are some who do so however.  I have read and seen videos of TERFs who claim that transgender men who are not at all transgender, but that they are in fact lesbians who have been conditioned to think as men by “the patriarchy” (because of course, we men – who are supposedly all sexual predators – obviously want a planet completely inhabited by men).  Again we see this instance of denying the very existence of transgender people.

Gay men in a Nazi concentration camp

When any society dismisses one section within that society, because they are ‘merely a minority’, when they persecute that section because they do not fit in with their mindset, and worst of all, when they deny their very existence, that society is going down a very dangerous road indeed.  And we need not look very far to see the end result of what happens in those circumstances; we need only look to Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.  Indeed, even in the modern day, we need only look to Chechnya, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Brunei, and many other countries, where LGBT people are openly persecuted, often to death.

And yes, transphobes and TERFs, I did just liken you to Nazis, and I make absolutely no apologies for doing so.  For when you treat transgender people as any less than human, when you attempt to strip them of their identity, of their dignity, and their basic human rights, then you are behaving in precisely the same way the Nazis did to the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, the mentally disabled, and of course, among others, LGBT people.

Not that I am calling everyone worried about self-ID a Nazi.  My vitriol is not for those with genuine concerns, and / or who are willing to learn, but those who despite all the evidence, absolutely refuse to learn, but are only intent on spreading their own hatred.  And it pleases me to say to such that self-ID is a reality, and it is happening this year, and nothing they say or do is going to stop that.   Get used to it.

Nicola Sturgeon

But I feel that there is something bigger at play here.  Self-ID is yet another step in a plethora of positive moves by Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP Scottish Government which have enhanced the lives of women, the elderly, the young, children, LGBT people, the disabled, the poor, and many more.  I believe that Nicola Sturgeon has a vision of a Scotland yet to come.  An independent Scotland which as fair and equitable for all, where the value of all are recognised, and where none are left behind.   It could be argued, and I believe, that the First Minister is laying the groundwork for that independent Scotland.

I share that vision, as I think the vast majority of the independence movement do.  And it is an achievable vision, but one which neither Nicola Sturgeon or the SNP can deliver alone.  It will take us, all of us, to play our part and help create the fully integrated Scotland which we all seek.  We are not only parts of the jigsaw, we are the jigsaw; all of us are integral parts of the bigger picture, which would not be complete without even one of us.  As Blair Jenkins, the former Chief Executive of Yes Scotland once said that we would get whatever independent Scotland we choose.

If it were ever to happen that we had an independent Scotland where one demographic, or even any individual, were persecuted, maligned, and denied basic human rights purely for being who they are, where even one person is left behind, that in my view would be a free Scotland not worth having.  For as the song goes, "If one of us is chained, none of us are free.”