If you want to know just how insanely damaging gender ideology is, consider this: in 2025, the Scottish Government has had to tell headteachers that boys should not be allowed to use the girls’ toilets.
For years now, the dignity of teenage girls has been sacrificed at the altar of trans rights.
Any boy who declares himself female has been permitted access to single-sex spaces such as toilets and changing rooms and those who have spoken up in opposition have been dismissed as bigots. The rights of girls – and the basics of safeguarding – have been ignored in the name of ‘kindness’.
It was a scandal that this was ever allowed to happen and an outrage that it has taken so long for the SNP at Holyrood to start putting right what they got so terribly wrong.
Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth announced new guidelines on Monday for schools which must now provide toilet facilities for pupils based on biological sex rather than feelings.
In a 64-page document headteachers are informed that girls (and boys) only spaces should be accessible solely to pupils of the appropriate sex. Sixty-four pages to state the obvious. What a farce.
Of course, since this is a project of the SNP government, it is horribly flawed. The Nationalists simply cannot do the right thing without getting it wrong.
Shortly after the publication of the new guidance for schools, campaigners for the sex-based rights of women and girls declared it ‘muddled and ideological’.
Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth is quizzed over unisex loos in schools at Holyrood on Tuesday
We’ve reached this bizarre pass after grassroots feminist organisation For Women Scotland won an action at the Supreme Court in April which clarified that, in law, references to sex relate to biology rather than identity.
In the aftermath of that much-welcomed blow for common sense, the Scottish Government dragged its heels, promising to consider the ruling and to issue guidance. What there was to consider remains unclear.
The Supreme Court did not change the law, it confirmed it. The judges ruled that, under the existing Equality Act of 2010, biology trumps vibes. This being so, the only guidance necessary was a simple instruction to headteachers that they should follow the law or face the sack.
But simple clarity is beyond the hand-wringing ideologues who continue to wield power and influence at Holyrood.
Over dozens of pages of virtue-signalling nonsense, the Scottish Government manages to further complicate matters.
Not only are schools told that, despite the law being perfectly clear that single-sex spaces should be based on biology, they can provide a third ‘gender-neutral’ option ‘depending on the school community’. Teachers are also encouraged to allow trans-identifying pupils to use the toilets outwith break times to help them feel more comfortable.
Much of the new guidance is concerned with ensuring that no child is ‘outed’ as trans. Yes, of course, any child should be treated with kindness and dignity at school but this basic principle cannot be applied to children who have decided they’ve changed sex and ignored when it comes to those who have not.
I understand this may be messy and difficult for the parents of trans-identifying children to grasp but no child is helped in any way by the insistence that they should play along with the idea that somebody can switch from male to female – or vice versa – simply by declaring this impossibility to be true.
Nor is it wise or safe to lie to girls about the presence of a boy in their midst. For good, if deeply depressing, reasons, we raise our daughters to be aware of the potential danger to them from some men and boys.
What madness, then, that for the best part of a decade, the message from government has been that trans-identifying males get a pass from this. Girls were still told to be wary of men except for the ones who wear women’s clothes and use the women’s showers.
T HE overdue guidance for schools comes ten days after the Scottish Government lodged paperwork with the Court of Session, in response to a new threat of action from For Women Scotland over the delay in ensuring compliance with the law, which stated its position was lawful. Well, it might be now…
It’s abundantly clear from reading the new document that the grip of trans activists on government and the civil service remains strong. Every page drips with pro-trans spin and peppered through the guidance are manipulative and, I’m afraid, irrelevant statements from pupils.
From complaints about changing rooms to bromides of the ‘people are people’ variety, the emotion is cranked up.
The idea that the Scottish Government thinks these are worthwhile interventions is bewildering. Of course, everyone deserves to treated with respect but a male is a male, regardless of how they may feel, and that has implications for all females with whom they share an environment.
The Scottish Government’s grudging nod towards the rights of girls comes as the trans activism train grinds to a halt.
The Supreme Court has made clear the legal position. Activists have made clear the moral one.
For Women Scotland, the charity Sex Matters, the Edinburgh-based policy collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, the journalists Susan Dalgety, Mandy Rhodes and Julie Bindel, and the novelist JK Rowling are among an army of women who – in the face of relentless abuse and threats – have fought to secure the rights women fought for years to win.
Earlier this week, Ms Rowling responded to a recent interview given by Emma Watson, the former child-star made a multi-millionaire by her portrayal of Hermione Granger in the film adaptations of the Harry Potter series.
Ms Watson has, in the past, joined in when Ms Rowling was attacked for her view that biological sex is real, important and – crucially – immutable but last week she attempted a clumsy climbdown, talking of her relationship with the writer and philanthropist. The actor said she refuses to ‘cancel’ Ms Rowling despite their differences on trans issues.
Well that was big of her.
Ms Rowling, who has kept her own counsel for years while Ms Watson and co-star Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry in the movies, have loudly and proudly proclaimed their allyship with those who brand her wicked, decided enough was enough.
Emma Watson had, wrote Ms Rowling, poured ‘petrol on the flames’ of the debate at the same time that rape and death threats against her had reached a peak.
‘Like other people,’ wrote the novelist, ‘who’ve never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is.’
This is a charge that could apply equally to the politicians and civil servants who, even now, have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to uphold the legally protected rights of women and girls.