Scotland's progressives are out of touch

What the debate over gender tells us about modern Britain

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A new flank in the culture war has opened in Scotland. Last week, the Scottish parliament, led by Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish National Party, with support from the Labour Party and the Greens, passed reforms that will make it much easier for people —including children—to legally change their gender.

The Gender Recognition Reform Bill will allow people as young as sixteen to legally change their gender by simply self-identifying with one. An official medical diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’, which is the mismatch between somebody’s biological sex and their gender identity, from a trained professional, will no longer be needed.

The Bill will also dramatically reduce the amount of time required for somebody who wants to change their gender to live in their “acquired gender”, from two years to just three months, or six months for 16 and 17 year olds. In other words, if a teenage boy wakes up in Scotland and suddenly chooses to self-identify as a female and claims to have lived as a female for twenty-four weeks then, without seeing any professional, they will be able to legally change their gender, enjoying the same rights as other females and access to the same single-sex facilities that are usually reserved for them.

All of which raises a question. Who wants this? Seriously —who actually wants this? If you look at the polling on this issue, as I pointed out on Twitter, it is crystal clear that the vast majority of voters in Scotland certainly don’t want this. Remove the need for a medical diagnosis before somebody can legally changing their gender? Only 20 per cent of Scottish adults think this is a good idea. Reduce the amount of time somebody must live in their ‘acquired gender’ from two years to just three months? Only 21 per cent support this. Reduce the minimum age a person can legally change their gender from 18 to just 16? Again, only 21 per cent think this is a good idea —including only very small minorities of Scottish National Party and Labour voters.

In fact, look a little closer and not even one in ten Scottish adults “strongly" support the plans unfolding north of the border, where I suspect more than a few parents are wondering what on earth these changes mean for their adolescent children but are too scared to say so because they fear they’ll be branded a transphobe or a bigot.

Nor do people across the rest of the United Kingdom want this. This week, I polled the entire country, asking people whether they want to see the changes in Scotland rolled out across the rest of the UK, as Keir Starmer and Labour have suggested they will do after the next general election. Once again, only one in five people, just 20 per cent, say they would support Scotland’s reforms going nationwide.

And nor do most women and girls want this. Crucially, much of the opposition to the reforms in Scotland comes not only from conservatives, who see them as the latest example of a concerted effort by radical progressives to erode both the importance and boundaries of biological sex, but from countless numbers of women and girls who, understandably, see this as yet another attack on their sex-based rights.

Already in Scotland, which has embraced self-identification, women in NHS hospitals and prisons could find themselves sharing what are incredibly intimate spaces with a biological adult male who identifies as female (if you want a sense of what this means for a physically vulnerable woman then see this must-read thread). And now these new reforms, many women argue, will significantly increase the likelihood women and schoolgirls find themselves confronted with biological males, including predatory ones, in school changing rooms, toilets, prisons, shelters, and other single-sex spaces.

This is not a moral panic. In recent weeks, both the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls and the Equality and Human Rights Commission have voiced their concerns about the reforms in Scotland, arguing they will be open to abuse by male sex offenders —as seen elsewhere. Given this, it also worth reflected on the fact that half of all transgender inmates in Scotland’s prisons began to transition during or after their conviction and that, remarkably, last week, even an amendment to block convicted sex offenders from legally changing their gender during and after their conviction was actually rejected. We truly have entered the twilight zone.

As The Observer’s Sonia Sodha points out, it is not hard at all to see how all this will now give ample cover to male sex offenders who seek sexual pleasure from voyeurism, exposing themselves to others, or much worse. Nor is it hard to see how encouraging children as young as 16-years-old to question their biological sex or self-identify with a different sex, all in the absence of any professional medical guidance, will inevitably push many more of them down the pathway to damaging and irreversible medical procedures which some will later regret, not least because worries about identity are often temporary in nature, driven far more by the uncertainty, confusion and desire to conform that accompanies puberty, adolescence, mental health problems, and autism.

So, who does want this? The answer is radical progressives —they want this. Despite only representing 13 per cent of Britain’s population, these highly committed, highly active, highly organised and highly opinionated activists are now pushing through sweeping social changes which not only lack widespread public support, are anchored in dubious and highly contested academic theories and promote decisions and procedures among children which remain under-researched but which now also look set to stoke our intensifying culture wars.

Already adrift from the rest of the country in the extent to which they believe Britain is racist, schoolchildren should be taught the country is racist, free speech and free expression should be curtailed to protect minority groups, dissenting voices such as J.K. Rowling should be shut down, and buildings and statues that are associated with people who said uncomfortable or racist things centuries ago should be renamed or torn down, when it comes to sex, gender and what we should teach children about these things radical progressives are similarly in a galaxy of their own.

Aside from being far more supportive of these reforms than the average voter, recent research finds they are also far more supportive of a whole raft of ideas which reflect how gender identity theory is increasingly impacting on Western societies, such as Britain. They are, for example, overwhelmingly more likely than the average voter to believe ‘a transgender woman is a woman’, to think it’s appropriate to tell children in primary school that ‘some people have two mums or two dads’, ‘some people are gay’, and ‘some people are transgender’, to believe ‘a trans woman should be able to take part in women’s sporting events’, to express support for children under 16 taking hormone blockers, which delay changes associated with puberty, and also cross-sex hormones, which permanently change somebody’s physical appearance so it is in line with their ‘gender identity’, to support gender reassignment surgery for children under-18, to think a transgender woman who has not had reassignment surgery should be allowed to use women’s changing rooms, and to support ‘unisex’ toilets in public places, such as gyms, leisure centres and even schools.

Routinely, on this issue like many others, while only minorities of the wider public support what is being proposed, clear and often large majorities of progressives, who disproportionately dominate the institutions —the political parties, the media, the creative and cultural industries, the schools and universities— do.

With little in the way of active resistance, from moderate liberals who either naively think this is just about ‘being nice to everybody’ or who, frankly, are too scared to voice any opposition to the pathetic sight of the CHINOS, Conservatives In Name Only who show little if any interest in opposing this creed or defending things that were once considered central to conservatism, such as the rights of children, women, and the family, radical progressives are able to wield a degree of social and policy influence that is wholly disproportionate to their actual share of the electorate.

And so, in turn, they end up doing what we see in Scotland, imposing a radical agenda which very few other people in the country support while simultaneously silencing and stigmatising those who dare ask questions or challenge the direction of travel as a transphobe, a bigot or a TERF. The culture wars, as I have written before, are nowhere close to being 50-50 —they are more like 80-20. And in Scotland, as in many other places, it is once again the 20 per cent who are now rapidly reshaping society around their radical minority worldview. And this, almost certainly, will continue unless the other 80 per cent actually decide they want to do something about it.

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