Women are fighting back against Scotland’s gender identity policies 

Is a ‘woman’ an adult human female or a person who identifies as such? This is the question I asked Nicola Sturgeon at the United Nations earlier this year. But, oddly, she wouldn’t answer it. Instead the first minister of Scotland explained that, as ‘an ardent, passionate feminist,’ women’s concerns about how gender self-ID laws might harm them are ‘misplaced.’

The day after Sturgeon’s UN address, in a leaked online conversation, three female SNP MSPs complained that Sturgeon’s remarks proved that she was ‘out of step’ with the party. ‘FFS [for f***’s sake]’ one wrote, sharing a tweet from ‘Engender’ (a self-described feminist policy and advocacy group) whose director had praised the first minister’s supposedly ‘positive feminist analysis of trans rights.’

And today the Sunday Times reports that ‘several SNP figures, including a minister, are understood to be deeply worried that plans to make it easier for individuals to switch gender could damage the party’s performance at the Holyrood elections in May 2021.’