How the SNP just showed they value dogs more than women
Ministers’ actions suggest the welfare of dogs is more important to them than the safety and wellbeing of women and girls
It’s still a man’s world. In a week when the murky metadata of the Epstein files revealed the contempt with which many of the world’s most powerful men, and their acolytes, treat women and girls, the SNP government exposed its disdain for women.
While First Minister John Swinney was posing for an opportunistic, some might even say cynical, photo-shoot with Waspi campaigners in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday, a few hundred metres up the Royal Mile, lawyers were throwing Scotland’s most vulnerable women to the wolves on his behalf.
The Scottish Government was in the Court of Session arguing that male criminals who identify as women have a right to serve their sentence in a female-only prison. Campaign group For Women Scotland has brought a judicial review in an effort to have Scotland’s prison rules ruled unlawful in light of last April’s Supreme Court ruling that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, the protected characteristic of 'sex' means biological sex, not gender identity.
‘I felt unsafe’
SNP ministers are having none of it. They argue that it is not reasonable for a woman prisoner to feel threatened if she is locked up with a violent, biologically male offender, if said offender would feel suicidal if he was forced to serve his time in a male prison. In plain terms, the Scottish Government believes that the rights of trans-identified men, even violent ones, trump the rights of vulnerable women.
The government, which often cites 'lived experience' as the gold standard for informing its policies, even tried to prevent the court hearing sworn testimony from a female prisoner. Sensibly, the judge, Lady Ross, overruled its objection.
The woman told the court how a male prisoner, who wore “a tight top and jeans and high-heeled trainers”, treated her: “He threatened and intimidated me. He fancied me in the way a man fancies a girl. He would expose his body parts… so that everyone could see the shape of his penis. That’s sexual assault or indecency. I felt unsafe with these men around me.”
Protect women, not abusers
Meanwhile on Tuesday, independent MSP Ash Regan tried to persuade MSPs to support her Unbuyable Bill, which would make the purchase of sex illegal. The SNP government was having none of that either.
Siobhian Brown, the community safety minister – a role Ash Regan held before she resigned over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in October 2022, the first, and to date only, SNP minister to resign on a point of principle – said there simply wasn’t enough time to consider the Bill.
“Members will be aware that, regretfully, the Scottish Government cannot support the bill at stage one, due to the short time left in the session to address the significant issues,” she told MSPs. Yet only days before, the Scottish Government had supported a Bill from the Scottish Greens to ban greyhound racing in Scotland which was at the same stage as Regan’s legislation. Spoiler alert – there is no greyhound racing in Scotland.
Not even a searing speech by her SNP colleague Michelle Thomson could change the minister’s mind. Thomson asked: “Who here would argue for the protection of abusers rather than of the women themselves, and who here would tell a constituent who cannot afford to put food in her mouth that the solution is to put male members in her mouth? No one.”
No one it seems, but the Scottish Government – and of course their buddies, the Scottish Greens. The parliament's most colourful MSP, Maggie Chapman, argued that prostitution and all it entails is just "work". Sex workers are no different to “retail workers, hospitality workers, healthcare workers, care workers…” she said. Except healthcare workers or bar staff are not, as Thomson later described, “systematically raped... multiple times a day”.
Regan’s bill was defeated by 64 votes to 54. Forty-eight hours later, the Scottish Government supported another members’ Bill, this time Monica Lennon’s Ecocide Bill, which is arguably more complex and will require more time to be discussed than Regan’s.
A cynical ploy?
In Swinney’s Scotland, it seems there is plenty of time to protect the welfare of dogs from a sport that no longer exists while crafting complex law on “severe environmental harms”, but none at all to protect thousands of women and girls from commercial sexual exploitation and abuse.
During Tuesday’s debate, Brown, the community safety minister, did promise a commission on prostitution if the SNP are in still in power after May, which begs the question – why did the government not support Regan’s Bill? Its excuse about timing was frankly, deceitful, as proved by its support for Lennon’s Bill.
Did Swinney instruct his party to vote against the Bill to punish Regan for embarrassing the SNP by her resignation over gender reform? Or was it a cynical ploy to keep the Scottish Greens sweet?
The Greens support the full decriminalisation of prostitution, and earlier this week it was reported that the party would not stand in “more than a dozen” constituency seats in the May election, so giving the SNP a clear run as the only pro-independence party. Was women’s safety traded for a couple of sure-fire, first-past-the-post victories? Or do the SNP simply have a woman problem?
On Thursday, Swinney told parliament that he had “made no secret that the behaviour of men must be confronted”. Words are cheap, First Minister, and your actions this week alone betray your hypocrisy. Not content with spending taxpayers’ money arguing in court for the rights of violent male offenders over vulnerable women, your government has just told the country that the welfare of dogs matters more than the safety and wellbeing of women and girls.
Thursday, May 7, is only weeks away. The last time I looked, dogs can’t vote but women can – and there are 2.4 million of us.
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