EXTREME ANTISENSE

Nicola Sturgeon, with the full support of her party, the SNP, introduced the Gender Recognition Bill in Scotland, the purported aim of which was make it easier for people to change their gender. The bill sailed through the Scottish parliament 86 votes to 39, despite fierce opposition from a large section of the public.

Presently, people need to apply to a UK gender recognition panel and need to prove a diagnosis of gender dysphoria – a mismatch between someone’s physical gender and how they would now like to be identified. Two medical reports are needed. The applicant further needs to prove that they have lived full-time in their new, intended gender for at least two years. Further, they need to swear an oath that they intend to continue in the new gender for the rest of their lives.

The SNP’s Gender Recognition Bill intended to transfer the application process to the Registrar General for Scotland, cutting out the UK authorities, and no medical reports would be necessary. The applicants would only need to have lived in their intended gender for three months. The age at which someone could apply was reduced from 18 to 16 years old. The applicants would still need to swear an oath. In practice, the applicants would simply self-identify.

Those opposing the legislation in Scotland did not relent upon the bill being passed. They were heartened when the UK Government intervened to block the measure on the grounds that it had UK-wide implications and therefore the Scottish parliament had exceeded its authority (the devolution legislation allows the UK government to do this). This gave Sturgeon an alleged constitutional crisis to latch onto.

Meanwhile, to spoil things, a man who now styles himself as Isla Bryson, and has donned a fluffy blonde wig and taken to wearing leggings and pink clothes, was convicted of being a double rapist, for raping two women before the name change etc. Having self-identifed as a female, the now Isla Bryson was promptly transferred to a women’s prison and segregated from the other prisoners.

As a public outcry escalated, unable to recognise a deep hole even when digging one, Sturgeon doubled down. She dismissed her opponents as transphobes, homophobes and even racists. On this occasion the name-calling failed to silence the common sense of the electorate. Eventually recognising the extent of the unpopularity she had provoked, Sturgeon backtracked and instructed the authorities to move the double rapist to a men’s prison.

As another offender, this time a violent stalker of a 13-year-old girl, who claimed to now be a woman emerged, the SNP paused all other transfers to women’s jails of transgender women with convictions for violence.

Of Isla Bryson, Sturgeon was asked: ‘Is this double rapist a woman?’ Sturgeon replied that she did not have enough information to decide. When it was pointed out that one of the double rapist’s victims did not believe that he was truly transgender and was making a ‘mockery’ out of the authorities, Sturgeon replied: ‘My feeling is that is almost certainly the case, which is why the key factor in this case is not the individual’s claim to be a woman.’

In other words, despite the SNP’s Gender Recognition Bill allowing people to self-identify, and that the rest of society has to believe that those so doing are whatever gender they claim to be, Sturgeon did not accept Isla Bryson’s self-identifcation. She broke her own legislation.

This is not only an extreme example of antisense (Marxist, malevolent, pre-meditated gibberish), but also is an example of the three features of political correctness highlighted by

Wayne Mapp, a New Zealand MP and the country’s ‘Political Correctness Eradicator’ some years ago. First, political correctness is ‘a set of attitudes and beliefs that are divorced from mainstream values’. Second, ‘the politically correct person has a prescriptive view on how people should think and what they are permitted to discuss’. And third, which he regarded as most important, political correctness is ‘embedded in public institutions, which have a legislative base’ and ‘coercive powers’, and ‘it is this third aspect that gives political correctness its authority’. For Wayne Mapp, the capture of public institutions sets political correctness apart from other ideas and ideologies. Furthermore, the consequence of this capture is that public institutions cease to represent the interests of the majority and instead ‘become focussed on the cares and concerns of minority sector groups’.

The SNP’s Gender Recognition Bill does not represent the views of the majority. The whole trans issue is advanced by public institutions with a legislative base – hence the bill. But, importantly, the controversy surrounding the issue is that the politically correct are trying to impose their views on everyone else. They are telling people what they must believe – in this case that a double rapist is as much a woman as anyone born a woman, and can self-identify as such.

In the case of Isla Bryson, we have reached the ridiculous position where, according to Sturgeon herself, neither she nor the double rapist himself consider him to be a woman, but, even so, everyone else MUST do so. Antisense at its must extreme.