If a week is a long time in politics, then nine years is surely an eternity in the transgender debate. I began this blog in September 2016 to record my thoughts and archive my published work. If it has my byline, there’s a copy here somewhere.
What is a woman? That once-simple but now-controversial question divided opinion in the 2024 Paris Olympics, where boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting both won gold medals. The International Boxing Federation had previously excluded them from women’s boxing, reportedly because they have XY chromosomes, denoting them as males. But the International Olympic Committee saw things differently. IOC spokesman Mark Adams claimed that, “They are women in their passports and it’s stated that this is the case, that they are female.”
When will the Scottish government get on with the day job? Hot on the heels of his controversial Hate Crime Act, Humza Yousaf has now promised a misogyny law that will apparently protect members of both sexes. The First Minister insisted that ‘anyone affected’ by misogyny would be covered, whatever their biological sex. This includes, of course, transgender women.
Debbie Hayton