The SNP's Sick Social Experiment

What is it with Nicola Sturgeon and vulnerable people? First she transferred elderly people out of hospitals and into care homes without testing them for Covid, thereby infecting numerous care home residents with the virus, some fatally. Now it transpires that, under her watch, male offenders have been transferred into women's prisons. Some are still in women's prisons although not the double rapist who has caused the First Minister to admit that transwomen are not women in certain circumstances ...

Just over a week ago Calton was sure that the demise of Sturgeon would be at the hands of angry older women. Now it looks like it has all but been achieved by a man in a blonde wig.

One could give Sturgeon the benefit of the doubt over the care home Covid disaster, however it has now become clear that men in women's prisons was deliberate, planned policy. The Scottish Trans Alliance, one of the Scottish Government's pet charities which is bankrolled by the Scottish taxpayer, deliberately targeted prisons as a means of persuading other public bodies to follow its radical trans agenda. Their reasoning was that, if putting transwomen into women's prisons could be shown to work, the rest of their trans-inclusive policies could be rolled out into society. The SNP government fell for this argument hook, line and sinker, with the result that female offenders became guinea pigs in a sick social experiment which Calton does not doubt was approved by Nicola Sturgeon. (A policy was introduced by the SNP Government under Alex Salmond in 2014 of accommodating transgender prisoners according to their chosen gender. Nicola Sturgeon has continued it.)

The death of elderly residents in care homes was carelessness. The traumatising of vulnerable female prisoners is deliberate and the blame lies with the First Minister of the government which introduced the policy of housing men in women's jails and the First Minister who has continued her predecessor's policy. In Calton's opinion, Nicola Sturgeon should not only resign but be charged with dereliction of duty - the duty to care for the most vulnerable in society.

White Horse Syndrome

Calton has read numerous comments recently which say that Nicola Sturgeon is only using trans people to pick a fight with Westminster. Now, Calton has no doubt that Sturgeon relishes any excuse for a barney, and indeed could probably start a fight in an empty room, but he isn't convinced that she's being quite so cynical over the trans issue. If you read her comments, watch her video plea to trans people leaving the SNP, listen to her on TV, she really does seem to believe in the trans cause. She definitely seems to believe that transwomen are women and are also the most stigmatised minority in Scotland today. In short, she has been captured by trans ideology. There may be personal reasons behind this but there may also be another reason - white horse syndrome.

With her dreams of leading Scotland into independence, Boudicca-style, disappearing into the distance once again, Nicola may be seeing herself, in an appropriate gender role-reversal, as a knight on a white charger, rescuing transwomen in distress and decapitating, or at least silencing, a few Terfs along the way. Never mind that, instead of killing dragons, she's let loose a couple of the monsters called Misogyny and Violence in Scotland. Or that, instead of tilting her lance at Westminster, she's taken aim instead at Scottish women. It's her legacy that's at stake, not independence or the good of the Scottish people.

Fortunately it looks like the anger of older Scottish women may well drag her off her high horse.

Alba Trying to Square the Circle

It was high time that the SNP's dominant position on the independence side of Scottish politics was challenged and so Calton welcomes the entry of the Alba Party to the field. Quite a lot of women have done the same, judging from Alba's women's conference at the weekend, in spite of Nicola Sturgeon's attempts to smear Alba leader Alex Salmond as not safe around women. This is because Alba seems to provide a real alternative to Sturgeon's anti-female, woke, pro-trans policies. Their Equalities Policy has a series of statements about women's rights, including the right to safe spaces and women-only sport. So far, so good. However the self-same equalities policy goes on to say

ALBA acknowledges that no single protected characteristic is
more virtuous or more worthy of recognition and safeguarding
than another. They are all fundamentally important, each on
their own, and as a collective.

 There are also some waffle words about reforming the Gender Recognition process in a "respectful, sensitive and positive fashion". Which basically means that the Alba Party has no more idea than the SNP does about how to square women's rights with trans demands. That is because the circle cannot be squared. There is no solution that will keep everyone happy. Alba looks like it is coming down on the side of women, which is an improvement on the SNP, but it is still throwing a sop to the trans lobby and, in the process, potentially letting women down in the future. Until a political party is willing to grasp the nettle and recognise that people cannot change sex, women will continue to be threatened and undermined. Alba is a step in that direction but no-one should kid themselves on that Alba is the solution. Least of all women.

Is the SNP Good for Women?

 Calton was prompted to write this post after seeing that one hopeful SNP candidate was not approved by the party because of her views on transgender issues and another was asked who would look after her children if she was elected. Both were women. Now, one would think that, with a female leader who claims to be a feminist, the SNP would be a positive environment for women, supportive of their rights and encouraging of their aims. Not so. In her race to be seen as the most woke leader in the western world, Nicola Sturgeon has abandoned her sex. Let's have a look at the evidence.

She claims that her plans to make it easy for men to self-identify as women do not clash with her feminism, however many feminists would disagree. They think, and Calton agrees, that the radical trans ideaology which Sturgeon is pursuing not only threatens women's safe spaces but threatens the very definition of a woman and all the hard-won rights which go with it. The Scottish Government's Gender Reform Act (GRA) may be on the back burner for now but, make no mistake, it will be back with a vengeance if the SNP get a majority in Holyrood next year. The fact that the First Minister has twice invited best friend and minister responsible for the GRA Shirley-Anne Somerville onto her daily briefing in the last fortnight confirms this. It also demonstrates that if you support the GRA, you get the support of the leader of the SNP in your battle to be reselected. If you don't support the GRA, forget it. (Somerville is being targeted by the #dontvotewoke campaign as she tries to hang on to Dunfermline and West Fife.)

Joanna Cherry is another woman who has questioned the party's policy on transgender issues. She wanted to stand for Edinburgh Central next year but the SNP NEC changed the rules, effectively preventing her from doing so. Much has been made of the Salmond/Sturgeon divisions within the SNP but the real faultline is the woke/non-woke one, which has spawned the #dontvotewoke hashtag on twitter, referring to the current selection contests for SNP candidates. It is well known that Stuart Campbell is no fan of Nicola's however his comments on the candidate selection process are still worth reading. Further evidence that the SNP leader is not good for women is the emergence of the SNP Women's Pledge, which would not be needed if Sturgeon truly supported women. They are supporting non-woke candidates.

Calton could say more on issues such as the child-care question posed to a female candidate, how Alex Salmond's sleazy, but not illegal, behaviour was overlooked by senior women in the SNP in order not to damage the cause of independence and how the SNP have shown a complete lack of trust in women's ability to bring up their own children without government intervention (the named persons and smacking legislation) but this post is already long enough. Perhaps another day ...