(LifeSiteNews) — In Scotland, a bill that would make it easier for people to legally “change their gender” looks set to pass next week.
The Orwellian “Gender Recognition Reform Bill” would reduce the age at which people can change their gender from 18 to 16 (although the BBC has reported that an amendment might mean that “16 and 17-year-olds would need to have lived as their acquired gender for six months rather than three”) and no formal diagnosis or medical report would be required to make the switch.
The bill, put forward by the Scottish National Party, has been predictably lauded as a significant victory for the transgender movement.
But the legislation is also facing heavy criticism. Some politicians have already noted that men could take advantage of this process, and that male sex criminals could use it to identify as female with no way of preventing them from doing this. According to the Guardian, an amendment has been tabled that would require sex criminals to go through an assessment before allowing them to legally change their gender, although with the fundamental premises of gender ideology codified in law, it is impossible to see how these criminals could be prevented. (Indeed, many male convicts have taken to identifying as female in order to get transferred to women’s jails).
The bill attempts to address this by making it a criminal offence to “knowingly make a false application to change gender,” but considering the fact that gender has become an entirely fluid concept, the enforceability of this is questionable at best.
Author J.K. Rowling is also taking aim at the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, calling it “the biggest assault on the rights of Scottish women and girls in my lifetime and opposed by two thirds of voters. This is Nicola Sturgeon’s [the SNP head] poll tax.”
The poll tax Rowling references was British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s infamous “Community Charge,” implemented in 1989 which triggered riots. Rowling is correct that the bill is unpopular. According to the Daily Mail: “Research by YouGov for The Times found that voters are skeptical about the main changes in bill, which would allow people to self-identify in their new gender without a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria and would lower the age at which people can apply to formally change gender from 18 to 16.”
While supported by young people between the ages of 16 to 24, 66% of respondents opposed lowering the age at which people can legally change their gender. Both SNP and Labour politicians have also stated that they want to see amendments, and only 21% of those polled agreed with lowering the age threshold.
Sixty percent also disagreed with the removal of the medical report requirement, with trans lobby group “Scottish Trans” coming out in favor: “Scottish Trans supports these reforms, and believes they will have a marked impact on the lives of trans men and women in Scotland, who currently have to spend large amounts of time and money on a difficult, bureaucratic, and unfair process just to have the way they live recognized on some of their records.”
Scottish Trans did, however, note that these moves are not nearly enough: “Whilst an important step forward, the reforms proposed would still see Scotland with a gender recognition law that is far from world-leading. Other countries have been significantly more ambitious in changing their laws to ensure that all trans people can be respected and recognized as who they are.”
Rowling and the board of directors of her new women-only centre for victims of abuse (which includes former prison governor Rhona Hotchkiss and academic Dr. Margaret McCartney) have been vocal critics of the legislation, and Rowling recently posted a picture online of herself sporting a t-shirt reading: “Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women’s rights.” That pretty much sums it up.
