I am woman, hear me roar: The Supreme Court verdict is a victory for common sense

It was the lesbians wot won it. Having always been the more ignored sexual minority, it was a defining moment in the For Women Scotland vs Scottish Ministers’ case at the Supreme Court when the great legal minds wrestling with the apparently vexed question of ‘what is a woman’ had to then grapple with the idea that lesbians were not sexually attracted to a certificate. It was a comedic moment in what had already felt like a surreal case. It seemed like the right time to stop for lunch.

And it was certainly something to chew over. That no matter whether a man who identifies as a woman holds a gender recognition certificate granting him, in most circumstances, legal recognition as a woman, it would still not force a gay woman to be sexually attracted to him because, for her, he is still simply a man and that is not where her predilections lie.

It was such an absurd proposition that for many of us embroiled in this whole painful sex and gender debacle, whether you had come at it from purely the point of view of women’s safety and right to single-sex spaces; or from a child protection issue horrified by the idea that a young person would be supported onto a life long journey of medical intervention, sexual impotency and rendered inorgasmic; or from the more prosaic proposition that in sport, men can never be on a level playing field with women, it was the Scottish Government’s same-sex attraction argument that in the end was shown to be so blatantly absurd that a man with a GRC could be a lesbian, that no right-minded person could accept it. And the Supreme Court, did not.

It was rivalled only by the mental gymnastics visibly apparent as the learned judges tried to understand how a pregnant trans man in receipt of a Gender Recognition Certificate might lose the benefits of hard-won pregnancy and maternity rights over their pregnancy, should the Scottish Government’s argument win that they should be legally defined as a man and not the biological woman that their pregnancy clearly concludes them to be. Again, common sense and a proper understanding of the law and biology prevailed. 

The question at stake might have always been a simple one for many of us – ie, what is a woman? But the answer, while still obvious to most as being based in biology, has become much more contentious, mired in conflicting legal definitions and complex employment and discrimination laws. And all deliberately whipped up by protagonists, some of the most vociferous of whom sit on the SNP and Green benches in Holyrood, as what they like to describe as a culture war rather than what it is, a discussion about material reality and its practical application in a world where women suffer daily from misogyny, inequity and violence perpetrated by men.

But stripped down of all the froth and fury, the definition of sex in the Equality Act of 2010 is so much more fundamental to lesbians than any other group because if you erase the importance of biological sex you find yourself on a conveyor belt of an argument that denies same-sex attraction, bars lesbian-only meetings and associations, and ends with the erasure of lesbians as a distinct group by dint of the assertion that any man can be one. And lesbians have been ignored long enough, as it is. Thank God the judges agreed.

Exactly a week before the Supreme Court published its deliberations on the For Women Scotland case, I chaired a joyous event in Edinburgh with the lesbian feminist campaigner Julie Bindel, who had been part of the “lesbian interveners” in the court case. Deliciously, this gathering of the “monstrous regiment” of 200-plus women with probably the highest concentration of lesbians that the capital had known for some time was held just yards from John Knox House. And while whether Knox was actually a misogynist is a disputed point – he was unlikely to have ever recognised lesbians at all, because who did at the time – he acutely understood the power that some women could have, and he feared it. Rightly.

The Supreme Court judgment on what is a woman was the culmination of a brave campaign fought fiercely by women for women and ultimately was a victory for women. And in the process, something wonderful happened. Women, many of whom had had no previous involvement in activism or politics, rose up against what had begun to feel like the tyranny of Sturgeon rule – a presumption that regardless of what the law said, men could self-identify themselves as women.

And while it took time for ordinary people to understand the implications of what that could mean to them, cases such as Isla Bryson, Roz Adams and Sandie Peggie began to hit the headlines and opened people’s eyes to the practical application of gender self-ID and how practice across the public sector and beyond had started to overtake the actual law of the land. And they didn’t like it. The furore that has followed has tied politicians in knots and helped see the exit of two first ministers from office. But while the politics moved slow [and hallelujah, gave the Labour Party time to catch up, albeit with some distance still to go] women were galvanising, organising, orchestrating, writing books and refusing to ‘shut up’. 

This was a good day. A triumph for women who, as the court reminded us, make up more than 50 per cent of the population and have been fighting for equality for over 150 years, and with some work still to do. 

And maybe it’s because we are Scots and so immersed at being at the forefront of this battleground that the efforts of the women in For Women Scotland aren’t applauded enough. But Marion Calder, Susan Smith and Trina Budge will go down in history – unless of course it is scripted by the SNP – as sheroes. They are an unlikely trio of radicals. Unknown to each other until about seven years ago, this feisty group of middle-aged, middle-class (although Denny-born farmer’s wife, Trina, would baulk at that description) women who came together over mutual concerns about the way gender recognition reforms – specifically the ability for any man to self-identify as a woman – could impact on women’s single-sex spaces.

Without them, without their bravery, tenacity and humour, we would still be arguing over what a woman is. And for that they deserve to be put on a plinth.