Sometimes the genderists make it too easy
Sometimes the genderists make it too easy
December 28, 2022
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On Tuesday, December 22, the Scottish parliament voted to pass Gender Recognition Reform (i.e., anyone gets to be legally recognized as whatever sex they want to be recognized as). This will mean that in Scotland (as in many other places in the world, including in many states in the U.S.), male prisoners, including sex offenders, will be able to legally self-identify as women and thereby gain access to the women’s prison. I wrote about that (and its relevance to the U.S.) last week in Newsweek here. Though there were some defectors, the law passed with the overwhelming support of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Green Party, and Labour Party.
Yesterday, Angus Robertson, a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) and a member of the SNP, published a bit in the Edinburgh News to the effect that:
We have heard evidence from women’s rights organisations; children’s rights organisations; sexual violence organisations; sporting bodies; academics; campaigners; world experts; and parliamentarians from across the globe. The final version of the Bill contained amendments both written and supported by members of all parties – it is owned by us all.
In the end, the overwhelming consensus in parliament was that the Gender Recognition Reform Bill should be passed.
To quote Nelson Mandela, “to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others”. In passing this legislation, I fervently believe the parliament and the people of Scotland have taken one more step in doing just that.
His piece contains this triumphant image of the heroic Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years and knew a bit about how to treat prisoners humanely:
First of all, please set aside for the moment the abominable fact that this MSP appears to be equating women’s right to single-sex spaces with racial apartheid in South Africa.
What Mr. Robertson likely does not know is that there is a document familiarly called the Nelson Mandela Rules, named for, well, Nelson Mandela. The Nelson Mandela Rules were formally adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 and set forth international standards regarding the treatment of inmates in prisons and jails globally. The official name is the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
Rule 11(a) of the Nelson Mandela Rules explicitly calls for sex-specific prisons and jails globally.
Rule 11 states:
The different categories of prisoners shall be kept in separate institutions or parts of institutions, taking account of their sex, age, criminal record, the legal reason for their detention and the necessities of their treatment; thus:
Subpart (a) states:
Men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women, the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate.
Mr. Robertson, if you are going to vote to shred women’s rights at the altar of “gender identity,” that’s your business. But it’s another thing entirely to invoke the memory of a revered global icon who was an expert on this topic and who expressly called for the opposite result with respect to prisons and jails.
I rarely weigh in on legal matters happening across the pond because I’m aware that there’s always a relatively good chance that I have no idea what I’m talking about. But come on, this one was just too easy.