“The biggest threat to single-sex services is insufficient funding from the Government”

I hadn’t seen this before: a Q&A on gender recognition by the Fawcett Society, a leading feminist charity campaigning for women’s rights. It strikes me as nuanced and fair-minded, so for example:

The tone of the debate in some quarters, and on extremes of both sides, has been a problem. Amplified by social media, a small minority whom we believe do not represent the views of most people have gone far outside legitimate debate and strayed into violence, or aggressive, intimidating, or dehumanising language. We believe there is no place for that in this discussion.

Events appear to have overtaken this bit:

It is notable that in Scotland, where there has been an ongoing dialogue for some time between women’s and trans organisations, that mutual understanding and respect is stronger and there is a common agenda. We think this is valuable and needed in the rest of the country too.

That was written in February, but while it’s an accurate description of women’s groups and single-sex services it sadly doesn’t apply to the majority of Scots media and the most vocal parts of social media. Our newspapers and current affairs magazines are relentlessly one-sided; they frequently go “far outside legitimate debate” and do nothing about comments pages full of aggressive, intimidating and dehumanising language.


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