No True Scotsman Phallusy: Scottish Gov Balks At Consequences Of Their Own 'Self-ID' Law
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No True Scotsman Phallusy: Scottish Gov Balks At Consequences Of Their Own 'Self-ID' Law
The spiral has begun
Sturgeon, prime minister of the Scottish parliament, has walked back the decision to place an intact male rapist in a women’s prison. Because duh.
“Given the understandable public and parliamentary concern in this case,” she said, adding emphasis to reassure male prisoners they can still identify into women’s prisons. “I can confirm to Parliament that this prisoner will not be incarcerated at Cornton Vale prison, and I hope that provides assurance to the public…not least to the victims in this case.”
Isla Bryson, a man, was born Adam Graham, and got face tattoos under that name to establish his bona fides as a sane and centered person with a coherent sense of self.
Sentenced to serve prison time for raping two women, Bryson showed up in a fabulous wig and manicured nails to show the world that he is a true woman. Inside. Not on the outside. His body is still fully male. It just has silicone boobs on it, now, because that makes him a “real woman” who belongs in a prison with women.
Never mind that he enjoys raping women, he clearly needs to be housed with vulnerable women, share their cells and their showers, and live among them as one of the girls. One with his true tribe at last.
The same Scottish parliament which recently passed self-ID legislation over the loud objections of women’s rights campaigners has now seen what it looks like in practice, and they are repulsed.
One after another, every point that Scottish women made protesting legislation to allow “self-ID” at Holyrood last month is being proven correct. Each time the madness of that policy has another predictable, and predicted, real-world impact, this will happen again.
And again.
And again.
Even the advocates of this disaster know that. They have known all along that it would happen. It’s why “this is not a debate” became their mantra. They’re still trying to shut down the story in place of a sensible policy answer, but it’s not working like it used to.
Trans rights campaigners thought that by starting with prison policy, they could normalize the integration of the sexes according to “gender identity” in wider society. Captive women have been the guinea pigs for an absurd policy of “inclusion” that puts intact men, even rapists, among their preferred victim pool, on purpose, so that they can achieve the same goal everywhere.
Explaining this to people makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist until you show them the receipts, whereupon the gender zealot will simply refuse to believe anything, and denounce you to the thought police on Facebook.
Again, this was supposed to normalize transgender identity so that laws such as Sturgeon’s “gender reform bill” could pass. Instead, the consenquence of self-ID policy and law in the real world is reaction against normalizing transgender identity.
Rather than become numb to the issue, as the lobbyists had hoped, the Scottish public is now quite alert to transgender policy capture for the very first time, ever. They are making people allergic to “gender identity.”
Imagine that you are an MP for the Scottish National Party who just voted to make self-ID the law of the land because the Greens in the coalition demanded it. You were repeatedly assured this is the right side of history, that JK Rowling and the evil terfs are wrong and they are right.
It’s just this one guy, this time, you may tell yourself. But it will not just be Isla Bryson. Another one like him will come along. Another man will steal a trophy, another “decapitate terfs” sign will appear.
Appeals on behalf of “real trans people,” as though some sort of objective test could ever detect or measure the purity of any man’s “woman-ness,” is a sexist fallacy.
In fact, it is the No True Scotsman fallacy: an attempt to exclude the counterexample by narrowing the definition. At what point does a kilt become a skirt? Is it the moment the man asks us to call him Susan? Because that is what Scotland’s new law does.
No wonder British PM Rishi Sunak has moved to quash the law. Sturgeon has vowed to rally on with independence. The whole devolution project of British federalism is being called into question over the fallacy that a phallus is ever female, can ever be female.
For example, Bryson/Graham has an estranged wife, Shonna, who tells the Daily Mail “never once did he say anything to me about feeling he ws born in the wrong body or anything. I have a lot of sympathy for real transgender people. It’s a hard thing to live with, but he’s just bullsh****g the authorities.”
Shonna still believes there is really a thing called “trans,” that it is something like being gay because people are born with it, and that her husband is different from any other man who claims to be a woman on the inside. Perhaps she never looked through his browser history?
Bryson’s lawyer tried to argue that his client’s “transition” was reason to acquit “her” of rape. The jury did not buy his argument that “[Bryson/Graham] is transitioning, [he] is aiming to continue on that path to becoming female gender.” Not that he actually is a true Scotsman, you see, but he wants to be one, and isn’t that good enough?
Responding to questions about the case, Fiona Cruickshanks told Scotland Tonight that rapists should be imprisoned according to “how they choose to identify themselves and how they’ve been living in the community,” leaving aside the question of how long a rapist Scotsman must wear a wig before he is a true Scotswoman.
(For a fullsome rundown of the insane way this has all played out, see Wings Over Scotland.)
Austin Sheridan, the SNP member who called STV “disgusting” for supposedly creating “backlash” against “male to female” “trans people,” assumes that a class of male really exists that is fundamentally different from any other kind of male, and that this special class of male can be screened from the alleged faker. But there is no risk assessment in a reality-based universe that will put this man in a prison with women.
Note that Sheridan is also breaking the cardinal rule of “acceptance without exception,” here, for he does not even try to argue that Bryson/Graham is a true Scotswoman, deserving to be housed in a female estate.
Instead, he defends men claiming a transgender identity who “will get backlash from this and [be] in harms [sic] way” because a news organization has correctly identified the sex of a rapist.
Sheridan would perhaps dismiss the rapist as an aberration or an anomaly, but of course this is false. Bryson/Graham is a true Scotsman, after all, and not the fallacious kind, but the kind born with a phallus.
Nor does removing said phallus unmake the man. Vaginoplasty does not reduce male strength advantages over women. As in domestic violence, no woman can stand up to either Adam or Isla in a physical confrontation without risk of serious injury. Within the context of a female prison hierarchy, his greater capacity for violence would translate into greater status from the moment of arrival.
Whether Isla still has Adam’s penis makes no difference. He is a true Scotsman either way. He can never, ever be a true Scotswoman.
This reality will confront the Scottish government again and again, henceforth. Every time it comes back around, members of the Scottish parliament who voted for Nicola’s fiasco of a bill will be forced to confront their fallacious reasoning for that vote. It has increasing political costs.
The actual Scotsmen and Scotswomen now in revolt against self-ID will ensure that they understand.
Rainbow revolutionaries will continue to rally, but it’s all retreating from here, for them, one true Scotsman at a time. If only they had left themselves some ideological room for retreat.