It’s a head-on confrontation over transgender rights between the British government by Rishi Sunak and Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon. So much so that the central executive has officially announced, for the first time since the devolution of Tony Blair’s time in the late 1990s, that it wants to block an Edinburgh law which allows anyone aged 16 or over to change gender with a simple self-certification. A measure that had immediately triggered the reactions of feminist intellectuals such as the writer and mother of Harry Potter, JK Rowling, who had branded Sturgeon and the Scottish government as “misogynists”, for what is still a clash between two of the most powerful women in the Kingdom United.
However, the independence leader Sturgeon considers “aunacceptable intrusion” that of the Sunak government, “a political weapon that could pave the way for the blocking of other laws of the Scottish national parliament in the future”. The British government replies that the “measure is necessary” mainly for two reasons: the Scottish law of easy gender change (including minors of at least 16 years of age) would create dysfunctions and contradictions in the recognition of gender by the other nations of the Kingdom, also for those schools and institutions intended for one sex only. But above all, according to the London executive, it remains a measure that “puts the safety of women at risk”, in the spaces reserved for them, as Rowling herself had pointed out. For this reason, the Sunak government has decided to intervene for the first time, invoking article 35 of the “Scotland Act”, thus triggering a constitutional dispute that will most likely end up in court and eventually before the Supreme Court.
Scotland’s recent easy gender switch law is controversial for two reasons: it lowers the age of self-determination for those with gender dysphonia from 18 to 16 years, and above all it eliminates the medical examination before the actual gender change, practically reducing the latter to a self-certification. Something that for the British government can be dangerous as a possible Trojan horse of imposters or even malicious people, even in spaces specifically reserved for women. “It is a black day for democracy and for trans rights,” replied the social justice minister of the Scottish devolved government, Shona Robison, who instead defends her local government provision.
The law passed with 86 votes to 39 in the Edinburgh parliament dominated by the independence party of Sturgeon Snp, but this did not appease the controversy. Beyond JK Rowling’s excellent ones, too the polls seem to prove him wrong to the Sturgeon government and its law on transgender rights: in recent days a large majority of Scots, according to the surveys of approval institutions, seem to be against the provision of the pro-independence leader for trans rights.