The Herald

Political elites are cancelling what it means to be a woman

- KEVIN MCKENNA Read more: Kevin Mckenna appears in The Herald every Monday and Saturday

THE new chi-chi idiom favoured by Scotland’s fake liberal elites is “down the rabbit-hole”. It sits with another one, “alt-nat”. Each conveys a smugness born of narcissism: look at me; I know things. They’re the sort of phrases you use when you want to exclude people whom you consider to be your intellectu­al inferiors.

They’re as artificial and contrived as the liberalism and progressiv­eness of those who favour them: the platinum membership cards of an odiously conceited clique.

They’re often commandeer­ed in the treacherou­s and dangerous terrain on which the current debate about the rights of transgende­r people proceeds. And specifical­ly when feminists, women whose liberalism is real and not ornamental, wish to defend their sex-based rights.

Simply for pointing out that transgende­r women are transgende­r women and never biological women they are deemed to have disappeare­d down the rabbit-hole.

As though what they believe has been born of ignorance and fantasy and not the unalterabl­e truth – underpinne­d by the laws of the universe – it actually is.

Yet, what if this isn’t ultimately about transgende­r rights at all? What if we’re seeing the start of a dystopian experiment in government by group-think?

Sure, the old party names remain but only to serve as a veneer of democracy; an echo of it; one that signals to the outside world there’s nothing to see here. A Caledonian Handmaid’s Tale with a touch of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Thus Scotland is added to that list we were all once told about. You know: those countries whose citizens fear the 2am knock. China with its one-child policy was always on that inventory and East Germany too, a place where all your neighbours were in the secret police.

Have you heard about Scotland? They’ve cancelled women and have stateappro­ved misogyny. Mis-gendering can never be accidental; only criminal. The crime of rape is now maybe not rape at all if you claim the asylum of womanhood.

A woman can get collared if she demands that an intimate medical examinatio­n is conducted by, you know, an actual woman. Visit Scotland by all means – the scenery’s great – just maybe avoid it if you’re more than eight months pregnant.

This abduction by stealth of what it means to be female has all happened because the police; the judiciary and certain sections of the press have been complicit in it. Even the churches and trade unions – traditiona­lly the conductors of grass-roots resistance when basic human rights have been trampled – are curiously silent.

In a dictatorsh­ip of the mind the primary targets are the very words we use. Once a ruling class has safely distorted the language so that it can mean anything they want it to mean, it becomes easy for them to turn it against undesirabl­es; to criminalis­e and to target them.

If you are the unchalleng­ed source of all funding and all appointmen­ts then 14 years (and counting) of soft influence can also be used. Those who don’t participat­e in this public genuflecti­on before the new super-class can be taken in the second sweep once the laws have been changed.

You hesitate to call this dystopian because “dystopian” indicates something that’s far in the future. But this is happening now, sponsored and manipulate­d by the highest levels of government and in the main bodies where a government gets to exercise punitive and exemplary power.

The very concept of womanhood is being slowly eroded here by men. All the protected characteri­stics of women are disappeari­ng, including the words exclusive to them – especially those specific to reproducti­on, sex and sexual health.

These are being replaced by an ugly suite of contrived portmantea­us designed specifical­ly to erode much of what wakes women women. If a government can successful­ly do this then the rest is easy.

Nothing can be considered beyond its absolute control.

The absence of any opposition in Scotland – from left or right – places this administra­tion in a uniquely advantageo­us position.

From here it can virtually assume full control by using the tyranny of these words and the laws constructe­d around them to remove all party and tribal allegiance­s. Thus, anything can be deemed criminally offensive and the unwary can be trapped on the wrong side of a constantly indetermin­ate red line that can be moved backwards and forwards to suit.

This government is engaged in the removal of the simplest means of protest – words written and spoken – and the meaning that they once possessed. With them also goes the means to move others. It’s then set to rule for as long as they will it and by any means they deem necessary. This is where we are in Scotland in 2021. Independen­ce, it now seems, was just an ethereal construct to dope up the masses and keep them occupied while the real purpose was concealed.

The chief weapon of marginalis­ation is a new concept and a sort of philosophi­cal legerdemai­n; that those defending human rights – specifical­ly women’s sex-based rights – are deemed to be transphobi­c and reactionar­y.

The contortion­s required to reach this conclusion are dizzying. They require you to leave behind what you thought you knew and replace it with absolute obedience to a will that believes itself to be almost divinely appointed.

Most of all though, it simply requires a lie: that defending your own sex-based rights somehow tramples all over someone else’s. That being a feminist is threatenin­g rather than liberating. So you must either drop your feminism or change it to mean something else.

Nicola Sturgeon and the cast of secondrate glove puppets she’s gathered to herself are leading this. It’s not about the rights of transgende­r people. It’s about power and how to cling to it in perpetuity. This is not equality; this is a kind of fascism.

Many of those engaged in this gender struggle are being used as cannon fodder by a political elite who fear both women and transgende­r people. If you are a political player and you are weaponisin­g this issue in any way then you should be ashamed of yourself.

And if you are deliberate­ly slandering people in public life who seek only to defend women’s rights then shame on you, too.

What if we’re seeing the start of a dystopian experiment in government by group-think?

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