It is 9:30 am and a group of around 100 people, mostly women, are gathering in a central Edinburgh auditorium to hear the judgement from the Supreme Court.
People greet and hug each other on arrival, offering their best wishes to For Women Scotland’s Trina Budge. Co-founders Marion Calder and Susan Smith are in London.
Trina tells us that, however it goes, once the judgement is in, there are plans for lunch and either celebratory or commiseration drinks.
Knowing some of these women as I do, even if the judgement doesn’t go our way we’ll find the cheer in solidarity regardless.
The tension in the auditorium is palpable, though there is a crackle of anticipation. Regardless of the outcome, at last there will be a path forward. Should FWS win outright, which is the preferred outcome, that path is clearer.
But either way, there’s a power of work to be done, and everyone here knows it.
While some people outwith this auditorium continue to insist that the lack of clarity over sex and gender in law is a mere ‘culture war,’ anyone actually paying attention knows that a great deal rests on this imminent judgement.
And the people in this room have been doing far more than merely paying attention.
Poet Jenny Lindsay has spent six years battling her cancellation by the arts sector for speaking out against the trans lobby
In the face of extreme hostility and misinformation, those gathered here have mounted a highly successful cultural and legal resistance against the excesses of gender identity ideology in Scotland and across the UK.
This includes representatives from Sex Matters, founded to campaign for clarity over the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010, and the founders of Scottish Lesbians, both of whom are interveners in the FWS case.
Of all of the women gathered, it is lesbians whose rights are most at stake. The Supreme Court’s ruling will decide whether a man with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) that says his sex is a female, really is a female for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010.
If so, it will become unlawful for lesbian associations to gather solely with other lesbians, should a male with a GRC saying he is female wish to be there.
Anyone paying attention knows that there are many men – with and without certificates – who identify as women and see nothing wrong whatsoever with calling themselves lesbians, insisting that those who oppose this are guilty of ‘transphobia.’
While this is felt to be profoundly homophobic to women with my views (and, I’d argue, to anyone who thinks about it for more than two seconds) it is the logical position of anyone who holds gender identity beliefs.
These beliefs disregard material reality in favour of linguistic trickery. All humans have a gender identity, and this overrides their sexed body, the logic goes. If you experience a (highly subjective, immaterial) ‘female gender identity’ and are attracted to women, then, voila! You are a lesbian.
Whatever the law says, which can famously be ‘an ass’ as the saying goes, this way of thinking has been embedded in institutions across the UK.
The auditorium starts to fill up.
Alongside the activists and grassroots campaign groups, there are individual women who, like I have experienced in the Scottish literary arts, have faced serious detriment in their particular sector for daring to question the ideology of gender identity.
Women who’ve lost work, friends, and sometimes their health, due to genderist activists relentless harassment. All are women who simply want clarity on the law, and who oppose a cultural atmosphere that has seemed to rush steadily away from legality and sense.
Sitting in front of me is academic Shereen Benjamin of the University of Edinburgh, who has faced ostracization and harassment in her workplace from students and colleagues alike. A lesbian woman and long-time trades unionist, she felt no option but to leave the Universities and Colleges Union due to their genderist views and their seeming to back the aggressive harassment of ‘gender critical’ academics.
It does not take much for a woman to be hounded over this issue. While the histrionic response to said woman can leave bystanders assuming she must have done or believe something truly horrific to end up so vilified, the original act is usually breathtakingly reasonable.
Having studied and written about the hounding of countless women over the last decade in the ‘gender wars’, including my own experience, I can say this with confidence.
It has alarmed many to discover that my own ‘hounding’ commenced in 2019 when I posted one sole tweet opposing the publication of a justification for incitement to violence against women branded ‘TERF’ (trans-exclusionary radical feminist.)
For opposing this violence, and for refusing to ‘cancel’ women branded with that spiky initialism, I have spent six years now battling my own cancellation, often desperately trying to find paid work of any kind in the arts, which I had spent two decades working my way to relative security and success in as a freelance live literature programmer, stage poet, and creative educator.
I was hounded out of Edinburgh, faced venues refusing to allow me to hire them, was quietly blacklisted by literary institutions and festivals, and lost a great deal of writer friends I’d thought were good ones.
I’ve been subjected to massive smear campaigns, with fellow writers seemingly proud to join in personalised abuse and character assassinations, while often failing to accurately articulate my views, never mind making any coherent argument about the legal issues themselves.
I’ve had an open letter directed at an institution that appeared to oppose my harassment, experienced stalking behaviours from genderist campaigners, had emails and messages of abuse from complete strangers and former colleagues, and much more besides.
Apparently fuming at my finding a new way to write for a living, when my recent non-fiction book Hounded was announced last summer, a Creative Scotland literature officer contacted at least one bookstore to tick them off for having it on sale for pre-orders.
To say that this – especially the continued attempts at economic sabotage – have taken their toll is an understatement.
My response to all of this has been to repeat my three core beliefs: women are materially definable, they are legislatively and culturally important on that basis, women should have unfettered freedom of speech and assembly, particularly on matters that affect them profoundly.
Unlike some of my hounders, my views have been consistent from the start.
Also unlike my hounders, like the other women gathered here, I’ve had to immerse myself in this issue, following numerous employment tribunals and court cases; legislative procedures and policy discussions; arguments over the philosophy of gender, the governing rules of sporting bodies, and much else besides to ensure I’m continually up to speed.
Gender identity activists do not tend to do this. It often feels like truth, the law, resolving this issue whatsoever and living peaceably is not what such activists wish for.
This lack of interest in objective truth and reasoned argument means that such activists do not appear to know what the Supreme Court is even passing judgement on this morning.
I chatted with some women about this on the way in.
One reported seeing posts on Bluesky where some activists seem to think that the Scottish Ministers had been arguing that trans women are women, and trans men are men, for example.
This is incorrect.
All parties, on both sides, agree that those without a GRC, no matter how they self-identify, remain their sex in law.
In fact, the Scottish Ministers case was quite clear that a trans man (a natal female who gains a GRC saying her sex is male) loses rights on the basis of sex discrimination as a female.
So much for ‘defending trans rights.’
To be fair, perhaps such people can be forgiven for their ignorance, as the SNP has long been obfuscating on their position.
On the one hand, they argued during the passing of the ill-fated Gender Recognition Reform Bill that making it easier to get a GRC was basic admin that would have no impact on the Equality Act 2010 or single-sex exemptions.
On the other, they’ve now spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers money arguing precisely the opposite at the Supreme Court.
It helps to pay attention.
As such, there is a near-total silence as the judgement starts to be handed down.
I have never felt tension like this. One woman sitting near me whispers, “I haven’t felt this nervous since I went into labour!”
We listen closely, a majority of us expecting a fudge. My stomach turns when Lord Hodge starts to speak.
And then, when he says the magical words, that the court has unanimously found in favour of the case made by FWS, the crowd erupts into cheers and rapturous applause. I surprise myself by bursting into tears, as do much of the crowd.
I worry that we’ve misheard, and are celebrating too early. But no, it goes on.
Every single argument that women who have been hounded have made is confirmed as correct: that the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex alone. That lesbian rights would be destroyed if certificates made some males females in law.
That women are a definable category of human being.
There is something so utterly relieving about the calm, steady voice of a Supreme Court judge ruling that women have been right all along.
At the announcement protecting lesbian rights, Shereen sobs with her head in her hands.
The stakes really have been so high.
Part dystopian nightmare, part absurdist drama, the last few years have been decidedly odd, to put it mildly.
This is exactly the outcome we had hoped for.
FWS, that tenacious trio, have changed the game here considerably. We know we will face continued abuse, and that activists will, as I write this, begin berating and misinterpreting the judgement.
But we can take this moment.
FWS, alongside the other women in this room, are women who did not what was easy, but what was right. That they should never have had to do this had highly-paid legislators done their jobs is galling. But they did it.
Upon realising the lack of leadership from those with establishment power, these women set out to right the lazy wrongs of those who accepted the demands of gender identity activists unquestioningly.
These are women who simply will not have it. They will not allow their hounders and abusers to ‘win’, and they will not sit back and wheesht as women are redefined.
They will refuse the exhortations to ‘be kind’ in the face of the most unkind activism you could think of, in defence of an ideology that is foundationally wrong, and causes intense harms – both to its own believers, as well as to those who oppose it.
It is a deranging ideology, the damage from which will take years to resolve.
And at the forefront of resolving it will be women who, both morally and practically, have felt an inability to turn away from the onslaught of what we fundamentally believe is the biggest backlash against women’s rights and against feminist women that we could ever have imagined.
Dare I say it, but these are women who are highly ‘gender non-conforming.’ Not the shallow interpretation of ‘gender’ as being about how one looks, how one dresses, or how ‘femme’ or ‘masc’ one wants to present as, but the true non-conformity that occurs when a woman refuses to back down, roll over, and prioritise men’s desires, eschewing her own.
For Women Scotland, alongside all the other women in this auditorium, are amongst the most tenacious, intelligent, and joyful I have ever met. All of the social, psychological, economic and democratic harms that have been thrust against me and so many others over the years on the frontline of the ‘gender wars’ is offset in no small part by keeping the company of such courage.
This battle will continue. But first, those celebratory drinks.
Jenny Lindsay is an award winning Scottish poet and author of Hounded which details how she lost her livelihood in the arts because of gender activists.
