Doing what was right for traumatised women

We move slowly forward, one step at a time. Good news from Scotland:

MSPs have overwhelmingly backed an amendment in Holyrood that will allow the survivors of rape and sexual assaults to pick the sex rather than the gender of the person examining them after an attack.

The change in terms put forward by Labour’s Johann Lamont was backed by 113 MSPs.

The LibDems and Greens voted against, while the SNP's Christine Grahame abstained.

Currently, Section 9 of the Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2014 allows victims of sexual assault to request an examiner of a particular gender.

But yesterday in Holyrood, the Labour MSP Joanna Lamont moved an amendment to the Forensic Medical Services Bill to change that to sex.

In its stage one report of that bill, Holyrood’s Health and Sport Committee, warned that the definition of gender “could be ambiguous in the bill, which has the potential to cause distress to individuals undergoing forensic medical examination.”

The Scottish Government initially rejected this argument, stating it was “not immediately convinced that there is legislative ambiguity on this matter”.

However on Thursday, ministers dropped their opposition.

Opening the debate, Lamont told colleagues the change was about clarity and doing what was right for traumatised women.

She said: “In giving people rights, in giving women victims of rape and sexual assault rights, in giving all survivors of sexual violence rights, we need to be precise.

“Sex is defined in law, and gender is not. A right is not a right, if it’s unenforceable. We owe it to survivors to listen and treat them with respect.”

Inevitably the familiar accusations of transphobia were dragged out:

Her colleague Monica Lennon said that some of those backing the amendment were ”blatantly hostile towards trans women, and the trans community.”

She added: “Clearly, there are some people who want to exclude trans women from working with women and girls to have disclosed rape or sexual assault.”

Well yes. Excluding trans women from working with women and girls who've been raped sounds like a very good idea to me. It's extraordinary that the delicate sensitivities of trans women could be placed ahead of the feelings of rape and sexual assault victims, who might just not be too happy with the idea of being examined and questioned by men who identify as women and dress up in a skirt and a wig considering they'd just been subjected to violence and humiliation at the hands of a man. But that's the way the whole debate's been framed: trans feelings trump women's feelings every time. But the tide is turning…