Meeting of the Parliament 22 December 2022
I will open my remarks by paying tribute to all the people with whom we have engaged throughout the process. I thank them and our committee clerks and Parliament staff, who have supported us, as well as the cleaners, catering and security staff, who have put in quite the shift to facilitate us being here so late this week to debate this legislation.
I became an MSP because I wanted to change people’s lives. Today is one of those rare moments as an MSP where we all have a real opportunity to improve lives and directly tackle inequality. Being recognised for who you are, without suspicion, is hard. Being expected to rely on medical interference where it is not needed or wanted, to somehow prove who you are and who you know you are, is demeaning and hurtful, and requiring someone else, who does not even know you, to confirm your identity, is belittling.
The pressure to conform to a society that does not quite understand your experience is hard. It is exhausting. It means that you second-guess your instincts and worry that people think that you should not be how you are or get what you get. You feel the need to justify who you are in a way that people who do not share your characteristics do not have to. As a disabled person, I am only too familiar with that world and that experience. I guess that is why I have always felt a connection with trans people’s desire to be recognised for who they are, for the current process for doing that to be reformed, and for society to accept them and support them to be their best selves without barriers, additional costs or medicalisation.
The thing about stigma and discrimination is that their characteristics are almost always the same. Whether your characteristics are those of a disabled person, an older person, a woman, a person of colour, a lesbian, a gay person or a trans person, you are held back, you are questioned, you lose out, you earn less and people treat you differently. You internalise that and agonise over every microaggression; ultimately, that eats away at your sense of self, purpose and potential. That is why I believe strongly that the reform that we will vote for today has been a long time in coming and why changing the current onerous, lengthy and invasive process of legal gender recognition has always been so important to me.
The current system is outdated and out of touch with the progressive Scotland that we aim to be. It forces trans people to endure trauma and intrusion just to have their gender recognised in law. Throughout the scrutiny of the bill, I have said many times that the drawn-out process and the Scottish Government’s delays in bringing it forward—as well as its failure to provide the strong leadership that is necessary to quash misconceptions and allay fears—has led to a vacuum, which has allowed fear and ignorance to prosper. It has led to a debate that has framed the rights of trans people as a threat to the rights of women and created a toxic environment that has let down both causes and brought hurt and upset to those people who spend their lives fighting for both of them.
We are having this discussion because there is a clear injustice and we have the power to fix it. That is what devolution is for. In all the evidence that I have heard—and I have heard a lot of it—it has been clear to me that too many trans people feel that, under the current process, it is not possible for them to be recognised in law as the gender that they identify with. The current system is so bad that, too often, trans people are forced to leave themselves open to discrimination in all aspects of their life; they face constant fear of being outed and are treated differently because their identity documents are not consistent with their lived experience. That is why I have been so keen to make sure that the legislation is the best that it can be.
I cannot understate the importance of getting that right. The legislation has to do what it says on the tin and tear down some of the most disproportionate barriers that are denying trans people the dignity of being recognised for who they are. That is why members of the Labour Party have spent so much time scrutinising the bill and why we have done that thoroughly.