The tide is finally turning on the trans lobby

What fresh hell is this? Last week, I brought you news of the male-turned-female Ontario educator teaching woodwork while wearing a giant pair of prosthetic breasts, complete with protruding nipples. Now we discover an even bigger boob much closer to home, with Holyrood’s utterly catastrophic move to allow Scots to self-identify their gender without legal proof.

MSPs have backed new legislation that would grant 16-year-olds the right to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) without an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria. The plans also cut the time an individual has to live in their “acquired gender” from two years to three months before making an application. Soon, it might well take a man in Scotland more time to apply for a passport than to claim to be a woman, with all the allowances it subsequently provides, such as entering a woman’s space.

No proof is required, let alone surgery or hormones – just a transgenderish feeling will do, even for a confused teenager. Presumably we can all now look forward to Holyrood passing a law allowing people to self-identify as teapots or even hamsters provided they’ve dressed like one for 12 weeks. (It’s not as lunatic as it sounds; I recently heard the tale of a school allowing one of its pupils to self-identify as a cat.)

Naturally, J K Rowling has once again been pilloried online for daring to point out that this is a bonkers idea that will harm the most vulnerable women in society. Like most rational beings on the planet, she has no problem with transgender people, just the idea of women “throwing open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman”.

The Harry Potter author posted a photograph of herself on Twitter wearing a black T-shirt that read: “Nicola Sturgeon – noun – destroyer of women’s rights.” She accompanied the post with the caption: “I stand in solidarity with ‘For Women Scotland’ and all the women protesting and speaking outside the Scottish Parliament.”

The activists of For Women Scotland, who gathered outside Holyrood in protest, state on their website “that there are only two sexes, that a person’s sex is not a choice, nor can it be changed”. It is, of course, laughable that such a basic statement of biological fact should now be viewed as so controversial. But such is the state of affairs.

These activists, and Rowling, aren’t just standing in solidarity with the women of Scotland but the people of Scotland who, it seems, can no longer rely on the politicians who claim to represent them. For this biology-defying Bill was supported not just by the SNP, but also by Labour and Green MSPs too. This is despite the fact that a survey conducted by the Scottish Parliament’s equalities, human rights and civil justice committee showed the majority of respondents opposed the legislation.

If the SNP had that level of support in an independence referendum, it would be rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall before you could sing Loch Lomond – but of course the Nats only take seriously the survey results they agree with.

The vast majority of people across the length and breadth of Britain will regard this decision as beyond absurd, but will be too afraid to say it. Until recently, we lived in a society where, if you dared even to question ultra-trans orthodoxy, you were automatically labelled a bigot. You fell into that nasty category where racists and homophobes belong. Women who wanted to self-identify as free-speech advocates were told to shut up.

Even when children were being encouraged to make life-changing decisions and given puberty blockers that could negatively affect them for decades, those doubting the clearly malign motives of the ultra-trans lobby were branded intolerant. Even when parental rights were undermined and when professional women were hounded out of their jobs by largely male protesters wearing balaclavas, women with the courage to stand up for the sisterhood were investigated for “hate crimes”.

Even when lesbians were labelled “Terfs” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) for refusing to date transwomen with penises, the world stood by and watched their hard-fought rights being snatched from them. And even when a male rapist, with no history of being transgender, decided to identify as a “she”, forcing his victim to tell a court she had been violated by a woman, the justice system allowed it to happen.

But now, thanks to people like Rowling, Professor Kathleen Stock, Dr Hilary Cass and the Telegraph’s very own Suzanne Moore, that mono-thinking culture has been exposed for the lie that it always was. After years of being denigrated, dehumanised and demonised, and ignored by decision-making bodies in favour of radical interest groups, these women are finally getting a hearing, and the proponents of the tyrannical dogma which they oppose have been found out.

The closure of the Tavistock transgender clinic is a prime example of how the tide has turned. Despite the stark warnings of whistleblowers and journalists, the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) continued to administer potentially life-changing treatments to often vulnerable children. Then the paediatrician Dr Cass removed the cloak of virtue-signalling.

Her interim report on Gids in February exposed a scandalous disregard for the welfare of children treated at the centre. She found that puberty blockers were given even when their effects weren’t properly understood and without adequate record keeping of the welfare of those children. It triggered people to ask a rather obvious question: why had it taken so long for the uncertainties and risks around the use of puberty blockers to be officially recognised?

Attention then rightly turned to organisations like Stonewall and Mermaids, which have spent recent years gaining what Rowling has described as “unprecedented influence” over public institutions, including the police and the NHS.

They built influence among celebrities too, including Harry Potter star Emma Watson and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – even though Mermaids, for instance, is run by Susie Green, a former IT consultant with no medical training, who took her child to Thailand, aged 16, for genital surgery that was illegal in Britain.

Last week, it emerged that one of Mermaids’ trustees, Dr Jacob Breslow, spoke at a conference hosted by an organisation that promotes services for paedophiles who need professional help. Dr Breslow stood down, releasing a statement saying: “I unequivocally condemn child sexual abuse”, but with Mermaids already facing investigation for giving children breast-binders behind their parents’ backs, common sense has prevailed at last. The Charity Commission is investigating the organisation, and the National Lottery has paused its funding. None of this would have happened without women (and trans women and men equally concerned about women and girls’ safety) taking such a courageous stand. We ought to recognise and celebrate them – many of whom have gone to hell and back to fight this worst of all forms of wokery.

The wider war is yet to be won, however. This is an opportunity to get some legislative changes to protect children and families, and to safeguard women-only spaces. Liz Truss has promised to do that. She has a 71-seat majority to implement it. Then we can heap pressure on Nicola Sturgeon, who continues to act like the last Japanese soldier, refusing to down her weapons out of some sort of self-deluded desire to be seen as the “right” sort of feminist.

The women of the world will never surrender to having their rights eroded by wilfully ignorant identity politicians. You don’t need to be a witch to work out who is the true Voldemort here.