Up and down Scotland over the past year, women have been getting together and asking if it could be true our government wants to make laws that would mean men can say they’re women (and vice versa) and, just like that, it’s a fact?

No doctors, no treatment, just “I say, therefore I am”?

As there was no organisation in Scotland voicing women’s concerns, we formed one. ForwomenScot. It seemed that if any man could just identify as a woman then women’s rights wouldn’t really mean anything any more. So we’re glad that the government has decided to reopen its consultation on reform of the GRA.

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Shirley-Anne Somerville rightly said the words “sex” and “gender” don’t mean the same thing and using them interchangeably has created issues across legislation. From conversation with civil servants, we believe this conflation was deliberate. If the GRA consultation was a confusing document (and it was!) that’s because it was designed to be.

So far, Government has only consulted with organisations they themselves fund. These groups have demonised opponents to self ID. As a result, our meetings are picketed and violence threatened. Even Mhairi Black MP called women like us “Jeremy Hunts”. Ministers should make it clear this is unacceptable.

The Government dismisses concerns about threats to women’s services, spaces and sport by claiming the reserved Equality Act will not be changed. This ignores the many ways the GRA and the Equality Act interact and much confusion has gone unchallenged. Reform should be accompanied by clear definitions and guidance on sex-based exemptions.

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It’s astonishing we have to spell this out in 2019, but females face unique issues because of our sex. Our bodies are different to those of males, so we need to think about reproductive rights, differences in physique for sport, and bias in healthcare and social structure. The First Minister has said she found Caroline Criado Perez’s The Invisible Woman “revelatory”; it would be great if she could join the dots.

We understand trans people also face discrimination and challenges but acknowledging that these require different, sensitive solutions shouldn’t be controversial.