JOAN MCALPINE: I was called trash for standing up for women. The SNP, led by Nicola Sturgeon, tried to shut me up... but Ive got absolutely NO regrets

A woman is born of woman, not certificated by bureaucrats. We should never have needed the most learned judges in the land to confirm that obvious fact. 

Women have been saying it for years – only to be shouted down, ridiculed, and vilified.

I know. I was one of them.

The UK Supreme Court has now confirmed that, in the Equality Act 2010, ‘sex’ means biological sex – not acquired gender via a certificate, and certainly not self-declared gender, as the Scottish Government originally argued.

The ruling, delivered in response to an appeal by the grassroots group For Women Scotland (FWS), was more than a legal win. 

It marked the culmination of years of struggle, courage, and, at times, despair. For me, it was also deeply personal.

It has been more than six years since I first met Susan Smith and Marion Calder – whose jubilant smiles outside the Supreme Court lit up front pages last week.

I was then an SNP MSP. They were two mothers from Edinburgh, building a national campaign from their kitchen tables, juggling public meetings and crowdfunding with school runs, rugby practice, and full-time work.

Trina Budge, a farmer from Caithness joined them. They had no party machine behind them. Just facts, persistence and each other. 

In December 2018, Susan gave evidence to the Culture Committee at Holyrood that I convened.

We were scrutinising a Bill that proposed redefining sex in the forthcoming National Census to include the nebulous concept of ‘gender identity’.

When the trans lobby heard FWS was giving evidence to parliament you’d have thought we had invited The Mother of Demons herself.

Their tactic was to ostracise and deplatform. They knew the madness of their ideology would be exposed when subjected to reasoned scrutiny, as it was that day.

Susan’s clarity during that 2018 committee appearance left a mark. Soft spoken, calm, and grounded in law, she explained –without theatrics– how self-identified sex could mean a girl on a school trip might share overnight accommodation with an adult male who claimed to be a woman.

Joan McAlpine was the SNP MSP for the South of Scotland region but came up against fierce hostility to her gender critical views.

The SNP I had devoted my life to was becoming unrecognisable, Ms McAlpine says, reflecting on her final months in the party.

That such things were already happening – boys placed in girls’ dorms, male sex offenders transferred into women’s prisons – stunned many MSPs. This was long before the case of Isla

Bryson, a rapist placed in the women’s prison estate, shocked the rest of Scotland and contributed to then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s humiliation and resignation.

Our committee persuaded the government to drop the gender identity language from the actual Bill and abandon plans for a third ‘sex’ option.

We believed data must be collected accurately and that allowing people to self-identify their sex would undermine vital statistics used to monitor inequality and shape public services.

Nonetheless, National Records of Scotland, the government agency behind the census, insisted on publishing guidance telling respondents they could answer the sex question based on how they felt.

Most of our committee disagreed with that decision. 

Now, so has the Supreme Court.

In many ways those sessions in 2018 were a rehearsal of the debates to come – and a first step on the long road that led to last week’s historic judgement.

After months of evidence gathering, I posted a long Twitter thread in 2019 called Sex and the Census, explaining why biological sex mattered.

I focussed on data, but I was also concerned about the most vulnerable – for example women who were raped or women who required intimate care because they were very frail or disabled.

Could they refuse attendance by a man who claimed he was actually a woman?

I hoped for reasoned debate. Instead, I was targeted by activists in my own party.

One future SNP councillor posted a photo of me with a red circle target on my head.

Others called me ‘trash’, demanding I should be suspended or deselected.

A senior politician’s male partner threatened to confront me at an SNP conference.

Others cheered on a notorious troll who posted violent, misogynist tweets and somehow ended up on the party’s National Executive Committee. 

My complaints were ignored or dismissed.

But I also received thousands of messages of support – many from women too afraid to speak publicly, including lifelong SNP members and feminists who felt politically homeless.

The front window of my Holyrood office was covered in beautiful cards from women all over the UK, thanking me for defending their rights. I have kept every one.

I raised my concerns in the Mail on Sunday that year. It was at a time that the government was planning to change the law to make sex a matter of mere self-declaration through the Gender Recognition Reform Bill.

I wrote that this would allow domestic abusers and sex offenders to change the sex on their birth certificates. I also told of the effect on all-women shortlists, designed to combat discrimination against women.

A man who had suffered no detriment and may have enjoyed a successful career, could take a woman’s place by declaring himself a woman.

Ironically it was this issue, the ability of men to take places on public boards reserved for females, that was the subject of the Supreme Court deliberations last week.

The Mail on Sunday story also highlighted the political fissures opened by the row.

The SNP I had devoted my life to was becoming unrecognisable.

But this wasn’t unique to us. Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens – they all embraced this same dogma. Alex Cole-Hamilton, leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, has even praised the campaigning of ‘Beth’ Douglas – a biological male who identifies as a woman – who had called me ‘trash’ and publicly defended violence against women.

It was a frightening time but I was determined to expose the madness. I spent 2019 working closely with FWS and asking questions in parliament.

I raised the fact that Police Scotland and the courts were allowing criminals, including rapists, to have their sex recorded as female.

I also voiced concerns about the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde policy which said men identifying as women could be placed in female wards – and patients who objected should be treated the same as racists.

There was a price to pay. The SNP under Sturgeon was determined to shut me up.

I was elected number one on the South of Scotland list by party members in 2021. But the party’s ruling body introduced an affirmative action mechanism, against legal advice, which ensured another MSP took my place and was elected that year.

I have no regrets and in many ways am glad to have moved on.

Susan, Marion and Trina were an inspiration and I am privileged to have walked part of the road with them. It’s time more politicians caught up.