What’s Current: For Woman Scotland stages census protest; 100s identify as ‘believers in biology’

  • A For Woman Scotland campaign sees hundreds of Scots use the national census to say they believe in biological sex in protest of the government’s decision to allow trans-identified persons to self-identify in the official survey. The Times spoke to Sarah Pedersen, a professor of communication and media at Robert Gordon University, who ran an online survey to ask gender critical people how they responded to the census. More than 650 people responded to her survey. Pederson said:

“Respondents also told me about other things they had done to make their views clear. Many had decorated the form and its envelope with stickers, ribbons in the suffragette colours of white, purple and green, or drawings. Several answered the ‘how do you travel to work’ question with ‘broomstick’ — identifying themselves as the witches that gender-critical women are sometimes accused of being.”

Pederson told The Times that 355 survey respondents said they had answered Question 21 with “believer in biology.”

  • An Economist article titled “Why women are fatter than men in the Arab world” causes social media uproar as Arab women accuse the publication of reducing them to racist stereotypes.
  • Women from developing countries gather in Nova Scotia to study feminist justice and leadership in the Global Change Leaders program through St. Francis Xavier’s Coady International Institute.
Meghan McCarty

Meghan McCarty is an undergraduate student and aspiring journalist living in the United States.