Misinformation circulated

Aug 8th, 2021 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Remember Andy Wightman? Resigned from the Scottish Green Party last December over the tension between women’s rights and (purported) trans rights. Now he’s been bullied into explaining his reasons.

I never intended to write further about my resignation from the Scottish Green Party. When I resigned, I agreed with the Party not to say anything further.

However, I am now aware that there has been some significant misinformation circulated by members and officials of the Party alleging to explain why I resigned.

I have seen emails, Slack channel communications, information from protected Twitter accounts and the Party’s Q&A following my resignation They make wild allegations about my motivations and character. Some of the claims being made are now being circulated and are having a negative impact on my reputation at a time when I am seeking work. I therefore wish to set the record straight.

It’s all too familiar, isn’t it. Of course they’re now lying about him. It’s what they do. (Who? Which “they”? The trans-fanatics, i.e. the real fanatics about trans ideology and the trans “right” to tell everyone what to think and say.)

Immediately prior to my resignation, Patrick Harvie wrote to me saying that my resignation would be a “huge loss to the Party and to Parliament”. Weeks later he was on national TV denouncing me as a transphobe.

Sigh. In a much much tinier and less consequential way, been there. One minute please don’t leave, the next minute beware the foul transphobe.

What led up to and prompted his resignation is a long story – long but interesting. I’ll share just an excerpt or two.

On reflection that evening I decided to resign from the Party for the simple reason that I could not work in an environment with such a censorious, bullying and intimidatory culture and where I was expected to agree that scientific facts such as sex are to be sidelined. This position has never been debated and agreed by Conference but appears to be an implicit consequence of the Party’s stance on trans rights.

I resigned the following Friday (resignation letter here). Party members whom I had regarded as good colleagues immediately denounced me as a transphobe, accusing me of wanting to participate in a moral panic about transpeople. One Edinburgh Councillor thanked me for all that I had done but, on learning of the circumstances of my resignation, recalled the message and said I was disgusting.

That too is entirely familiar.

The Q&A for Party members and other public statements are insistent that my fault was to have wanted to vote against Party policy on trans rights. This has never been the case. What has been the case is that the Green Group of MSPs insisted that this vote on an amendment to a Bill concerning victims of sexual assault should be viewed through the lens of trans rights and queer theory, and that there was a hostile and bullying culture within the Party.

I have never understood why one has to subscribe to queer theory and gender identity theory in order to improve the lives of trans people. But that’s the bar that has been set in the SGP.

To conclude, I resigned because I could no longer work in such an environment. That others can and do is fine and I am not seeking a debate as to whether I was right or wrong. But for me, I need an environment that is more tolerant, more questioning, more critical, more empathetic, and more willing to listen.

The Green Party loses good people because of a bullying loyalty to queer theory, and the forests continue to burn.

He commented on this post of mine from June 2019, in which I berated him for apologizing to the bullies for attending a meeting where Julie Bindel spoke while not saying anything about the attack on her at that meeting. He commented to say he’d done so on Twitter, and I replied to say yes but not in the statement and then added what, sadly, he now knows all too well.

I don’t know what to tell you. I think it’s pretty appalling that you threw Julie under the bus yesterday, even though you condemned “all such violent incidents but especially when directed at women” the day before. I know very well the kind of pressure the trans army applies, but I think it has to be resisted rather than obeyed.

Harsh, and I think I felt guiltily harsh about saying it, but at the same time what about Julie? But he took it in impressively good part, and now…well, he’s resisted instead of obeying. The trans army is good at pushing people over the cliff that way.

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