LETTER: NorthLink Ferries should reinstate shared, single-sex cabins
Helen Robertson’s letter about the NorthLink ferry cabins has struck a deep chord.
If a woman can no longer sleep safely on a 14 hour crossing for fear of the strange (potentially dangerous) man beside her, society has lost its moral compass.
NorthLink once offered shared cabins segregated by sex. I regularly used them as a student. It was cheap, convenient and worked well.
That was a simple, sensible arrangement that protected privacy and dignity. Without consultation, that option was quietly removed, justified with the astonishing claim that “it’s not just a case of male and female anymore”.
Just because a tiny minority of very loud activists have screamed at us that biological sex is not a thing does not make it so. Since then, passengers have been left with a choice between paying for an entire cabin or trying to sleep upright in mixed-sex pods.
While Nicola Sturgeon and others saw the gender ideology fad as “progressive”, majority public opinion up and down the country clearly shows our national experiment with this ideology wasn’t progress.
It’s the slow dismantling of women’s right to safety in public life, carried out under the false banner of inclusivity. The so-called “progressive” view that denied the reality of biological sex spread far beyond ferries.
In Scotland, women had safety in their single-sex refuges, rape-crisis services, hospital wards, workplace changing rooms, even prison cells eroded in the name of gender ideology.
Court cases raised by ordinary women who fell victim to this ideology continue to hammer home the level of institutional capture which occurred, and those who have removed women’s spaces in the name of ideology are quietly trying to hide behind a veil of bureaucracy.
Readers may also not be aware that a recent freedom of information request has revealed that two schools in Yell removed single sex toilets for girls, and as far as I can see nobody in the SIC is accepting accountability for breaching equality law in those cases. The girls affected by those decisions deserved better, and the families of the girls affected should consider if they wish to take the matter further.
It should not need saying, but it does: men and women are biologically different, and those differences matter in situations where privacy, safety and dignity are at stake. The statistics speak plainly.
The vast majority of those convicted of sexual offences are male. This is true of rape cases, and of child sexual abuse.
These facts do not mean that all men are dangerous, of course not, but some are. Because we can’t tell which men are and aren’t a threat to others, we have segregated spaces for women.
This undeniable reality means that every woman has a reason to expect, and to demand, boundaries that protect them from the potential harm that can be caused by men.
If any man insists that’s unfair, or somehow not inclusive, then, sorry, but your individual feelings don’t trump the safety of women and girls. Being “inclusive” is not the acid test of every political decision.
Making the right decision for the safety and wellbeing of the majority is. Over the past decade the refusal to recognise the differences between the sexes was ideological, not scientific.
It denied both biology and observed reality in terms of offending statistics. Following their humiliating defeat in the Supreme Court, even the SNP Scottish government has been forced to face scientific biological reality.
Nicola Sturgeon’s career ended abruptly around the time that a male rapist was being sent to a female prison unit, yet Ms Sturgeon continues to struggle to answer the question “Is Isla Bryson a woman?”
Ms Sturgeon’s wealth and status means that she is unlikely to have to bear the brunt of her luxury belief that men can be women, but she was happy for ordinary women to have to share their most intimate spaces with biological men.
It will be interesting to hear what our current crop of MSP candidates would say to the question “Is Isla Bryson a woman?”. (Hint: to avoid crashing your political career, the answer to that question is no).
Following the supreme court ruling which confirmed that the Equality Act 2010 protects single-sex services on the basis of biological sex, ministers must now abide by the law as it stands, not as activists wish it to be.
The definition of male and female cannot be changed by political fashion or linguistic trickery. It is written into law and grounded in biological reality.
That principle must now extend to all public services, including our ferries. It is unacceptable that a woman travelling alone should have no option other than a mixed sex sleeping area.
To claim that offering single-sex cabins is somehow exclusionary is to misunderstand the very purpose of equality law, which explicitly allows separate facilities when needed for privacy, safety, or decency.
NorthLink should therefore reinstate shared, single-sex cabins for women as a priority, and men if possible, ensuring that travellers who cannot afford an exclusive cabin still have access to a safe place to lie flat, rest, or manage medical conditions during the long overnight voyage.
Any new vessels commissioned for the route should also take account of this basic requirement.
To use a nautical analogy, on the gender issue, the tide has turned.
The time has come to move past ideology and return to common sense, compassion and the rule of law.
Women and girls deserve to travel, and to live, safely, and with dignity.
By Matthew Laurenson
Aberdeen