Jenny Lindsay

Summerhall is one of Edinburgh’s largest Fringe venues, also running year-round exhibitions and artistic performances. This past week, it has also played host to the city’s latest site-specific beclowning show, with artists so reportedly ‘terrified’ by Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes being in the building, they had to set up a ‘safe room’ on the day she was booked to be there.

In the Scottish Borders, Earlston Primary School’s newly built campus has no single-sex toilet provision. This astonishing planning decision was reportedly made after undertaking training by LGBT Youth Scotland. It was also based on the Scottish government’s similar guidance, which one can easily assume may well be based on the same advice, so eager have the SNP been to outsource their thinking on policy in this area to activist lobby groups they generously fund to then lobby them. Yesterday, this illegality was brought to a halt, aided in no small part by the victory of For Women Scotland in the Supreme Court last Wednesday, which reconfirmed that the legal situation all along had been that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 means, well, sex.

For the last fortnight, the employment tribunal brought by nurse Sandie Peggie against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton has gripped the nation. Nurse Peggie lodged a claim against both Dr Upton and the health board for sexual harassment, harassment relating to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation after she was suspended for questioning the presence of the transgender doctor in the female changing room. There is much more that could – and will – be said about the case, which will resume in July, but it is the response of Scottish politicians that has fuelled much ire over the past week in particular.

A few days ago I was alerted to a new mental health campaign video for the NHS service Mind To Mind. 'Life is full of ups and downs,' the clip started. Cut to a middle-aged woman looking out of her window, a little fraught, but then resiliently donning a colourful bobble hat before leaving her house. 'So we need to look after our heads,' she smiled to the camera. This 60-second social media film was posted by NHS Fife on 4 February, urging people to take care of their mental health by connecting with others experiencing the same difficulties. I became aware of it thanks to X’s algorithm repeatedly catapulting it into my newsfeed after a swathe of women I follow responded to it with anger, mirth, and sometimes despair.

The phenomenon that has blighted the live literature world over the last ten years could be classed as a 'stooshie', or 'a big commotion', in Scots. Indeed it feels rare for any books-based event or literary festival not to provoke one these days. The last decade has seen a huge increase in fractious warring in the world of books, driven in no small part by the use and abuse of the powers of social media by certain activist-writers. In my experience as a writer and former events organiser of two decades in Scotland, there has been a rising intolerance amongst a significant minority of often mid-career or even debut authors who, while not household names, are nevertheless powerful activists.

Roz Adams is not a public figure. She is not on social media. Yet this hardworking rape crisis support worker has found herself at the centre of the Scottish gender wars over the last few months, due to her employment tribunal against the beleaguered Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC). It all makes for a rather harrowing tale. Adams was constructively dismissed from her former position at ERCC in 2023, after a lengthy period of discrimination and harassment from colleagues. She takes the view that when a woman approaches a rape crisis service requesting a female counsellor, she should be assured that this is what she will receive.