It’s 6pm and a thousand women are waiting. The organisers say the start of the meeting has been delayed just a wee bit because they need to admit everyone to Zoom, but a few minutes later, it’s all good and ready to go. It’s not going to be easy though, this meeting: the subject is serious, the consequences are troubling, and the women are talking about upsetting times and memories. But there’s hope too, and positivity (and some laughs). All the emotions feature tonight.

The reason so many women have come together in this way is to mark the launch of a book called The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht. You may have heard about it. Edited by Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn, it features reflections from a group of women who, in various ways, ended up in the debate and struggle over trans rights and women’s rights, particularly the SNP’s plans to allow gender self-ID. The starting point is the early grassroots meetings in 2018 and the climax is the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon. Quite a story.

But before I tell you more about the launch – and what it reveals about the way in which Scottish institutions let women down – I should probably point out, before someone else does, the potential problem here. Here’s a meeting of women to talk about women’s rights and here’s me, a man, setting out, with fairly typical male confidence, to explain it all. All I would say is that, in writing about the trans debate, I’ve got to know some of the women who feature in the book, I was asked to attend, and it’s an important subject to talk about, so I’ll try and do that if I can.

I’ll start with the words of the most famous woman to contribute to the launch: JK Rowling, who provided a message that was read on her behalf. “Women like us,” she said, “have been through a trial by fire, but we are not an eccentric fringe”; she also said she had never regretted outing herself as gender-critical and that’s saying something considering how nasty and unpleasant the whole thing became. “We’ve shown what happens when you piss off Scottish women,” she said.

We then listen to the experiences of a number of women – some well-known, some less so – and as they speak, a common theme becomes clear. The way institutions in Scotland ignored women with gender-critical views. Or tried to shut them up. Or failed to defend their rights to free speech. Or did nothing as they were labelled prejudiced or bigoted or nasty. One by one by one, the women tell their stories, their shocking stories.

Women like Nicole Jones, a young painter who points out that her views on sex-based rights are neither unlawful nor unreasonable but that she still faced a censorious climate on campus. “I didn’t feel like I had the support of the institution,” she said, “and trust was eroded with each cancelled event.” She means events involving gender-critics that often couldn’t go ahead because of protesters or could only go ahead with heavy security. I’ve seen it for myself at Edinburgh University.

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We also heard from the MSP Pam Gosal. Ms Gosal was a member of the committee charged with scrutinising the self-ID bill, but she said the process favoured organisations supporting the bill and dissenters such as she and her colleague Rachel Hamilton were shut down. It revealed, said Ms Gosal, how narrow-minded and brow-beating the Scottish Parliament can be at its worst

And on it went, with a similar story emerging from the poet Magi Gibson who spoke about the artistic institutions. A climate of censure has been at work in arts and culture, she said, and it’s become intolerable for many writers. She mentioned the scandal over a briefing document published by Literary Alliance Scotland which told bookshops: “Don’t sell Terf books.”

The obvious riposte is that, in reality, “Terf books” are being sold in bookshops: I’ve seen lots of copies of The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht in Waterstones for example, prominent with other new non-fiction. But I think it’s fair to say this change, this relative freedom, is a recent development, helped by prominent victories in courts and tribunals, and the failure of the self-ID law, and the Cass report and so on. It’s meant the accusation that gender-critical views are bigoted and must not be heard no longer lands like it once did.

(Image: Free)

But the dangers are still real. I was struck by something Lucy Hunter Blackburn said in the meeting about self-ID and the Isla Bryson scandal. The whole affair represented a failure of Scottish politics, she said, but more worryingly she doesn’t see much evidence that such a failure couldn’t happen again. “I still don’t think that enough politicians across the political spectrum really get it,” she said.

And there’s another problem, which several of the women mentioned. All the way through this, many on the trans activist side have not only sought to shut down public meetings, they’ve refused to debate their views: “no debate” they say, and as long as they maintain that position, it’s hard to be hugely optimistic about further progress. How can you sort things out if you don’t talk?

The good news though is that, because of Bryson and the other developments and scandals in this affair, the “no debate” approach, and the refusal of some politicians to think, or read, or talk about the issues, is getting much harder to sustain. And what’s really refreshing and hopeful is that the gender-critical feminists have always been, and still are, willing to talk to their opponents and discuss their views. So my advice would be this: accept their invitation; talk to them; listen to them. It’s how the change will happen.