The time, energy and money spent protecting the definition of “woman” would be better spent advocating for the vital and crumbling network of organisations that actually protect women, says Herald columnist Marissa MacWhirter

Scotland doesn’t care about women. The thought travels like heat along a fuse, exploding in a burst of sparks like a firecracker in my brain.

I have just hung up the phone from a (now routine) call with a domestic abuse support worker. And again, in the headlines, is the best Scotland can do by way of ‘women’s rights’ activism. Someone allegedly damaged the umbrella of a protester at an anti-trans demonstration.

Sorry, not ‘someone’. It was Susan Smith, a director of For Women Scotland, who was heralded as one of the country’s “leading women’s rights campaigners”. She allegedly vandalised the rainbow umbrella of a counter-protester outside the Scottish Parliament last month. I wipe my tears and dry my eyelashes. Frustration makes my nose hairs burn, and I try my best not to let my eyes start leaking again.

The staff at Women’s Aid do their best not to show how stretched they are. I think they do a damn good job. They make you feel like they have time for you, even though they are up against a national shortage of services and soaring demand. That is what makes it so morally bewildering to me that these culture war clowns are supposed to be a bastion of women’s rights. While they try to strip the dignity from a marginalised minority, frontline women’s services are on the verge of collapse.

Clydebank Women’s Aid closed earlier........

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