John Swinney was asked this week if he wished to apologise to women after the court ruling on what’s meant by the word women and he said this: “We’ve acted in good faith. We’ve tried to navigate our way through two pieces of legislation, during which our position has been supported twice by courts in Scotland in this particular case, so the debate has been around very uncertain areas of definition and the Supreme Court has concluded on that, and that is an end to the matter.” Lots of words. But notice the one that isn’t there: sorry.

So let me do it for him because men like me, men like us, men like him, absolutely owe an apology to the women who questioned and fought what was going on with trans rights and women’s rights. Lots of politicians and activists and people with newspaper columns – me included – suggested that the women who first raised the alarm were prejudiced or transphobic or misguided and their concerns were misplaced, and here they are years later, often vilified but now vindicated, victorious and rightly so. Which is lots of words when one will do: sorry.

I’m aware, by the way, that it’s not just men who need to apologise here, and that women were involved in the vilification too (most notably Nicola Sturgeon). But men like me who waded in displayed a particular lack of humility. I remember a conversation I had with one of the campaigners against self-ID who explained to me why sex rather than gender mattered to women, and why single-sex spaces were important, and why letting in people who are physically male was a problem. And if a man, a man like me, was going to tell her she was wrong,........

© Herald Scotland