Women Won't Wheesht

 

Nope, I had no idea what "wheesht" meant. Apparently it's slang in Scotland for "be quiet." There's a new movement in Scotland called "Women Won't Wheesht," and it's in reaction to Scotland recently making it a hate crime to discriminate against someone on the basis of gender identity--but not on the basis of sex. Yes, you have that right--it is not illegal to discriminate against a woman, but it is illegal to discriminate against a male who identifies as a female. Indeed, it's a hate crime now in Scotland. As Marion Millar has found out.

There's lot of write-ups about the Marion Millar case, but probably the best is by Lily Maynard, here. From that article:

"Marion Millar is Scottish, a feminist and a working mum. On 28th April 2021 she received a phone call out of the blue, from a police officer who told her she would need to attend her local police station to be interviewed under the Malicious Communications Act (MCA). When Marion told her she had small children to care for (she has autistic twins) she was informed that social services would look after them while she was interviewed. Millar was understandably both horrified and intimidated by this news. She was contacted again and told to attend the station on 27th May – which was also her birthday- but this appointment was cancelled, ostensibly due to the custody suite not being available. Her interview was eventually rescheduled for 3rd of June, leaving her to spend five weeks under huge amounts of stress."

What did Millar do? Apparently 6 of her tweets have been reported by someone as being "aggravated malicious communication." We know what one of them is: "In the words of The Times newspaper, 'The messages investigated by officers are understood to include a retweeted photograph of a bow of ribbons in the green, white and purple colours of the Suffragettes, tied around a tree outside the Glasgow studio where a BBC soap opera is shot. It is believed a complaint was made to the police suggesting the ribbons represented a noose.'" You can see the image in Maynard's article, which looks nothing like a noose--it is a suffragette ribbon wafting in the breeze.

Maynard spoke with the NGO For Women Scotland, who fought long and hard--and unsuccessfully--against this hate crimes bill: "For Women Scotland told me, 'The charge against Marion Millar seems highly politically motivated and appears to rely, at best, on interpretation and the belief that women’s rights are inherently hateful. During the Hate Crime Debate, we warned that some SNP officials and supporters were looking to use Hate Crime legislation against political opponents. Before the new law has come has come into force, we have been proven right. Part of the motivation of these complaints appears to be to outlaw legitimate protest: we have, for too long, heard that ribbons and stickers were hateful. It should terrify everyone that the police are now making arbitrary judgements on lawfully held and expressed opinion.'“ Rather than catching criminals, police are harassing the middle-aged mother of autistic twins for tweeting an image of a suffragette ribbon.

Maynard sums it up nicely: "I’m not sure what it means for the future of free speech when a woman can’t express her support for women’s rights without being threatened with prison." But that's the point, isn't it? It is all about shutting specifically women up. About making sure that women cannot speak out against their own erasure and the harm they are suffering from that erasure. It's about making the very word "woman" (not to mention "mother") so politically incorrect that the words can no longer be uttered in polite conversation--or a hate crime will be alleged. This is the rankest of misogyny, and the purveyors are--so far--getting away with it. Take a look at a tweet from Mermaids, the UK pro-trans organization:

 




 Notice that the idea that male sex and female sex are material realities is viewed as akin to Nazism, and that anyone who believes in such "biological fundamentalism" is a "feminazi." It is amazing to see such a cult-like adherence to unreality on the part of Mermaids and others. This devotion to unreality will end very badly.

But there is one good thing to come out of this mess--women are finally standing up! Here's what it looks like in Scotland: