'Heather' Herbert Charged Over Ann Widdecombe Comments

The two articles (BBC and Mail) seem to get things wrong in opposite directions. The BBC allows us to be misled into thinking the arrested person is a woman, and the Mail begins by screaming 'trans' in the headline and the first sentence.

It is reasonable to expect new stories to inform us about sex. (Surely sex is more relevant than the fact that he is 50 years old! And if we were routinely ignorant of the sex of the subject of a crime report story, we would not be able to form perfectly sound and useful generalisations about relative offending rates of men and women).

But it isn't reasonable for a story to centre trans identity in stories that don't contain or imply any reason for thinking that being trans is relevant to the alleged crime. In fact, it is probably discriminatory on the part of the Mail.

I think the best solution is to avoid pronouns, and to add a clause to some low-profile sentence saying something like " ..., who is transgender, ..." if there is a risk that the reader would otherwise be misled.

Some people might say: There are quite a few names that don't signify sex, as well as readers who may be unaware of the 'sex of a name' if they are from a different heritage from the subject of the story. Why do we only have to clarify sex where the person is transgender and has a name that is associated with the opposite sex?

But in cases where a name is sex-neutral, or doesn't signify a sex to a reader because of different cultural traditions, there will almost always be one or more pronouns in the story that clarify sex. It is only the scrupulous pronoun avoidance (or wrong pronoun use) that causes difficulty.

Hopefully several people have gone through his online presence with a fine tooth comb, who know what counts as against the law and that’s why he is now being investigated.

Having listened to it, I think he is referring to himself, he says at 1.13 " I, myself, currently, having had what could be called a brain outage, am tarred with very ridiculous things, including sexual assault"

The whole thing is creepy as fuck tbh. Worth watching if you can to get the full measure of the man (totlly unbalanced). This link should work for those not on x https://xcancel.com/TheParty1sOver/status/2077723566091415851

His post was on Bluesky not X/Twitter - Bluesky is the nice and kind place where all these people went because Twitter was so nasty.

I assume the "other partner" is Herbert. Is Herbert actually 50 years old? Could it be someone else who has been charged for something we are not aware of? Not Herberts tweets.

Unless I’m missing it, they don’t actually say what this geezer was charged with? Just that first no criminality was found, then it was reviewed. So what are the actual charges? Malicious communications?

"every silly little joke that people make is blown out of proportion because we are transgender"

"I myself...am charged with ridiculous things including sexual assault"

"my partner has been charged with bullshit"

"My other partner has got her face splattered all over the papers for no fucking reason"

It sounds like more than one of them has been charged with something.

I think he says he ( the bloke speaking) is saying he is accused of sexual assault for something he did when he had a ‘brain outage’. Apparently everything they say is in jest . Vile people.

I agree. I actually found her politics completely repugnant, but she was a human being and no one deserves such a horrific end. As much as I disagreed with her, she had a perfect right to hold the views that she did.

He’s one ugly dude - inside and out.

I hear what you say but yes.
Freedom of speech shouldn't allow for pure hatred, harassment or whatever. It will be interesting to see what the charge will be - never saw what the bloke wrote.

Edited, saw the comments. May be interesting to see what they think will stick tbh.

I think it might be a Scottish thing with the Procurator Fiscal deciding what the charge is.

DM have changes their headline

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15982119/Trans-ex-Labour-candidate-charged-Ann-Widdecombe-death.html

Does his tweet need to incite violence for it to be criminal? I thought any communication that causes alarm or distress can. What he tweeted made my blood run cold.

100%

I noticed that straight away... bit odd?

I'm pleased that there is finally some level of pushback against the violence that these men spout. We see it all the time and have done for years on their signs at protests, in their tweets. And I think society (and the police) dismissed it as harmless "righteous anger", noone who likes gay people and "being kind" would ever actually hurt someone just because they disagreed with them, right??

But now someone has gotten hurt, murdered, and there's bound to be fallout from that. The guy who murdered her probably didn't come up with his hatred by himself, it was fed into by the violent rhetoric women have been complaining about for years. Maybe now the police will start to take it more seriously.

Do this guys posts cross the line into criminality? I don't know. But I think the threshold for "their side" has lowered a few pegs to get closer to the rest of us.

I don't think there's any real suggestion he knew that she was murdered? The dying painfully comment is just general inhumane horribleness and the chained to the bed comment is, I believe, in reference to female prisoners being shackled while they give birth.

Good, he’s a misogynist and a bully.
I hope they throw the book at him and I hope his employers show him the door.

Utterly vile.

But should writing vile things on Twitter be a crime?

Police statement ""Following further assessment, a 50-year-old has been arrested and charged in connections".

Is it me or is that a deliberate omission of male or female?

Brilliant 😁

The Times have made it clear this is a transwoman - ie a man! It matters that the violence and misogyny that some trans activists display is made clear.

He would have to be now. Scottish government policy was changed following the successful challenge recently by FWS.