Scottow verdict: Guilty

[DeployTheTut]

I have no words. Reports from Joani Walsh and Maya Forstater at the Trial in St Albans

twitter.com/mforstater/status/1228261217212522497?s=21

twitter.com/joaniwalshi/status/1228259484801359872?s=21

A criminal conviction for causing annoyance and anxiety, what sort of f'd up world are we living in?
I wish I could sue the FA for every time I have watched an England game and suffered annoyance, anxiety, frustration and anger.
Was that a judge or magistrate who came to that conclusion?

Best wishes to Kate, who is the victim of the best known vexatious litigant in the UK.

I really do think we should all learn a very harsh lesson from this.

I think women are learning harsh lessons constantly about how very anti woman the world has been turned very fast, and how fashionable discriminatory treatment of women has become. However do you feel that women should learn to sit down and in the words of Jane Clare Jones 'keep their little lady mouths shut' and be abused quietly like good girls?

Or do you think the lesson being learned here is that it's time to stand up against this and refuse to accept anti woman legislation and anti woman law and discrimination against females in this country? We're half the population. And the general public are not behind this.

In the words of one stroppy woman-centred person: when the time comes when you have to choose between doing what is easy and doing what's right...….?

What should women do? Because my answer to this is Riddikulus .

In effect this was about someone stalking and digging and intentionally searching for any evidence that someone was still on Twitter under another name and wanting the person punished for having escaped their control

Exactly this.^
Kate I'll be digging next week.

I did laugh when I read that the judge doesn't like women using words like girldick. We didn't invent the ladydique, Your Honour...

Yes the internet is a horrible place sometimes.

The equivalent here is your bully getting you fired for standing up for yourself anonymously NoSharon.

Not sure what lesson you'd like us all to learn, but probably time to get off that fence either way I think, and have some courage in your convictions at least.

And let's be honest about this:

Women have been told this week that to meet in groups to discuss women's rights is hate and unacceptable.

A crime.

Lloyd whatzit with the beard on national tv, unchallenged.

ALL the labour leadership.

If the very harsh lesson is that women trying to stand up for their rights against unjust oppression will be made to suffer...? Fuck that. I won't live in that kind of a world. I won't be quiet about it either.

WTAF is this insane false equivalence!?

How can anyone equate “TWAM” with “DIAF terf” or “suck my **dick” saying “both are offensive!?”

Where is the violent or rapey intent in TWAM? Where?? I’ve heard it all.

Kate

(Oops Sorry I hadn’t refreshed .. that was to something way back .. as you were)

How can anyone equate “TWAM” with “DIAF terf” or “suck my dick” saying “both are offensive!?”

It might have been a while back but bears repeating.

Isn't it funny how its so clear that TW are not treated as W when it comes to what they're allowed to say.

I think CPS should have thrown this case out. The Communications Act has been used to prosecute multiple people that did not deserve to be criminalised.

But I think there are points being mentioned that really are besides the point, So being away from a baby that is over a year old for 7 hours is not interrupting the breastfeeding relationship. At this age the baby can easily eat other food and breastfeed 7 hours later.

It was 11 hours in total, 9 spent in the cells

I was the victim of horrific online harassment from one poster on another website many years ago. She seemed to absolutely loathe me and would post things like 'just do everyone a favour and kill yourself' when I would post about feeling suicidal. So I do know the impact vicious communication can have on a person, but on the other hand, I do get the points posted recently about freedom of speech.

That is a good example where it would be completely reasonable to go to the police and complain about harassment. That easily reaches the threshold of persistently causing annoyance and anxiety as stated in the 2003 Communications Act.

Nothing Kate wrote approached that level. It was mostly stuff like misgendering and using terms like "pig in a wig". A lot of the time she'd blocked Hayden's account so it was, as it were, behind Hayden's back.

People write stuff like that on Twitter all the time. As far as Kate was concerned, she was just engaged in the usual exchange of insults and name-calling that is pretty routine on the platform. It took someone like Hayden, a persistent and determined litigant, to seize the opportunity to report that as a criminal offence.

A breastfed child over 1 probably won't die if they're not breastfed - however the mental health impact on the child could be significant and I hate the minimising. Breastfeeding is not just for nutrition but comfort. And it's not as if there wasn't another option here. The police could have interviewed Kate at home - did saying some mean things on twitter really justify what they did to Kate and her child? When only 1.4% of reported rapes (actual, physical crimes) are prosecuted it seems VERY heavy handed and one has to wonder about whether the police are choosing to bully women who say mean things rather than actually investigating real crimes.

Has there EVER been a comparable case where a man's been thrown in jail for saying mean things about a woman on twitter?

BF wise-
At that age all my children would have been hugely stressed by being separated from me for so long. For two of them I would have also been very very uncomfortable too.

"ALL the labour leadership"

NOT all the Labour leadership; two of the current leadership contenders.

So Kate was ordered to pay £1000 costs for tweets about a male - I just reminded myself of what Tara Wolf had to pay for assault of a female - £400.

I'm lost for words.

At that age all my children would have been hugely stressed by being separated from me for so long.

Yes and this happened immediately after Kate's children saw their mother arrested and taken away. The whole thing must have been so distressing for all of them.

Yes and this happened immediately after Kate's children saw their mother arrested and taken away. The whole thing must have been so distressing for all of them.
Quite! Exactly the kind of stressful situation which would make a one yr old want/need to breastfeed more

So Kate was ordered to pay £1000 costs for tweets about a male - I just reminded myself of what Tara Wolf had to pay for assault of a female - £400.

And it's a perfect reflection of what those sympathetic to TRAs have been saying in this and every other thread, that offending a male or hurting their feelings is as bad as or far worse than threatening or physically harming a woman. This is misogyny, on both an individual and a societal level. It could not be more clear both in terms of what the motivation is and the impact it has on women's lives. To people like that women simply matter less and don't deserve the same level of protection or consideration, either legally or in terms of societal practices.

Misogynists at every level of the legal system from line officers to judges abuse their power in order to teach women and girls this lesson.

4th rule of misogyny: Women's opinions are violence against men, thus male violence against women is justified.

I really want to tweet what Kate did and turn myself in at the police station.

I wonder what they would do if we all did it?

Also misogyny brings with it the impulse to punish any woman seen to be stepping out of line harshly in case others get the same idea. That impulse too can be seen at work in this and every other thread related to this issue, that fear that if just one woman gets away with being noncompliant then they may lose control of all of us.

Lundy Bancroft writes books about this.

Hang out on the relationships board and it doesn't take long to find a woman who has escaped a man who would rather kill her than see her slip out of his control. And will spend years obsessively punishing her, even to the extent of financially or physically abusing his own children to hurt her, for the crime of her daring to leave him and refuse his ownership and supremacy.

This attitude underpins a huge amount of DV. We know from the relationships board on MN, many of these men behaving in these awful ways are in their working lives and outside their homes thought of as nice, normal blokes. This attitude towards women is endemic at a private level, this misogyny is normalised. Lundy Bancroft could retire on the books he could write on this situation because this is DV on a national scale. It celebrates attitudes and behaviours that all the decent men in my life despise in other men.