Scottish women - speak up now while you still can.

[ArabeIIaScott]

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/police-scotland-set-up-new-30983808

'Police Scotland is setting up a dedicated hate crime unit ahead of Humza Yousaf's hugely controversial new laws coming into force early next year, it can be revealed.
The unit is expected to go live in November and training of the force's 16,400 officers gets underway in December in preparation for the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act being implemented in early 2024. The legislation consolidates existing law and extends protection for vulnerable groups with a new offence of "stirring up hatred".
Under the Act, offences are considered "aggravated" – which could influence sentencing – if they involve prejudice on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or variations in sex characteristics. Critics fear a disproportionate amount of police time will be diverted into policing toxic gender culture wars, with an over emphasis on "pursuing hurtful words but not violent conduct".
They claim the new laws will also have a "chilling effect" on free speech and warn that campaigners supporting women's rights may find themselves facing accusations of transphobia. Helen Joyce, director of advocacy with human rights group Sex Matters, said: "The establishment of a new, dedicated hate crime unit at Police Scotland sends a sinister message to those who advocate for women's and children's rights.'

"It also sets up a scenario where friends, neighbours, and family members may be reporting each other for wrongthink. It really does have the ring of the Stasi about it."

Very much this. If Starmzy shows signs of moving this way (he - bar pictures of him with ten buttered choirboys appearing in The Sun - is likely going to win the next coronation election) there needs to be mass revolt.

Will it though?

Or will this further the idea that some people get to use the law as their personal attack dog, and other people don't get even basic justice despite being entitled to it under law, and all based on whether they're in powerful categories or not?

We already have (in England) women spoken to by the police based on really spurious 'hate incident' reports such as stating reality, when those reports come from a group with power. Yet we know that women from a non-powerful group have shown police evidence of quite extreme terms of racial and homophobic abuse, with video evidence, and the police just shrugged. Because the offenses were being committed by people of power from a group the police have political affiliation and open bias to. One of those incidents is on film.

I'm not sure really how this is any different from Victorian times when the rich upper classes could get the servant class arrested because of their power, influence, money and who they were, and use it to keep lesser beings in their place. And if you drank at your club with the police inspector (as opposed to these days dancing with him at Pride) or swapped a Masonic handshake (these days wearing rainbow laces as the signal of Club Membership by the Right Sort) the law did what you said, instead of what was right.

I find it grimly amusing, as those busy fixing a very classist, oppressive, colonialist system in the UK are ones who would bore you to death about their righteousness and want all history exhibits labelled to the nth degree with how evil it was when someone else did it, because those people were other and not them, and were not entitled to treat others badly like they are. Its discouraging to realise so many people, including those in powerful positions, really are this thick .

Given that reports can be made anonymously, the possibilities of being reported maliciously are about equal for everyone, I imagine.

The likelihood of such perhaps does differ depending on what type of people and how many you have in your social circle.

And yes, it will depend a bit on whom/what the police deem worthy of pursuit.

i think that these proposed laws, like the gender recognition bill, are so bonkers that the general population hasn’t quite grasped just how bonkers they are. And any attempt to explain is dismissed as fearmongering. Because there is still a general assumption that “they” (ie the government, the police etc) wouldn’t be so mad. And that the UK is still a sane, rational, democratic place, and that kind of thing just doesn’t happen Here.

There are some days that I feel like reality itself changed around 2014-2016 and none else can see it yet. We really are headed for some kind of authoritarian future unless we can find some way of stopping it.

The belief that 'If it was that bad someone would do something about it' is the first part of the problem; and the second is when people say 'someone' they actually mean 'someone else'.

This and I will probably stop posting on Mumsnet completely. I know this allows them to win but forewarned is forearmed.

Yes.

While this Bill was being debated in the Scotparl, the police, legal bodies, the press, various organisations and lots of individuals all pointed out loudly and repeatedly the flaws and issues with it.

I honestly didn't think it would go through. For some reason I had also thought it would go the way of the Section 35 GRR Bill.

But here we are.

bar pictures of him with ten buttered choirboys appearing in The Sun

Sorry but @mach2

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/23826297.neale-hanvey-hate-crime-act-seeks-silence-women-lgb-people/

'In a few short weeks, the Scottish Government’s Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 will come into effect and my world and that of women up and down Scotland will enter a very dark place. Our contribution to political discourse will not only be ignored by government, it may cease to be lawful. Discussing the fundamental characteristic that defines us, our sex, is likely to be considered an aggravated hate crime.

Neale Hanvey, MP

'Section 28 was a walk in the park in comparison to Yousaf’s authoritarian silencing of women and LGB people. You can’t protect what you fail to define, and you can’t argue a defence that doesn’t exist in law. All of this and the potential for state intrusion into fundamental freedoms and human rights should deeply worry everyone in Scotland.'

It is worrying arabella

and bonkers. I don’t think a lot of people in Scotland know about this.

The bar for prosecution is extremely low. No corroboration is required and the definition of “harassment” is ill-described and includes a wholly subjective test of “causing the person alarm or distress”. Such nebulous scope invites vexatious and malicious complaints, prosecutions, convictions and potential incarceration.

Yes. As I've said before, it's hard to convey just how batshit the rules are. Or the lack of rules.

I've tried to explain it to people and they look at me like I'm mad.

I'm not surprised, tbh. You wouldn't credit a fully grown proper government bringing in legislation this fucking mad, and worse, you wouldn't credit it gaining Royal Assent/tacit nod from WM!

'the definition of “harassment” is ill-described and includes a wholly subjective test of “causing the person alarm or distress”. Such nebulous scope invites vexatious and malicious complaints, prosecutions, convictions and potential incarceration.'

People can be jailed for hurty feels.

That's literally it. I don't know why this isn't front page news, I don't know why we're not out marching in the fucking streets.

And as I've also said before, perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick and am grossly overstating it! That would be FUCKING ACE! Please disabuse me of my errors!

Sadly you do have the right end of this shitty stick, and part of the problem is that while we're all outraged in our own living rooms, the TRAs are the ones marching in the streets. We need to talk to anyone who'll listen, write to our useless MSPs, MPs, and the newspapers and raise awareness. And of course vote these f*ckers out of government.

I've had a letter published in the Scottish press, feel free to share:

Deeply-flawed legislation

SOME legislation is well-intentioned but has unwanted and unintended consequences. And then there's Scottish Government legislation with blindingly obvious and disastrous consequences. I'm referring to the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, and the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform (GRR).
The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act aims to protect vulnerable groups from prejudice on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or variations in sex characteristics. Sounds fair enough, except biological sex is not included. The GRR makes it easier for people to change their legal gender. Again, sounds all nice and fluffy until you realise it will give any male over the age of 16 access to female-only spaces if he self-identifies as a woman after just a few months.
Combine these two deeply-flawed pieces of legislation and it means that any woman who dares ask a man to leave a female toilet or changing room will be the one criminalised for hurting his feelings. And, despite facing deep cuts, Police Scotland must fully investigate all reported incidents of hate crime. Considering that in 2020-21, there were almost 7,000 reported hate crimes in Scotland, but more than 15,000 sexual crimes, it's good to know where the Government's priorities lie.
Perhaps the first task of Police Scotland's new unit should be to investigate the hate speech and misogyny in the Scottish Government.

Excellent letter.

I'll add that it now takes immense courage for women to point out the law of their country, defend their rights being taken by stealth and corruption and stupidity on crack, and point out the very obvious hypocrisy and idiocy and 'won't work will it and a five year old could see it' to our highly paid representatives. Women using their own names and addresses are likely to be found guilty of..... wrong think.... and politically punished into silence.

I have never been more disgusted with every single politician of every single party, this is a fuck up beyond any I can think of in decades, and they have been asleep with their thumbs up their bums watching it, apart from a couple of women who have fought it every step of the way and paid a lot for doing so.

Can Scots claim political asylum in England?

I think you have to dash into Beira's, shout 'riddikulus' and claim sanctuary. Or something.

I was just listening to a (completely unrelated) podcast about cults and one ex-cult member was explaining that the rules that members have to follow are often deliberately vague so that they can later be used however those in power decide they want to use them. Don't know why but this thread came to mind...

Absofuckinglutely.

What is the chilling effect going to be? Who is going to be targeted? How seriously are the police going to investigate every incident reported? If someone makes 450 reports a day, anonymously, are the police going to follow up each one? Will any one ever be pulled up for malicious false reports? I saw no mechanism for doing so in the police guidance.

I just can't emphasise it enough. THERE IS NO THRESHHOLD and NO CRITERIA. NO EVIDENCE required.

I think that if there were an election in Scotland today most female voters would vote for the SNP and they would win again. If the SNP didn’t win the election then I suspect it might be the Labour Party who would win and they would likely do pretty much the same thing.

I just don’t understand why feminists complain about this when most women and most feminists vote for these parties. SNP/Labour/Green/Lib Dem, they all want the same sort of policies that are in places like Canada already, if people don’t want this they should stop voting for it.

There's many reasons why women aren't aware of this, haven't fully understood it, have been conned by the marketing or have been raised in a belief that men ARE entitled to women's bodies and nice women don't make a fuss about 'consent'.

Sadly, at this point however, if they can't be buggered to wake up and do something, then they deserve what is going to happen to them. I'm starting to think until most women encounter the 'fuck, this is ME TOO you're talking about' and experience personal humiliation, exclusion, harm, they won't engage their brains and by then it's going to be much, much harder to undo their subordination in law. The most depressing thing about the past ten years is realising how lazy and how sentimentally manipulable so many people are, many of them in positions of responsibility.

Yeah I see it differently… I see it as you get what you vote for. If this is on offer at the ballot box and society chooses to vote for it then it’s going to get it.

What I don’t get though is how people can’t seem to understand that these policies they’re complaining about are inherently left wing and will be the consequences of voting left. Do people honestly go out to vote not know what they are voting for?