Guilty as complained of
Rob Jessel tests Scotland’s shiny new Hate Crime and Public Order Act:
As Lucy Hunter Blackburn explained in her superb analysis of the Bill, feminists were alarmed by its failure to address speech about sex and gender, arguing that it would increase the chilling effect on debate. The Scottish Government breezily responded that people would not be criminalised for making basic statements about the nature of sex and gender identity, in ordinary language.
But they were joking. Jessel went to Glasgow Sheriff Court to support Marion yesterday along with a bunch of other people. What to wear?
As a minor but grizzled combatant in the gender wars, I have acquired a number of t-shirts stating biological facts, including one emblazoned with the basic, incontrovertible statement “Transwomen are men”. I thought it wise to ask the police if I’d be committing a public order offence or, worse, a hate crime, should I put it on.
The constables’ answer was textbook: “As far as we’re concerned, you’re free to wear what you like. But if it offends anyone and they complain to us, you will have committed a hate crime.”
Which textbook is that, one wonders. If someone complains to the police, you will have been accused of committing a hate crime. There’s a not very subtle distinction there.
At least in normal world that’s the case. Apparently in Scotland it really isn’t? The accusation really is the same thing as conviction?
This is the same Looking Glass world that Fair Cop has been exposing in England and Wales, where any complainant is automatically afforded “victim” status and the accused is recorded (often without their knowledge) as having committed a “non-crime hate incident” — all without due process of law. The difference is, however, that south of the border we’re only dealing with College of Police guidance. In Scotland, this is on the statute book.
I guess the fact that it’s recorded as an incident rather than a crime makes it ok to skip the due process part. (The cops chatting to Jessel seem to have been wrong on the facts.)
I know we’ve been around this track before but it keeps causing my brain to go into whirly mode.
Bear in mind that Marion is being charged under the old law. The new version will make it even easier for people to maliciously report other people, since they do not even have to prove an underlying criminal offence.
In this light it’s a very good thing that David Paisley is leaving Scotland.
Yes, it’s exactly this that should be causing everyone to be terrified.
Three reasons:
1. That the accusation is sufficient proof of the ‘crime’ (not technically a crime, but if you’re accused of a hate incident, it will show up on police searches. So if you want to work with children or certain other jobs, you’ll fail the check)
2. It’s the police (in the first instance) who get to decide which ‘hate incidents’ to pursue and which to fob off.
3. No due process.
Let that sink in. Of course, it’s all great fun while it’s only a few TERFs and Karens being HATEINCIDENT’D but wait until a police officer (or someone in cahoots with him) files one against his ex partner or her new boyfriend or that neighbour who has the TV on too loud… I guarantee that this will happen sooner rather than later.
And once again, considering how many ideas have gone from “common sense” to “hate crime” in less than ten years, how can anyone be confident that their current views won’t get them demonized in another ten years? In fact, as I keep saying, many of the people who now actively support ruining people’s lives for acknowledging the existence of biological sex, that biological females are an identifiable group in its own right etc. better hope that some of the things they themselves used to say less than ten years ago don’t come to the attention of their new bedfellows…
Bjarte,
This mostly seems to be a consequence of youth and (or) a lack of introspection, along with a lack of understanding of how liberal democracy (or arguably even history) works. The kids building these people-eating machines, the mores and rules and now laws seeking to restrict expression and police thought and word and deed, don’t seem to realise that when said machines have been built, they (the builders) will not be able to control the machines forever. In fact, in relatively short order, a new group of people will come along to run the machines, and the builders will be just another group of people for those machines to eat.
Revolutions eat their own because a revolution is a machine designed for eating people, and it was designed by people. This revolution will eat its creators, sooner or later. It’s merely a question of who will be left at the controls, and whether they’ll come seeking to turn them, or to smash them.
I can think of a number of people whose public statements have offended many people. Should we divvy this up? Who’s got Jo?
At issue here is the concept of social hierarchy. “Punching up” is publicly acceptable;”punching down” is not. Blasphemy then is less likely to be framed as an attack on God or a powerful church, but as an insult directed to simple, powerless little believers forced into seeing what’s personally sacred to them being mocked.
TRAs are so used to seeing trans people as the most oppressed, most marginalized, most abused lowest rung on the social ladder that it doesn’t seem to occur to them that it’s possible to make a rational case against that. Such arguments therefore are only pseudo-arguments cloaking brute force — and should be treated accordingly. Public opinion therefore can never turn against them. It’s too obvious that they’re right.
Yes, Sastra, that’s very true, a very cogent analysis. But the problem is that even punching down isn’t against the law. It’s bad form, it may lead to social ostracization, loss of friends or job, or other undesirable consequences, but it is not against the law. Nor should it be, because that way leads to people redefining who is “punching up” or “punching down”, as the TAs have done.
Various rumors re the actual charges Millar is facing:
And (possibly) the specific tweets:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-HdoJvUYAEhw5E?format=jpg&name=medium
Assuming this is all accurate, I’m guessing the infamous ribbon photo may have been tied to a fence near a BBC studio and Paisley’s cringeworthy cringing did the rest.
The other charge — slandering a police constable? — suggests that one of the photos of convicted transwomen felons was, in fact, a constable. Weird. Even if so, doesn’t look like she created it.
I am still very bothered by the concept of “hate crime” or even “hate speech”. No problem at all with social opprobrium or even private actors imposing consequences (a raging active racist who is the public face of a company…fire his or her a$$). I even have mixed feelings about “hate” as an enhancement to a “real” crime (although aren’t many violent crimes at least largely hateful?) But hate speech as a standalone offense really bugs me. It should not be against the criminal law to be hateful. Hatred is not a crime.
True, but it’s not nice.
If the Scottish law in question had included sex as a characteristic for which “hate crimes” could be charged, there would be a lot of TAs in the dock, as they seem to enjoy bullying and threatening women who oppose gender ideology, or who just make simple statements of fact.
It is well known that ignorance of the law is not an excuse; that is, a person may not credibly defend themselves by saying they were unaware of the illegality of what they were doing. This rests on the idea that the law is knowable in advance – a person can not fairly be held accountable for wrongdoing unless it is possible to know the illegality of their planned action in advance of doing it.
I had thought this a fundamental principle to law and its prosecution, but Scotland disagrees.