Euan McColm in The Scotsman on the top boss Scotsman:

When it emerged last week that a leading feminist campaigner faced vandalism charges after touching an umbrella belonging to an angry trans activist during a protest outside the Scottish Parliament, the backlash from opposition politicians was swift and justified.

Here was as clear an example as we’ve seen of the way in which gender ideologues abuse the system, making spurious police complaints against those who must be punished for believing biological sex is real and immutable.

But, asked during First Minister’s Questions on Thursday about this intolerable abuse of power by Police Scotland, John Swinney refused to speak out. It would not, he told MSPs, be appropriate for him to comment on a live police matter.

So the police must be free to persecute women for defending our rights. Seems fair.

The treatment of Susan Smith is deeply disturbing but, I’m afraid, feels absolutely inevitable.

As one of the founders – alongside Trina Budge and Marion Calder – of the organisation For Women Scotland, Smith brought the case that saw the Supreme Court rule in April that, when it comes to the law, sex is a matter of biology rather than feelings.

Recent history tells us that trans activists insist such insolent women who loudly and clearly reject the fantasy that “transwomen are women” are to pay a price. The opportunity to exact it came during a protest outside the Scottish Parliament in September when Smith and several hundred others gathered to demand the Government implement the law on single-sex spaces.

A solo counter-protest was held by trans activist, Tom Harlow, who turned up with a portable PA system and proceeded to play music loudly, drowning out the feminist speakers.

So “counter-protest” doesn’t really name what he did. Drowning out the women=silencing the women. He wins and they lose.

Harlow, a drag queen who performs under the somewhat clunky name “Cabaret Against The Hate Speech” (that definite article is almost as unforgivable as his behaviour), was surrounded by a protective ring of cops while he put those women in their place. When Smith dared approach him, he thrust his umbrella towards her.

And she fended it off. Burn the witch!

[W]hile there’s no doubt over what happened, it is not (yet) illegal in Scotland for a person to touch an umbrella that’s been thrust towards them by a misogynist.

It’s perfectly clear from photos and video that Harlow’s umbrella was damaged before Smith got anywhere near him but, despite this incontrovertible evidence that no crime took place, he made a complaint to police.

Rather than laughing him out of the station – or lifting him for wasting their time – officers took Harlow’s report seriously and subsequently wrote to Smith instructing her to attend an Edinburgh police station where she would be warned about her behaviour. Failure to turn up, she was told, would leave her facing a charge of vandalism.

Have officers written to Tom Harlow instructing him to drop in for a lecture on his behavior? It seems not. It’s fine for him to make noise to silence women and shove an umbrella in the face of a woman who objects, but it’s very naughty of a woman to push his umbrella out of her face so she has to go the station to be scolded by the cops.

It’s as if they’re determined to show off what women-hating bully-loving shits they are.

How ridiculous it is that the touching of an umbrella should have led to any kind of police involvement. But how troubling that, even now, as evidence of the damaged caused by trans ideology mounts, Police Scotland is willing to act on the instructions of activists whose refusal to accept biological reality puts them at odds not only with the majority but with the law.

There was nothing whatsoever to prevent the First Minister from telling MSPs on Thursday that what is currently happening to Susan Smith is wrong. Nor is there anything to prevent him demanding Chief Constable Jo Farrell explain what the hell she thinks she’s playing at.

But hating women is the trend in Scottish officialdom.