Mick Hartley

Brendan O'Neill – Is Scotland the most sexist country in Europe?

Imagine a country where every time women tried to speak up about their rights they were insulted and abused by mobs of men. A country where women were continually prevented by gangs of misogynists from showing a film about womanhood. A country where women who express their political views run the risk of being branded old hags and even threatened with death. A country where members of the ruling party can be seen standing next to placards calling for women to be beheaded. A country where lesbians can be censored for daring to say women are real. A country where even wearing the Suffragette colours is a risky business. Put on the green, white and purple and you could find yourself cast out of this country’s parliament.

You’ve just imagined Scotland. All of these things – these sexist, censorious, intolerant things – are happening up there. The lesbian who’s been silenced is Joanna Cherry, the SNP MP who keeps committing the thoughtcrime of understanding biology and supporting women’s sex-based rights. Ms Cherry had been due to take part in a discussion at The Stand in Edinburgh during the Fringe festival this summer. But, according to The Times, the plug’s been pulled because venue staff said the presence of this sinful, scandalous woman would make them feel ‘uncomfortable’. It used to be the Bible-bashing Christian right that was made ‘uncomfortable’ by outspoken lesbians – now it’s Guardian-reading young people. The old blue-rinse lobby that viewed the likes of Ms Cherry as an abomination against God have been replaced by blue-haired art kids who see her as an abomination against their self-esteem.

The Fringe is fast becoming a no-go zone for outrageous women who refuse to daintily bow down to the gender cult. Cherry’s card was marked a couple of months back when trans comedian Bethany Black withdrew from a performance at The Stand over its repulsive moral error of giving Cherry a platform. Black is a biological male who identifies as a transsexual lesbian. Imagine going back in time and trying to explain to someone that in the future men who claim to be lesbians will be complaining about the presence in public life of an actual lesbian, and that they’ll be applauded for doing so. You’d be packed off to an asylum. At last year’s Fringe, female comic Elaine Miller was spat on in the street and the posters for her show were defaced, because she too refuses to submit to the science-defying dogma that says a man can be a woman. The Edinburgh Fringe was once the site of daring theatre and radical thought; now it’s home to ‘cowering obedient pissants’, as one comic calls them, who gleefully shut down unruly women….

He's not wrong.

Yes, the most sexist, sometimes violent invective comes from noisy trans agitators. But these mobs get a green light from a ruling regime that has entirely bought into the eccentric gender cult, to the extent of trying to introduce a gender bill that would make it absurdly easy for blokes to become women in the eyes of the law. The blue-haired wailers of ageist abuse at women exercising their freedom of association are best seen as the footsoldiers of government diktat, the on-the-ground enforcers of the ideology of gender recognition that has been embraced by the SNP itself. So let Scotland be a lesson to the world. The farther you go down the road of gender delusion, the more you will unleash a simmering hate for women and a twisted intolerance of women’s rights. Nations of the world, take note.