At the weekend, Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman was filmed applauding as a notoriously unhinged transactivist ranted through a megaphone to a small and almost exclusively male crowd of protestors about how he was going to openly break the law by continuing to use women’s public toilets, and addressing JK Rowling with the words “We should all take a shite on you, you heinous creeping old bitch”.
At another protest, Chapman herself asserted that the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on the correct interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 was motivated by not by a solemn consideration of the law or by the arguments of counsel who appeared before it, but by “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”.
Chapman is – incredibly – Deputy Convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament, and as such her comments sparked a storm of wholly justified outrage over her flagrant breach not only of Parliamentary rules but also of the law – specifically the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008, which requires all MSPs to uphold the independence of the judiciary.
Regular readers of Wings won’t need any reminding that Dani Garavelli of the Herald is, among some very stiff competition, one of the most contemptible pieces of nightsoil currently operating in the Scottish media.
But if you’re new here, we can give you a quick illustration.
If the sneering piety of that opening paragraph made you feel a little revolted, a bit angry and somewhat nauseous, then congratulations, because that means you’re still something minimally approximating to a decent human being. But unfortunately it gets a lot worse from there.
Scottish Greens candidate and transactivist Matt “Ellie” Gomersall, with whom Wings readers will be familiar, appeared on the Jeremy Vine show today and blundered straight into an elephant trap a myopic mole could have seen coming on a foggy night.
Having just embarked on a diatribe in which he dismissed as “ridiculous” the idea that predatory men would ever pretend to be transwomen to gain access to vulnerable women, Vine asked him about Adam “Isla Bryson” Graham, the convicted double rapist that even hapless Humza Yousaf felt able to confidently assert was “at it”.
Having just painted himself into a corner, Gomersall was then embarrassingly unable to disown Bryson as a “real” transwoman, thereby implicitly admitting that transwomen do indeed present a danger to women in exactly the same way that predatory men do, and torpedoing his entire core point that it was unfair to “discriminate” against them in exactly the same way single-sex spaces discriminate against non-trans men.
(Outrageously, earlier in the speech he’d tried to claim that it was only natural that some transwomen would be sex offenders because some biological women were.)
It’s tempting to believe that Gomersall was demonstrating an intellectual vacuum by making such vacuously cretinous arguments and failing to spot even the most obvious pitfalls in them, but the truth is far worse. Gomersall, and people like him, know that they’re lying (which is why they always try to silence opponents), but they lack the moral courage to face up to the fact that the inevitable price of their lies is vulnerable women being raped by what he revoltingly waves away as “fringe cases”.
All rapists are fringe cases. 95% of men would never dream of raping anyone. But we discriminate against ALL men in women’s spaces because you can’t tell which ones are rapists by looking. Men like “Ellie” Gomersall, though, think that the price of a few women being raped is worth paying to validate their delusions and fetishes (in his case, the creepy fetish of skinwalking as his pretty sister), and they don’t even have the shred of decency to bother coming up with a coherent line of bullshit to cover it.
We’ll be honest, readers, we gasped out loud when we saw this.
That such a basic, fundamental truth of human existence should ever be front page news with the capacity to shock 100,000 years after we invented language is a sign of just how insane our world has become since 2015.
But magnificent as it is, it’s not even today’s BEST front cover.
We wouldn’t be Wings if we didn’t round off this evening with a representative selection of some of the more measured and thoughtful responses from transactivists across the UK to today’s Supreme Court judgment.
So fetch some sort of celebratory beverage, settle down in your comfiest armchair in front of the fire (‘cos it’s been Baltic today) and enjoy the Sounds Of Kindness.
For those among you who don’t have the time or patience to wade through 88 pages of judicial lingo, we’ve distilled today’s Supreme Court judgment down to its key points.
Much of it, of course, can be summarised as “the bleeding obvious”.
We’ve all got a lot of extremely heavy reading and pondering to do now. But the short version of the outcome of For Women Scotland vs The Scottish Ministers is this:
On the face of the judgment just handed down live in the courtroom, a more absolute, comprehensive and legally momentous defeat for the Scottish Government – and the forces of gender ideology in general – seems difficult to imagine.
But we’ll get back to you on that after all the reading. Today, we’re just going to stand and salute FWS and their richly-deserved triumph. See you later.
It’s increasingly common now for the Scottish news to feature another prison scandal or employment-tribunal judgment highlighting the extent of gender-ideology capture in the country’s public authorities.
But it’s normally quite hard to get an overall picture of just how captured any particular public body really is, so we should offer some thanks to the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) who’ve helpfully provided us with a comprehensive primer in the form of a briefing for a board update later this week.
Innocent readers might have thought that the people managing a national park would be most concerned about attracting visitors, protecting wildlife, repairing paths and keeping local businesses sustainable, that sort of thing. But that’s not how things work in Scotland any more.
Because the CNPA are about to present the organisation’s 19 board members with an 91-page report and annex detailing all their vital work on… equalities issues.
Geri on The Takeover: “diabloandco You’re right. They don’t come around too often. I can think of two recent politicians that put ppls interests…” Apr 30, 22:45
Bilbo on The Takeover: ““I am one of the folk that needs to be convinced, I voted yes but now would vote no like…” Apr 30, 21:49
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Takeover: “Try the following quality full colour illustrated bilingual booklet by Roddy MacLean / Ruairidh MacIlleathain: GAELIC AND NORSE IN THE…” Apr 30, 21:20
Chas on The Takeover: “Geri It is not the wee diddy message board on the internet that puts people of Independence. It is the…” Apr 30, 21:12
Dave Hansell on The Takeover: “Thank you for your response. Being from Yorkshire, I’m more than a little biased in regard to a culture which,…” Apr 30, 20:59
Geri on The Takeover: “LOL! That’d be about right… SNP on the karaoke… This one is to all our ex members out there.. Oh,…” Apr 30, 19:52
Yoon Scum on The Takeover: “Geri How will a free Scotland keep control of us cap doffing English worshipping filth” Apr 30, 19:50
Yoon Scum on The Takeover: “if you’re a NAT can you think of anyone worse then the English culture? If you aren’t I think the…” Apr 30, 19:48
Geri on The Takeover: “I’ll explain it cause they won’t. It’s the great colonisers swindle. Unrefined raw products are cheaper to buy. They’ll collect…” Apr 30, 19:24
Geri on The Takeover: “Insider If you’d bothered to follow the recent ICJ case presented by South Africa via Palestine you’d be aware that…” Apr 30, 19:04
David Holden on The Takeover: “The Royal visit to Mull was a non event for some and a big thing for others. Calling it a…” Apr 30, 18:53
TURABDIN on The Takeover: “HACKERS break into Scot. gov IT and declare Scotland a sovereign state. A criminal act says SNP spokesperson.” Apr 30, 18:46
Dan on The Takeover: “Aye, maybe all those on here extolling the benefits of the Union can explain the positives to these folk losing…” Apr 30, 18:44
Oneliner on The Takeover: “Today we have the first of the Grangemouth Refinery redundancies. Today we have the Prince and Princess of Wales visiting…” Apr 30, 17:55
agent x on The Takeover: “Thank God I live in the real world and not the imaginary world on here.” Apr 30, 17:29
James Cheyne on The Takeover: “More a starmer thought process perhaps.” Apr 30, 16:45
Insider on The Takeover: “Chas, “The word nutter springs to mind” And right on cue up pops poor auld Alf with a random selection…” Apr 30, 16:16
Yoon Scum on The Takeover: “It would certainly create some interesting problems as the pound belongs to the UK not the English So therefore the…” Apr 30, 15:59
Rob on The Takeover: ““I’m beginning to think there should be an IQ test in return for the right to vote in referendums. Clearly…” Apr 30, 15:47
Rob on The Takeover: “Actually linguistically the purest form of original English throughout the UK is spoken in the Lothian Region, not England. Gaelic…” Apr 30, 15:39
James Cheyne on The Takeover: “Are union people against England being a Sovereign Country?” Apr 30, 15:38
Yoon Scum on The Takeover: “How many folk are converted to your cause by some soap dodgers walking around with a flag?” Apr 30, 15:16
Yoon Scum on The Takeover: “Most the reasons I am given for leaving the union relate to what a long dead person did” Apr 30, 15:05
Yoon Scum on The Takeover: “You can ask me if you want Why I am against leaving the union I doubt if you’ll be able…” Apr 30, 15:04
Yoon Scum on The Takeover: “I can easily name a competent political party Monster raving loonies party They are a bunch of perfectly sane people…” Apr 30, 15:02
Geri on The Takeover: “Chas Do one ya bullying troll. You add zero to every article or discussion on here but actively seek out…” Apr 30, 14:59
TURABDIN on The Takeover: “IN THE NORMATIVE British method of doing politics a simple majority is considered a majority, on that basis Scotland and…” Apr 30, 14:35
James Cheyne on The Takeover: “Sven, Thank you for your condolences, much appreciated. Busy at the moment taking the first daunting task/ steps beginning to…” Apr 30, 14:34
diabloandco on The Takeover: “Well Geri, I bloody can’t. I’m sure when I was much younger there were some honest folk in politics who…” Apr 30, 14:33
Geri on The Takeover: “You’d give up making your own decisions, your resources & your nations status FOR LIFE because of some political party…” Apr 30, 14:24