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.
Because you certainly are a bit light-headed if you’re buying this horse-plop.
We don’t normally spend much time analysing opinion polls more than a year out from an election because it’s a complete chump’s game – too much can happen. But this one’s so absolutely batshit mad that we couldn’t resist a bit of a probe.
We are far from the only people raising concerns about the charity – we know of at least 17 separate formal complaints against LGBTYS in the past year alone, yet the OSCR has declined to open any sort of formal inquiry into them. (It carried out three such inquiries in 2024.)
But despite the OSCR’s assertion that “we strive to be transparent and accountable”, when we went to find those complaints (including, of course, the one from ourselves) to link you to them, we hit a brick wall that rapidly turned into a whole new concern.
Geri on Some Attention For James: “That was a terrible move by Roddy & given his past differences & open irritation to Salvo I don’t think…” May 16, 03:21
Geri on Some Attention For James: “Message for James Kelly SNP 1 & 2 delivers Unionists. If SNP is set to win the constituency vote then…” May 16, 03:10
Geri on Some Attention For James: “You do know that the reason they got a state in the first place was because the other side was…” May 16, 02:54
Geri on Some Attention For James: “They play woke games because Westminster stripped Holyrood of powers after indyref & then again after & during Brexshit. That…” May 16, 02:42
Geri on Some Attention For James: “Salmond should’ve had that ‘gentleman’s agreement’ in writing from Dewar & Sturgeon should’ve had the Smith one written in stone…” May 16, 02:28
Geri on Some Attention For James: “The only comments btl that I’ve seen that support Isr are yoons/ paid trolls. I take issue too with the…” May 16, 02:10
Big Jock on Some Attention For James: “The trouble with James is that he has always been an SNP cheerleader. Sure he did dabble with Alba, but…” May 16, 00:51
sarah on Some Attention For James: “100% Yes: para 5 typo – Roddy and others have organised Liberate Scotland as an umbrella grouping for candidates in…” May 15, 23:52
Owen Mullions on Some Attention For James: “Now that the ‘debate’ is over, will you be going back on James’ blacklist? He doesn’t like to be questioned…” May 15, 23:33
Rev. Stuart Campbell on Some Attention For James: “So, not so much constructive suggestions as moaning about stuff I did or didn’t do in the past?” May 15, 22:41
Rev. Stuart Campbell on Some Attention For James: “Well, that was more insane than I ever dared to fear. Christ.” May 15, 22:40
Jondigsby85 on Some Attention For James: “I went into this with an open mind. I had read the articles on both sides and thought it was…” May 15, 21:59
Skip_NC on Some Attention For James: “Did he? Because if he did, that would have been the most serious violation of the Alba Party’s constitution and…” May 15, 21:37
Oneliner on Some Attention For James: “According to Jim McColl ‘Calmac didn’t want it’. (untested hybrid technology) But what does that matter when a Civil Service…” May 15, 21:24
Wullie B on Some Attention For James: “Bella isnt ny better with Mike Small being the one you are probably thinking about, another who like Kelly doesnt…” May 15, 21:15
Anthem on The Undertaker: “Most independence supporters understand that completely!” May 15, 20:57
100%Yes on Some Attention For James: “I’m glad he has. Until we rid ourselves of the SNP, Scotland not going anywhere soon.” May 15, 20:36
Hatey McHateface on Some Attention For James: “Your comment reads as if you are unaware that Scottish devolution and the Hollyrood parliament were set up expressly to…” May 15, 20:27
Hatey McHateface on Some Attention For James: “It’s taxpayer’s money, x. There’s effectively an infinite supply of the stuff, so the people with control of the firehoses…” May 15, 20:16
Muscleguy on Some Attention For James: “Exactly, I gave up on him ages ago. As for trying to use his page to comment, it’s practically impossible…” May 15, 19:56
Alf Baird on Some Attention For James: “James Kelly also advocated SNP 1 & 2 prior to the 2021 Holyrood election which resulted in 40+ colonialist party…” May 15, 19:53
Dan on Some Attention For James: “Always with the dismissive and destructive negativity eh Stu. I just think with your exceptional skill set there are way…” May 15, 19:50
agent x on Some Attention For James: ““Speaking at FMQs, the Scottish Labour leader said: “We are rapidly approaching half a billion pounds of public money on…” May 15, 19:49
Peter Campbell on Some Attention For James: “To be fair, as far as the SNP goes, Gordon has definitely seen the light.” May 15, 19:22
keaton on Some Attention For James: “I see he’s accepted. I’m looking forward to the debate” May 15, 18:01
Morgatron on Some Attention For James: “He’s not been the same since he lost the Stars in Your Eyes gig. Poor soul.” May 15, 17:23
100%Yes on Some Attention For James: “I said it yesterday and I’ll say it again today, Salmond said if Scotland wins Independence there wouldn’t be any…” May 15, 16:51