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 The old blue-rinse lobby that viewed the likes of Ms Cherry as an abomination against God have been replaced by blue-haired art kids who see her as an abomination against their self-esteem.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.

Speaking of Edinburgh, at the university there last week a mob once again managed to cancel the screening of the film, Adult Human Female. As the title suggests, this doc argues that only females are women, and that it’s woke hocus pocus to believe a bloke can become a lady simply by saying he’s one. This is blasphemy in the eyes of the gender cultists and so they have devoted themselves to blacklisting this profane film.

Like modern-day Mary Whitehouses, or the local council in Glasgow that banned Life of Brian for 30 years, they rain fury on anyone who tries to show Adult Human Female. Gangs of them, in masks, naturally, gathered on Edinburgh University’s campus last week to physically block the entrance to the lecture theatre in which the film was due to be screened. British anti-fascists once cried ‘¡No pasarán!’ at actual fascists. Now, middle-class TikTok narcissists larping as anti-fascists bellow similar at women who just want to watch a film about women.

The casual sexism of the rainbow mob that gathered to deny women their fundamental rights of free association and free speech was extraordinary. In one clip, a man in the mob sings Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’, and after the line ‘Young and sweet, only 17’, he motions to the women who have gathered to watch Adult Human Female and says: ‘None of them are 17…’ Get it? They’re old bitches. They’re hags. What are they even doing out in public? In another clip, an elderly, disabled woman says to the masked censors: ‘Let me pass, I have human rights!’ They don’t let her pass, which is basically a way of saying: ‘Fuck your human rights.’ Alarmingly, the Edinburgh branch of the University and College Union (UCU) supported this outburst of sexist authoritarianism masquerading as a political protest, confirming just how bad things now are in Scotland.

Something is rotten in the state of Scotland. In the space of a few days we’ve seen an established female politician be No Platformed for the crime of defending women’s rights and gay rights, while other women have been subjected to ageist and sexist bile because they wanted to watch a film. Is Scotland the most misogynistic country in Europe? It’s worth considering. It’s certainly hard to think of any other European country where there have been so many instances recently of women’s rights to gather, to speak and to associate with one another being so unceremoniously thwarted by angry activists.

This is the country where MPs for the ruling party – the Scottish National Party – were photographed at a trans rally next to a man holding a placard saying, ‘Decapitate TERFs’. In short, behead women who believe in biology; garotte those harridans. Imagine if a Tory MP attended a demonstration where there were banners saying ‘Behead Muslims’ or ‘Kill blacks’. This was as bad as that, yet the scandal fizzled.

This is the country where a woman was ejected from the parliament for the crime of wearing the Suffragette colours. (The speaker of parliament later apologised, and I should think so, too.) The country where women have been arrested for expressing supposedly ‘transphobic’ ideas. The country that has considered introducing ‘hate speech’ laws that have caused women to fear they will be jailed for expressing their biologically correct, feministically sound beliefs. The country where women who find themselves on the wrong side of the law can end up in jails that house male rapists too. Because if a male rapist says he’s a woman, then, under the gender tyranny that is modern Scotland, he’s a woman. No question. Only a bigot would demur.

That last point, about rapists being housed with vulnerable women in the prison estate, captures who bears responsibility for the misogynistic turn in Scotland. It’s the government. The establishment. 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.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy