Kettled and encircled
From The Scottish Daily Express:
Police chiefs are facing an angry backlash over their handling of a women’s free speech rally on Saturday, which saw feminists and trans protesters clash, it can be revealed. Up to 1000 gender critical women and trans activists faced off in Edinburgh during outspoken women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen’s Let Women Speak rally, the first major test of Scotland’s controversial new hate crime laws.
To put it more bluntly, feminist women held a free speech rally and trans “activists” did their best to drown it out.
While Ms Keen publicly thanked Police Scotland “for keeping women safe at the event”, many among her supporters were left angry and frustrated. Several complained about being “corralled” into too small a space while being surrounded on three sides by trans activists hurling abuse at them throughout the two-hour event.
In other words the trans “activists” had quite a lot of success in their efforts to shout over women talking about women’s rights.
They were labelled “Nazis” by mega-phone wielding trans activists close to where the women were gathered and at one point officers “contained” the section of trans activists as they shouted and chanted insults at the women. Many women told of their anger and anxiety at being “kettled” and encircled by a hostile crowd with whistles, sirens, megaphones and horns in a bid to drown out the women’s event.
They turn up with sirens and horns but the women are the “Nazis.”
One woman posted on Twitter/X: “It was extraordinary. Struggling to think of any other situation which would be policed this way. Watching police stand by and allow men to surround and scream abuse at a peaceful gathering of women, even facilitating their actions, felt deeply uncomfortable.”
Another at the event said: “We are now quite crushed in the cage. We have asked police several times to move the barriers back to give us a bit more room. We have disabled and elderly people here and we are absolutely crammed in.” While another wrote: “The number of people who were contained behind barriers with only one exit what on earth were #PoliceScotland thinking?”
Probably what they’re usually thinking: women don’t matter.
I’m not crazy about Kellie-Jay Keen *, but the way the police behaved on this occasion was disgraceful.
* Because she doesn’t identify as a feminist.
Given the state of modern feminism, it’s unsurprising that a rational person would find it difficult to identify as such. There’s a good argument to be made that the label confuses more than it clarifies.
This is what the NZ Police did when KJK attempted to speak in Auckland. They stood back and allowed the encirclement of the women by an increasingly angry and threatening mob. The end result was the useless barriers being pushed down and assaults and mayhem before the police got just a few women out, leaving the rest to fend for themselves. It goes against everything that is understood about crowd control and deescalation. If media were not complicit they would be asking police leaders if they were doing this intentionally, or if they’re just incompetent.