Sex Matters wrote a post yesterday about the same glaring unknown that I wrote about: how the hell do we know what is “abusive” as opposed to “offensive” or “insulting” or “upsetting”? Hamza Yousaf says his shiny new law applies only to “abusive” content, not merely “offensive” or “insulting” or “upsetting” content, but he doesn’t spell out which is which and how we all know.

Sex Matters says:

One of the most controversial aspects is the extension of so-called “stirring up” provisions to characteristics other than race, including transgender identities (which expressly covers non-binary identities and cross-dressers). The threshold for what counts as hateful is set low – at a single act of speech that is merely “abusive” and not threatening or violent.

But also, Yousaf said, not “offensive” or “insulting” or “upsetting”. Not merely offensive but abusive; not merely insulting but abusive; not merely upsetting but abusive. How do we know? How do we distinguish among those? Are they defined so narrowly that everyone knows which is which, with no doubt or ambiguity? Like hell they are.

After years in which transactivist lobby groups have trained police forces and judges to embrace gender ideology, and to view “misgendering” as offensive, women’s-rights groups have feared that simply mentioning the biological sex of trans individuals could result in investigation and even prosecution.

Which of course was their goal.

JK Rowling marked the new law by tweeting that certain high-profile “transwomen” are in fact men, daring Police Scotland to charge her. 

The force has confirmed that there were complaints, but it will not take them further and they will not be recorded as a non-crime hate incident. First Minister Humza Yousaf said Rowling’s posts on X were a “perfect example” of the distinction between stirring up hatred and people “being offended or upset or insulted”. He added: “Anybody who read the act will not have been surprised at all that there’s no arrests made.” 

Which is completely ridiculous. Is there a clear, obvious, widely understood distinction between stirring up hatred and people “being offended or upset or insulted”? There is one such distinction, which is if you say the thing to one person, with no witnesses, it can’t be stirring up hatred. But that doesn’t get us an inch closer to a general distinction, because the Act is of course about public speech.

As far as I can tell the reality is that Yousaf was just bullshitting, and there is zero reason to be confident that Police Scotland won’t be seeing “abuse” where the rest of us see “being upset” on hearing the truth.