You’d better be getting all your hating done now if you live in Scotland. Scottish Legal News:

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act will be activated – on April 1.

The law creates new stirring up of hatred offences for protected characteristics including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and transgender identity.

But not, of course, sex. It’s fine to stir up hatred of women – by calling us “terfs” for instance – but don’t you dare say that man in the dress and catch-me fuck-me shoes is a man.

Victims minister Siobhian Brown said: “For those impacted by hatred and prejudice, the results can be traumatic and life changing. While we respect everyone’s right to freedom of expression, nobody in our society should live in fear or be made to feel like they don’t belong, and the Scottish Government is committed to building safer communities that live free from hatred and prejudice.”

Except women of course. Women just have to put up with it.

BBC Scotland elaborates:

First Minister Humza Yousaf was the justice secretary who shepherded the Hate Crime bill through the Scottish Parliament, declaring at the time that it “sent a strong and clear message to victims, perpetrators, communities and to wider society that offences motivated by prejudice will be treated seriously and will not be tolerated.”

The law criminalises threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred against someone who possesses, or appears to possess, certain characteristics.

They are age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics sometimes known as being intersex.

Why not sex? Why are women excluded from this protection?

Also, while we’re on the subject, why not class? If you’re going to do all this box-ticking, why not women and why not class? Is snobbery dead in Scotland?

The new law also provides for stiffer sentences for offenders convicted of crimes deemed to be “aggravated by prejudice,” — in other words if they demonstrate malice or ill-will towards their victim based on the protected characteristics listed above, with the addition of a category for race, colour, nationality or ethnicity.

But not sex.

Finally we get to that.

Controversially, the protected characteristics in the act do not include sex itself, an omission criticised by some feminist groups.

Well yes. I think the law itself is probably a bad idea, especially in Scotland, but if you’re going to have such a law, why tf are you leaving women out? Do you seriously think women are not subject to hatred and contempt? Not to mention violence?

“This new law leaves women unprotected from hate crime,” the Scottish National Party MP Joanna Cherry KC told me. It would, she predicted, “be weaponised by trans rights activists to try to silence, and worse still, criminalise women who do not share their beliefs.”

All but certain, in my view.