.jpg){kind=link}
A Scottish feminist has appeared in court charged with "transphobic" hate crimes for tying a ribbon in the colours of the suffragette movement to a tree.
Marion Millar appeared at Glasgow Sheriff Court on Tuesday on six charges of allegedly posting offensive content on social media site Twitter, claimed to be of a "homophobic and transphobic nature".
Police Scotland received six complaints about Millar’s tweet of a photo of a suffragette ribbon tied to a tree. At least one claimed it resembled a noose, and that the feminist symbol was therefore allegedly a threat to a Scottish actor working on a BBC soap opera that is shot near to the site where the ribbon was tied.
Millar was represented at the trial by Scottish National Party (SNP) Westminster MP Joanna Cherry, who fell out with her party over its policy of granting transgender people access to women-only spaces if they self-identify as women.
The QC told the court her client would not enter a plea against any of the charges, which she had only been shown minutes earlier, and requested a date be set for a further hearing.
"I would like to go ahead to continue without a plea due to three reasons," Cherry said. "The first is practical. Miss Millar only saw the complaint, with charges from the Crown, 10 minutes prior".
"The second is that the communication charges are not compatible with guidelines, so it's not appropriate to plead with," the barrister argued. "The third is it raised serious questions about Miss Millar's European human rights".
Millar tweeted her thanks to supporters following the hearing.
Political Motives
The feminist activist works for the feminist group For Women Scotland, which in January launched a challenge to the devolved government's moves to count men who identify as women as counting towards gender parity on the boards of public bodies. Millar also helps organise the campaign Women Won’t Wheest — a word meaning ‘shut up’ in the Scottish dialect.
Unlike England’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Scotland’s equivalent — Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain — is a member of the Scottish government and attends meetings of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's cabinet.
The year SNP, with the support of its allies the Scottish Green Party passed the new Hate Crime and Public Order Bill which gives police and prosecutors sweeping new powers to clamp down on speech deemed offensive — with specific mention of transgender people.
In May Craig Murray, a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan was jailed for eight months for contempt of court for alleged "jigsaw identification" of one of the women who accused Sturgeon's predecessor Alex Salmond of sexual assault in the previous lord advocate's failed bid to jail him.
Other Scottish feminists gathered or tweeted in support of Millar on Tuesday.
The purple, white and green tricolour of the British Women's Social and Political Union, Britain's main campaign for votes for women in the early 20th century, has been flown on government buildings around the country in recent years. Ironically its colours reflect those of the thistle, Scotland's national flower.