Constantly debating over whether there is even a point in commenting on all of the infuriating awfulness of Scottish politics and associated media and social media, but I have, again, been pushed to the point where I feel the need to say something.

A thread.

With particular reference to the section of Stuart Campbell’s blog which invoked Neil Mackay’s daughter’s sexual assault as a means of attacking him. Now deleted but with the opposite of an apology. Before that, it was already shared by Kenny McAskill and liked by Joanna Cherry.

The paragraph in question said the report had been published “coincidentally mere weeks” after the Salmond allegations were reported. As if to imply some form of suspicious connection between the two. I feel like this is important to understanding the mentality & agenda at play.

The timing of that article was October 2018. Within a year of the Weinstein allegations and the rise of the Me Too movement. If there was a connection between entirely separate cases/allegations of sexual assault and harassment being reported during that time period, that was it.

The whole premise of Me Too was that women could speak up, they didn’t need to stay silent, & they would be taken seriously. The fact that those issues were receiving heightened attention was part of that. Now that’s being framed as part of an impossibly wide-ranging conspiracy.

It’s ridiculous if you imagine that Campbell and his followers really believe that totally unrelated accounts of sexual offences are part of a conspiracy against Alex Salmond. But it makes more sense when you understand they’re really just worried about a conspiracy against men.

It’s that much broader belief system which drives the obsession with proving a conspiracy against Alex Salmond. You don’t need to search far to find plenty of comments from this faction saying it’s a terrifying time to be a man, that “these women” are discrediting all women, etc.

And this is not the first occasion on which Campbell has tried to cast aspersions on reports about harassment by spuriously connecting it to the Salmond issue. There’s something so deeply pernicious about that because it’s about trying to taint all allegations by association.

All of this would be all well and good - inasmuch as the wilful spreading of misinformation about sexual violence cases and the virulent misogyny which underpins it can be “all well and good” - if nobody who claims to care about women’s rights and safety was endorsing it.

But the extra insidious layer to all of this is that there is a huge overlap, at least within the independence movement, between people who subscribe to these beliefs and those who are equally up in arms about trans people on the basis that their inclusion is a threat to women.

To be clear: there are also people in that 2nd category who don’t belong to the 1st. But I wonder if it doesn’t give them pause that the first group is taking up their cause with such enthusiasm or if they might understand in this context why it makes some of us so deeply uneasy?

That’s a genuine question for some people. But it’s clearly well beyond that point with elected representatives who are pushing both these seemingly contradictory agendas simultaneously. Nobody can be taken seriously as an advocate of women’s rights who endorses Stuart Campbell.

That was already obvious before today but in case anyone has missed some of this, maybe now is the time to start making clear that it isn’t acceptable that any elected representative in a progressive party should be sharing content from this website, least of all writing on it.

And I haven’t even mentioned the sectarianism! Which, by the way, is still there.