A businesswoman has been charged with a hate crime for alleged homophobic and transphobic social media posts.
Marion Millar, 50, from Airdrie, was charged under the Communications Act for six tweets published from 2019. If convicted she faces up to six months in prison.
The messages investigated by officers are understood to include a retweeted photograph of a bow of ribbons in the green, white and purple colours of the Suffragettes, tied around a tree outside the Glasgow studio where a BBC soap opera is shot.
It is believed a complaint was made to the police suggesting the ribbons represented a noose. It was one of at least six tweets reported to police. The nature of the other complaints is unclear.
Millar, who owns an accountancy business and is a prominent feminist, was bailed to appear at Glasgow sheriff court on July 20.
Her supporters said that the prosecution was an attack on the rights of women to express themselves.
Pale and visibility shaken, the mother of six emerged from Coatbridge police station after an interview of almost two hours, to be greeted by applause and cheers from a group of supporters, many of them wearing T-shirts branded “#WomenWontWheesht” a hashtag she helped popularise.
In a statement she quoted the novelist Salman Rushdie: “Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read.” Millar added “Police and politicians seem to have lost sight of this.”
Marion Calder, of For Women Scotland, the feminist campaign group, said it was “incredibly disappointing” that police had chosen to press charges.
“Women won’t wheesht (shut up),” Calder said. “These charges are a fundamental attack on our human rights. We still have the right to free thought and the ability to speak our minds.”
Millar, a former member of the SNP, has tweeted more than 4,000 times since 2013, and she has been heavily involved in debates about reforms to the Gender Recognition Act and Scotland’s Hate Crime bill, two focal points of the rancorous debate about the ease with which people can change their legal gender. Millar opposes self-identification.
Her case has already attracted worldwide attention, and the #WomenWontWheesht hastag was trending on Twitter while Millar was inside the police station.
Some reaction was hostile, with posts characterising Millar and her supporters as “terfs”, or trans exclusionary radical feminists.
A report was made to the police after a Twitter user, who was identified as a PhD student in Coventry, published a picture of a gun and tweeted: “Making a nice list of terfs tweeting @WomenWontWheesht because she needs target practice.”
The message was removed for violating Twitter rules.
Millar was greeted with cheers and applause when she arrived at the police station with her lawyer, and her supporters remained cheerful while she was interviewed inside the building.
Suffragette ribbons were tied around bollards and trees, A camping stove appeared, coffee and donuts were handed round, and there was an impromptu photocall, some of the women wearing fake moustaches as a joke.
Their position was summed up in their placards. One read: “Gender identity is a belief. Not a fact. Sex is a fact. Not a belief. The law has no business in transforming facts into beliefs and beliefs into facts.”
Behind the women’s opposition to self-identification was the issue of safeguarding, according to Margaret Ann Pearson, 59, from Airdrie.
“People think we believe all people who identify as trans are sex offenders but that is not what we are saying,” said Pearson. “The issue is, if we put a legal mechanism in place that allows people to disguise their intentions and their identity, who is to say that men who are dangerous and have criminality in their mind won’t use it?”
The Father Ted creator Graham Linehan, blocked from Twitter for breaching rules on banned words, sent Millar a cake on her recent birthday, and a message of support after her police interview.
His Twitter account was closed after he reportedly tweeted “men aren’t women tho” in response to a post by the Women’s Institute wishing their transgender members a happy Pride.
Millar was initially contacted by PC Laura Daley, at the end of April, and asked to attend an interview under the Malicious Communications Act.
She was told that social workers would be sent to care for her young twin boys, who are autistic, while she was questioned. Millar has claimed she has hardly been able to sleep or eat since officers opened the investigation.
Police Scotland confirmed that a 50-year-old woman had been arrested and charged in connection with online communications offences.
A spokeswoman added: “She has been released on an undertaking to appear at court at a later date. A report will be sent to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.”
