Witches of Scotland - EP 83 BONUS RANT

00:00:00.000 Hello.

00:00:02.000 Hi, how are you?

00:00:04.000 I'm fine, thanks. How are you?

00:00:06.000 I'm very well. Well, I say I'm very well.

00:00:08.000 I am just as disappointed on going with the world as I usually am.

00:00:12.000 Well, Natch, as I said to somebody yesterday, how are we supposed to go on? 0.94

00:00:16.000 It's just getting more brutal, like it's ridiculous. 0.95

00:00:19.000 Every day there's a fresh indignity. 0.84

00:00:22.000 And what's the indignity you're particularly indignant about today?

00:00:27.000 Well, something that everybody that's got two eyes and a brain, I think, well, I say everybody, actually, I don't even think it is everybody. I think people that are paying attention, that care about women, have been talking about this week, which is this horrendous phenomenon where it's been referred to as a rape academy, where men have been uploading images of them sedating and then raping their partners and wives, sharing information of what medication, ordering medication.

00:00:54.920 i mean it's just yeah what the fuck and this is the when people intervene think they're making 0.98

00:01:01.320 some kind of good point going that's not 62 million individual people it's 62 individual 0.98

00:01:07.420 clicks i don't care yeah it's wild how is that wild i saw a cartoon about it and it was like

00:01:15.720 a guy obviously talking to i presume it was meant to be a woman that was getting bitten by ants

00:01:21.020 and he was saying to her it's not 62 million individual ants it's 62 million individual

00:01:26.060 bites you know and it's it sort of feels a bit like that now it's just this death from a thousand

00:01:30.320 cuts of it's just we're becoming more and more sort of numb I think or we're at risk of that

00:01:37.040 where it's becoming more and more normalized that you know women's women's torture women's pain is

00:01:42.240 not being dealt with like at all it feels like so this is off the back of a big CNN

00:01:46.860 research and then article that came out at the I think it came out at the beginning of the week

00:01:53.060 maybe and it's really easy to find if you just google it so it just it's a CNN article and then

00:01:57.920 obviously other news sources have taken up and it's been talked about lots on particularly on

00:02:02.080 Instagram that's where I've certainly seen lots of stuff and this is on the back of of course the

00:02:06.200 Gisele Pellico case where it became clear that there were various different places where men

00:02:11.900 that were predators could go to share the experience

00:02:16.120 with other men who were predators.

00:02:18.860 What I didn't know about the Pellico trial

00:02:20.560 was that there are still people out there

00:02:22.340 that weren't identified and haven't been convicted

00:02:24.880 for what they did to her.

00:02:27.260 I mean, I just think there's so many of them, isn't there?

00:02:29.540 I mean, like, where do you even...

00:02:30.980 Where do you begin with something like that?

00:02:32.840 I mean, outside public executions, just joking.

00:02:36.400 What?

00:02:39.260 Hashtag guillotine. 0.98

00:02:40.260 could dispatch a lot of them pretty sharpish and i'm joking but i'm also not joking because you

00:02:46.080 just think why are the rules not being enforced for some people why do some people men think that

00:02:54.420 they're above those rules and they must be in some way justifying to themselves that it's not

00:02:59.780 the same as a woman being you know dragged off the street it's not staying stranger danger can i tell

00:03:05.140 you there's actually empirical evidence for that in Scotland because in Scottish Societal

00:03:13.700 Attitude Survey 2019 in relation to attitudes to violence against women, they asked people

00:03:21.140 to identify how wrong a man's behaviour was from a scale of one to seven, one being not

00:03:26.980 wrong at all and stuff and was very seriously wrong. They didn't use the word rape but one

00:03:33.700 identified the person as knowing another person as in having a relationship with them

00:03:43.880 and one not knowing the person and consistently higher was marked not knowing the person as being

00:03:53.840 more serious now I can't get my head around that because first of all they're making a decision

00:04:03.200 about whether or not that's more or less serious secondly why is the violation of trust between

00:04:09.720 people that know one another not not equal to being assaulted by a person that you don't know

00:04:17.320 it's because it's a spectrum it's a spectrum of of acceptability of abuse of women isn't it

00:04:23.320 so like the biggest bogeyman that we have is a man dragging you into a car or whatever dragging

00:04:29.840 you into the woods and raping you or men multiple men maybe doing that that's like the worst but

00:04:35.160 then the idea and i've read this repeatedly that you know that you're at home and it's your wife 0.96

00:04:39.960 and you already have sex so really what's the big deal she's used to it um and one of the defenses

00:04:45.400 that some of these men that have been charged have used is that it's a sex game and that the

00:04:50.140 women is then reneging on the deal that they've made that the women wanted this to be something

00:04:54.380 where she might wake up during it and it's like a frisson of excitement i'm sure there are people

00:04:58.500 that have that kink no kink shaming on you but i think the vast vast vast vast vast majority of

00:05:02.740 stuff we're talking about here is women in no way agreed to this because i've read about several

00:05:07.180 women so so there was the giselle pellicle case where of course she found out that her husband

00:05:12.400 had been meeting online and there was, what, 50-plus men

00:05:15.180 that were eventually charged by the French authorities

00:05:19.020 that had passed through her house and had access to rape, 0.98

00:05:23.720 and using the word rape, Giselle Pellico. 1.00

00:05:27.300 That was then sort of a tipping point where different news sources

00:05:30.700 and journalists obviously realised, well, hang on,

00:05:32.300 this probably isn't isolated, and that's why CNN found this other one.

00:05:35.960 So the Pellico case, I think, was on a dating website called,

00:05:41.420 there was a chat room within it called without her knowledge i mean that pretty much lays out

00:05:45.720 your stall doesn't it yeah that's not like we've agreed that she's asleep and it's a game that's

00:05:50.940 very the joy is in the fact that she doesn't know and she's not giving permission so then the cnn

00:05:56.780 then did this extensive investigation where they what they've described as a hidden online world

00:06:03.680 where the commodification and amplification of sexual violence against women is flourishing

00:06:08.720 that's such a scary sentence right so it's telling us that it's it's about money right

00:06:15.440 they're commodifying it because men are buying and selling these experiences or viewing these

00:06:20.220 experiences or drugs to enable these experiences and the amplification because now because of

00:06:25.540 social media where you might have been an isolated weirdo in the town that you came from

00:06:30.180 now men know that there are tons of weirdos everywhere that they can all pervert together

00:06:35.620 so they're they're joining each other i think what rocked the france about the pelico case was

00:06:41.340 that they weren't ostensibly weirdos of whatever that might be yeah i mean obviously it's it's not

00:06:49.420 necessarily a man in a dirty mack yeah yeah you know that's i think that's really what's terrifying

00:06:56.120 about it um is that these are just folk that you might meet every day doing something one thing i

00:07:02.900 to make really clear from a legal standpoint i think the law has now changed in france as well

00:07:07.060 as a result of this sex without consent is rape it's all to do with consent you cannot consent to

00:07:14.900 something that you don't have knowledge of you cannot consent to something when you are too drunk

00:07:21.140 to be able to consent or you're unconscious through drinks through drugs through sleeping

00:07:27.620 deeply that they cannot consent in those circumstances. So it has to be the free agreement

00:07:35.120 of two people who are actively consenting to something. You know, how is that insurmountably

00:07:41.380 difficult for some men to understand?

00:07:43.980 And didn't the law change in Scotland in the 80s?

00:07:47.620 Yeah, so this is a scary thing. And as a lawyer, I keep telling people the law only protects

00:07:54.560 what the social mores are at the time. The law does not give you rights which are inalienable.

00:08:01.580 In fact, law can give you rights and law can take you away the rights. And because we live in a

00:08:06.260 patriarchy, the rights are defined in terms of men ruling and women getting rights in that system

00:08:16.400 rather than all people just being equal under the law. I'll give you a for instance, up till 1982

00:08:23.440 in Scotland, men in marriage could not rape their wives.

00:08:31.540 That wasn't, and the underlying rationale is, of course,

00:08:36.600 is a woman has consented to marriage and presumably all that comes with that.

00:08:41.460 And therefore, she has given basically her consent.

00:08:46.660 There you go.

00:08:47.400 Now, that was 1982.

00:08:50.300 I was 11 years old at that time.

00:08:52.960 I was going to secondary school in those circumstances.

00:08:57.120 And if you think those laws can't be changed just as fast again, you'd be wrong. 1.00

00:09:01.020 And that's why we have to be absolutely on guard against the rolling back of women's rights. 0.84

00:09:06.960 Because it is women's rights.

00:09:08.840 Nobody is suggesting that men's rights over their bodily autonomy are rolled back.

00:09:13.540 We're seeing it in the US and we're seeing it again rear its ugly head in the UK.

00:09:19.540 And we have to fight it at every turn.

00:09:20.980 because when we talk about rolling back women's rights people I think instinctively and quite

00:09:25.440 understandably go towards the idea of health care and access to abortion but that's the thin end of

00:09:30.400 the wedge you know it's access to abortion and it's access to contraception to prevent you from

00:09:34.740 getting pregnant in the first place and then we're talking about well who who has rights here and it

00:09:39.660 often feels in that discussion that the side that are against women's health care that the that the

00:09:45.100 fetus their rights are sort of above the women's rights and we're seeing that happening just now

00:09:50.320 America. One of Reform's candidates in England is a very well-documented, very loud and articulating 1.00

00:09:58.000 herself, anti-abortion campaigner, an American who's moved over here. You know, I think that's

00:10:04.640 extremely clear. And I think that's something that we really need to be on our guard with women as 1.00

00:10:08.400 well, that are, as we've discussed before, that are patriarchy patrollers. We saw it during the 1.00

00:10:11.760 witch trials. We didn't personally see it, but it happened during the witch trials where women 1.00

00:10:16.720 would either accuse other women, you know, maybe to get power, maybe because they genuinely believed

00:10:22.820 it, maybe to protect themselves. And then women that were accused and were then tortured would 0.99

00:10:27.800 confess and give up other women's names, probably because they were being tortured. And they thought

00:10:32.720 that this might end what's happening. But we have to be careful because we're so manipulated by it.

00:10:37.280 We can see it, we've talked about this before, but we can see it with the MAGA women who are

00:10:41.120 sheltering under the under the power umbrella that maga men have but that that'll come back

00:10:47.300 to bite them like there's not a doubt in my mind this great guy used to follow on twitter who used

00:10:52.320 the phrase all tokens get spent so eventually these women that are there as sort of tokenistic 0.97

00:10:59.320 performative housewife females who by the way are which is absolutely they're right they're not home 1.00

00:11:06.100 looking after their children they're working they're making money from being on tv so they're 1.00

00:11:10.480 massive hypocrites from the get-go but these women are amongst the voices that are taking away our 0.74

00:11:15.440 rights did you see that i think it's forgive me if i've got her name wrong is it marjorie taylor 0.97

00:11:19.880 green the friend of trump who was a huge trump supporter then he sacked her then he called her

00:11:27.200 a traitor and then her children were getting death threats and she was on tv saying and he just

00:11:33.080 didn't care that my children were receiving death threats i was like they don't care they're all

00:11:38.380 about women and children until it doesn't suit them to be about women and children you know i

00:11:42.800 mean it's it's so fake and we can see through it we can totally see through it you know so this cnn

00:11:48.120 investigation let me just get the details up again um they they found a website and it's a porn site 0.93

00:11:55.100 called motherless.com i mean what the fuck is that name even about and it's home to more than

00:12:01.120 20 000 videos of so-called sleep content uploaded by users with hundreds of thousands of views 0.92

00:12:07.660 the website which had around that this figure 62 million visits in february alone and whose core

00:12:13.040 audience is the united states describes itself as quote a moral free file host where anything

00:12:19.500 legal is hosted forever i mean it's not legal it's not legal to do that so it's it's it's under

00:12:27.540 this is so gross it's categorized using different descriptive tags such as hashtag passed out and

00:12:34.180 hashtag eye check and there's like a really horrible image of a woman where a man's pulling 0.97

00:12:39.540 her eyelid up to check that she's she's absolutely out of it so fucking gross so then these these men 0.73

00:12:45.840 are then filming themselves there's a group in there that's that's called zzz you know like a 0.97

00:12:50.900 cartoon sleep um and that's where there's different people that are going on and they're uploading

00:12:56.760 content they're talking about what their practice is practices then they're linking up with other

00:13:01.300 people that are giving them tips there's one guy that's selling medicine and somebody saying they

00:13:06.220 had a business dispatching sleeping liquids i mean apart from anything else i mean they could

00:13:11.240 kill women like you know i mean these are not chemists they're not doctors they're they're

00:13:15.800 meddling with serious medications yeah and you know all you need to have is somebody with 0.99

00:13:21.700 depressed sleeping or some vulnerability already they are literally that should be um it should be

00:13:28.980 identified as an attempted murder.

00:13:30.720 Well, that's what I was going to say.

00:13:32.160 Is it illegal?

00:13:33.160 I mean, I presume it's illegal to drug somebody to sleep without their consent.

00:13:36.780 Absolutely.

00:13:37.600 It's illegal to drug anybody.

00:13:40.380 But if you're giving someone a drug reckless as to whether or not they live or die, then

00:13:44.820 it's, and if they do die, it's cultful homicide at the least or murder at the best.

00:13:53.240 I mean, that's what people should be getting charged with, attempted murder.

00:14:01.720 Yeah. And then the CNN article, which I really recommend everybody reads, but it's a hard read.

00:14:06.820 So, you know, be prepared, obviously.

00:14:09.000 They interviewed a woman called Zoe Watts and she found out that her husband of 16 years had been giving her.

00:14:15.400 I mean, this is so horrifying. He'd been giving her a cup of tea last thing at night.

00:14:19.400 she'd worked hard during the day he gave this nice act of making her cup of tea every night and she

00:14:23.880 said that she was you know she was glad to get that cup of tea and have like a little relax before

00:14:28.440 she went to bed and he was crushing up their son's sleeping medication she drank the cup of tea

00:14:33.800 spark out unconscious and then he was assaulting her and she said we worry about who's coming

00:14:38.520 behind us walking down the street or even who's friending us on facebook you know we worry about

00:14:43.160 going to our car late at night in a car park but we don't worry about who you lie next to

00:14:47.560 i didn't realize i had to i mean it's just it's the worst betrayal of trust you know what giselle

00:14:54.060 pellico said fear must change sides and absolutely it must and i you know i always think when i hear

00:15:01.460 stuff like this right what can we do what are we actually going to do to change things

00:15:05.080 things that i see are important that we should be changing things the first is that we should

00:15:11.160 be encouraging our lawmakers to protect women and one thing that i see or two things i see in

00:15:19.260 relation to that is first making femicide a crime right making it clear that when a woman is killed

00:15:28.080 by a man that is registered as femicide and the reason for that is the number of women that are

00:15:36.600 are assaulted or killed by people that they are in a relationship with in a former relationship

00:15:42.740 are being stalked by are being assaulted because they are a woman is not being properly identified

00:15:49.280 by our laws at the moment yes people are getting charged with murder but we don't have the

00:15:54.640 statistics and how many of them are femicides and it's important when you deal with something

00:16:00.720 you have to first of all call it what it is and identify it and countries throughout the world

00:16:05.180 have been being called on by the UN to do this for decades now and two or three countries really

00:16:10.940 really recently have and I think Scotland should be doing it as well so that's something that I

00:16:15.740 think we should be doing the next thing that I think we should be doing is we should be adding

00:16:21.820 misogyny as an aggravation to pre-existing crimes this started off as a bill in Scotland in 2022

00:16:30.620 it was shelved. I think either that bill has to come back or the Green bill, the Greens that

00:16:36.700 haven't read yet in Scotland, so I don't know the details of it, but they seem to be making

00:16:41.420 misogyny a standalone crime. Can I just go back to 2022 a second? That's what Nicola Sturgeon was

00:16:48.940 talking about the day that she gave the apology to the people that have been accused of being

00:16:54.380 witches. So she was able to tie in the huge human rights abuse of the Scottish witch trials to the

00:17:00.220 the way in which women are still treated today you know maybe we would have six years ago we

00:17:04.840 would have been saying you know obviously women aren't tortured today but you know i mean like

00:17:08.020 i don't i just feel like it's like a psychic psychological torture

00:17:11.840 we're getting the epstein files are out there that's still not being dealt with the president

00:17:16.960 of the united states is making life hard for everybody like in a really basic way with the

00:17:21.580 cost of fuel and the availability of fuel because of his hubris like we we are we are victims of him

00:17:27.960 on the daily and the fact that he has mentioned so many times in the epstein files and nothing's 1.00

00:17:34.400 been done about it and that's like tacit approval for men grabbing women by the pussy 0.99

00:17:39.060 what i would really like to know is i would really like to know from an american lawyer 0.99

00:17:45.460 if there's any american lawyers out there please get in contact what do they mean when they say

00:17:50.340 there isn't enough evidence for anybody named in the files like what requires evidence because i

00:17:55.460 I know the laws are very different in the US.

00:17:59.080 For example, I think some states don't recognise no body murders.

00:18:04.520 So if you can't find the body, you don't know what's happened.

00:18:07.520 You can't see it's a murder and people can't be convicted of it.

00:18:10.680 Could we compile a list of those states for no real reason?

00:18:14.880 I don't know whether or not that's right or not,

00:18:21.040 but I do know cases that I hear about and I'm like, 0.96

00:18:23.660 but you know she's going to divorce her husband and then she goes to see her lawyer and then she

00:18:29.160 disappears yeah do we not have a guess there was a comedy skit on um one of the reels um saying me

00:18:38.200 on a jury and it was like it's something about she recently divorced her husband it was just a woman

00:18:43.300 shouting guilty he's guilty he's definitely yeah take him away so so there is discussion about um

00:18:50.180 The Greens, the Scottish Greens, and I presume this is one of their electoral kind of bids is that they're saying that if we get in, if we get no more seats, whatever, we're going to push through a pledge to criminalise misogyny.

00:19:01.640 Now, this is very interesting because it is on, we read about this on Instagram, on the National, which is a pro-independence newspaper in Scotland, who are doing some really good reporting about a lot of stuff that there's to do with women at the moment.

00:19:15.740 It's really interesting.

00:19:16.980 But they've got this article that's saying that.

00:19:19.180 so it's a new bill aimed at tackling misogynistic harassment and abuse it'll be tabled by the

00:19:25.780 scottish greens in the next session of parliament they have pledged it's called the misogyny and

00:19:29.780 criminal justice bill and it would recognize as you've said claire misogyny as a specific

00:19:34.320 offense in scott's law so and then it'll be accompanied which it has to be by funding for

00:19:40.340 violence prevention services and local council schools and community organizations to help curb

00:19:44.820 gender-based violence one of the things that we really need to be doing is we need to be talking

00:19:48.460 to kids from when they're tiny we need to be talking about you know about about gender issues

00:19:55.080 you know about misogyny about the difference between men and women that's real and that isn't

00:20:00.540 real and the history of what's happened with women and the imbalance of power we need to be starting

00:20:05.560 from there because you know i don't want to go into talking about the manosphere and all that

00:20:08.900 kind of thing but we know there's like a really bad atmosphere in some ways at the moment and we

00:20:13.140 really really need to tackle it but interestingly the first comment on it is oh no can i can i can

00:20:19.100 i agree first of all the first comment on it is criminalizing any acts of aspects of speech is 0.98

00:20:26.000 bad who gets to decide what's misogyny i mean zoe who gets to decide what murder me fuck off 0.96

00:20:32.180 the end is it going to be the same as online crimes where if someone is offended that's enough 0.99

00:20:38.760 to criminalise you. Can we just clarify this once and for all? Particularly for viewers,

00:20:44.700 listeners in America, because when we were in America, we had this conversation a couple of

00:20:48.000 times where people said to us, oh, yeah, but you jail people just for offending somebody or hurting

00:20:52.520 somebody's feelings. That's not how the law works. If that was how the law worked, 98% of Scottish

00:20:58.280 people would be in jail. We offend people on the daily. It's our sense of humour. Like it's an

00:21:03.600 offending sort of a place it's still got a very edgy sense of humor i would argue i'd certainly 1.00

00:21:08.920 be in the jail i'd be running a wing with all my offending bitches we'd all be left right and 1.00

00:21:14.880 center offending everybody it's exactly in your gang that you're in you're a burglar you're a 0.99

00:21:21.900 different that's a different thing but it's it's how hard is it to charge somebody and then see

00:21:27.680 that through and have somebody jailed for speech clear? Well first of all speech is free the same

00:21:33.980 way as it is in the US. We've got article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which

00:21:39.060 guarantees your freedom of speech and specifically the case law on the matter says it's not enough

00:21:44.800 that it offends you. That's not what we're about. Yeah. What the freedom of speech is about is

00:21:51.100 protecting your right to say what you want about what you want to say including political free

00:21:56.100 speech, which is, I suppose, the most protected apex of all free speech. But it also doesn't

00:22:02.160 allow people to career around saying exactly what they want about anything with no care

00:22:06.920 to the consequences of what they say. If you are whipping up hate against people, yeah,

00:22:13.660 that's a crime. Why wouldn't it be a crime?

00:22:15.920 Of course it is. So what American people that we spoke to are talking about is what I presume

00:22:20.600 is really amplified. Was there that woman in England last year when, or was it the summer

00:22:25.420 before time just has no consequence for me now but they they she had said online to set the hotels

00:22:32.820 on fire where there were asylum seekers I think what she got jailed for was essentially sort of 0.96

00:22:39.260 an encouragement for people to to arson right and people were like oh no she got jailed because she 1.00

00:22:46.720 just said I don't you know I don't agree with her being asylum seekers they're two very different

00:22:50.460 things you can say I don't agree with that as much as you like you can't be criminalized for that

00:22:54.200 Yeah, I can't remember the detail. I can't remember the detail of that case, but I can guarantee you nobody has got the jail for saying I don't like asylum seekers.

00:23:02.860 Because again, you know, there are a lot of noisy, like a minority, but a lot of noisy people that are saying that left, right and centre on the internet.

00:23:11.500 And I don't see them having any consequences for their actions.

00:23:14.440 Can I go back to this? It carries on this quote.

00:23:17.560 Yeah, yeah.

00:23:17.980 Will misandry be a crime?

00:23:21.360 If so, who decides what misandry is?

00:23:23.500 Is that going to be you again, Zoe?

00:23:25.460 Yeah, I'll do it. Happily.

00:23:28.000 And the person asks, will I be able to go back 1.00

00:23:30.140 to all the hateful comments women have posted 0.99

00:23:33.580 and get them done for historical misandry? 0.98

00:23:37.100 Mate, listen, if you don't want women piping up, 1.00

00:23:39.880 then shut the fuck up. 1.00

00:23:43.200 No, it's just, like, I cannot, 1.00

00:23:46.360 It goes on and on and on.

00:23:48.660 I mean, sometimes you get these guys

00:23:51.060 that make these comments

00:23:51.840 and you have to think,

00:23:53.420 I don't want to take us to the gutter,

00:23:55.060 but you have to think they're getting off

00:23:56.600 in some way on saying that

00:23:59.520 and then on women getting annoyed with them. 0.99

00:24:01.840 Like they're enjoying it. 0.61

00:24:02.940 It's like, you know, as the youth say,

00:24:04.040 it's rage baiting.

00:24:05.260 Can I just read this one part of the sentence

00:24:07.920 and I think we'll see how clearly it's been proved.

00:24:11.400 This person, so they say various other things

00:24:13.520 and they say,

00:24:13.940 I already get accused of being Hitler on the daily without even mentioning my views on anything.

00:24:19.840 Now, let's just pause there.

00:24:21.660 I don't know, Zoe, how many times you've ever accused of being Hitler without even mentioning my views on anything.

00:24:29.940 Do you think that person might be positing some pretty offensive views?

00:24:35.540 I mean, I'm quite forward.

00:24:37.400 I will express my views.

00:24:39.140 Nobody has ever accused me of being like Hitler.

00:24:42.620 Ever. 0.51

00:24:42.900 so I am imagining that he is expressing dog whistle racist dog whistles that that would be

00:24:50.060 my guess and we see it all the time and I think we're so sophisticated now that most of us can

00:24:55.320 recognize a dog whistle and most of us can recognize when somebody uses a tactic of chucking

00:25:00.140 in stats and percentages and being like look here's some numbers this proves my point because

00:25:05.280 this guy's got such a chip on his shoulder that I'm surprised he's not dragging that shoulder

00:25:09.420 along the ground as he moves ridiculous country is a joke and he's actually used the wrong countries

00:25:17.100 what you mean sir is country apostrophe s no i can't do apostrophes though i listen i normally 0.68

00:25:24.880 i wouldn't be a dick about it but i just think don't act as if you're coming from a place of 0.57

00:25:29.980 intellectual rigor when you when you can't do basics i know that's petty i know it's petty

00:25:37.420 my career shush anyway apart from the fact the world is burning yes literally and metaphorically

00:25:47.020 have we got anything we'd like to say to sort of cheer things up towards the end of this little

00:25:51.000 extra bulletin yes we decided this year not to go to the tartan parade in new york because it just

00:26:02.620 felt for us the wrong time to be going across to america and we felt like we'd be pretend and

00:26:10.000 everything was okay yeah so we took the decision not to go and that was a really really tough

00:26:17.120 decision and then we had fomo last weekend we very much had fomo but you know zoe and i

00:26:23.740 are both love american people so his family are yeah traveled around america i love it i just i

00:26:32.160 wanted to yeah and but we just decided that we just couldn't pretend everything was okay so we

00:26:38.900 didn't go however a bunch of our amazing scotland clan sorry sorry sorry live news as it comes in

00:26:48.680 so that thread that we've just been commenting on the person that commented a woman had written

00:26:54.420 or the misogynists are all showing themselves and i wrote they always they always out themselves and

00:26:59.540 he's responded to me even though I didn't tag him. Who is they? Who is they? I want to protect all

00:27:05.400 speech, not just one side. Why is it that me saying this makes the left connect dots that

00:27:10.000 don't exist? What part of what I said was outing myself? Now bear in mind, I didn't tag him. I

00:27:16.120 wasn't talking to him directly. Also, what part of that is the left? The left and he's saying he

00:27:23.720 has left and then he's just written echo chamber echo chamber echo chamber like i give a fuck 1.00

00:27:30.740 honestly shut up shut up 0.99

00:27:34.220 now you see i could get the jail with people's thoughts about about being jailed for being 0.99

00:27:40.800 offensive yeah exactly wait till thought crime becomes a crime you'll never get out sorry sorry

00:27:46.300 about that live update that i just had to had to put in there right so back to tartan week yeah

00:27:51.600 So whilst we couldn't go to Tartan Week, we were so delighted and so happy that so many people turned up to Tartan Week and throughout Tartan Week, even though they weren't in New York, wore the Witches of Scotland Tartan and tagged us and we saw all the photographs of it.

00:28:08.120 So nice.

00:28:08.680 incredible particular shout out to rose and to pete who we met when we were in new york and

00:28:16.240 they're a great couple and they went to various events in tartan week and they also went to an

00:28:22.380 event in new york where they were fully dressed in the witch's scotland tartan and other people

00:28:27.100 were there wearing the witch's scotland tartan they come over to talk to them how cool so cool

00:28:30.660 so cool so cool and so so if you want to see rose in all her glory her handle is lady momington i

00:28:37.060 don't know if she's at if she's private or not but she really rocks it and she made this amazing

00:28:41.440 sparring like handbag to go with it and she just looks so cool she's so great yeah so we thank

00:28:48.200 every one of you that tagged us and mentioned us we really appreciate it and as we see yeah

00:28:52.720 it's resistance we're not doing it just because it looks super cool uh it does look i mean it does

00:28:58.060 it does it obviously it obviously functions as its prime aim which is that we remember and we

00:29:04.040 can learn and teach and other people then learn about it through the through the wearing and the

00:29:07.480 use of the tartan but it the thing that's really bringing us great joy in these dark times is the

00:29:13.200 fact that it builds community right so the clan our little nascent clan is standing at something

00:29:18.840 like 22 000 members and i think it just shows that you know with the with the aims that we share

00:29:24.500 about looking after the vulnerable and about coming together and about finding strength together

00:29:28.740 together and about resistance that's there that's there and we can't forget that and everybody needs

00:29:33.540 to keep remembering that and not feel shut down 0.99

00:29:35.660 by ding-dongs like 1.00

00:29:37.220 I just want to protect you from your smidge 1.00

00:29:39.120 fuck off 0.99

00:29:41.380 so I think we need to remember and keep 1.00

00:29:43.560 that energy and

00:29:45.060 like maybe not do the guillotine

00:29:47.360 that I was just jokingly suggesting earlier

00:29:49.200 but just kind of

00:29:51.640 keep it going in a positive

00:29:52.780 maybe not violent way but I do

00:29:55.580 think there are so many more of us and we need to keep

00:29:57.560 those conversations going and reach out to

00:29:59.580 other people so that you don't feel so desperately

00:30:01.460 alone because it is really hard just now you know i wrote on another comment on something

00:30:05.480 it's brutal it's brutal just now it's every day so we are not only the newest but we must be the

00:30:12.040 fastest growing clan in scotland and when people come together if you get those sorts of comments

00:30:19.740 and get those sorts of things tag us we'll happily tag other people and say look look at what this

00:30:25.220 egypt has said now to be perfectly honest i think we're actually personally i think a lot of the

00:30:30.920 time that is diverting us from things that we should be doing yeah yeah i know it can be

00:30:36.480 satisfying to have an argument with folk online but in fact what we should be doing is just seeing

00:30:41.120 that and well hang on i know you're talking you're actually talking to me and you're dressing it up

00:30:46.760 as if you're talking to everybody but actually you're saying to me don't wrestle with pigs

00:30:52.220 because you both get muddy and the pig enjoys it is that what you're saying exactly it's difficult

00:30:57.800 I've talked about this so many times but I just feel like if I'm if I'm getting involved and not 0.98

00:31:02.800 really giving a fuck about it that they're not hassling somebody else I enjoy the sport I do

00:31:08.020 enjoy the sport just be honest yeah I do I enjoy it with that do you know the problem is with that 0.89

00:31:13.700 it's wasting your time yeah I'll try and keep it to a minimum

00:31:18.240 we have that live folks yeah yeah I said I said I'll try I said I'll try

00:31:27.520 i mean it's not healthy it's not healthy but the the plus point is that you realize that there's

00:31:31.520 lots of other people that feel the exact same way that you do and there's lots of good people and

00:31:34.760 there's probably lots of other people that are taking claire's advice and are like i'm not getting

00:31:38.340 involved with that massive waste of time that bellend disengage and see when you because nobody

00:31:44.040 ever won a war on misogyny by writing back to misogynists they are just wasting your time when

00:31:52.080 you could be writing to your mp saying i want the law to change let them spend their time

00:31:58.000 yap away in their own social media bubbles while you go out into the world and change it

00:32:03.580 yeah yeah i think definitely so we've got some good podcast guests booked coming up we've got

00:32:10.360 a podcast coming up very soon which is about current witch accusations with a really horrifying

00:32:17.340 uh setting but we'll we'll tell you about that when we're releasing it we'll actually have to

00:32:21.960 put a trigger warning on just in discussions but anyway we've never put trigger warnings on before

00:32:28.800 and everybody knows it's about torture and murder of women primarily I know I mean just take it as

00:32:36.620 read some of this will be we could have put a trigger warning today so we should I just feel

00:32:43.680 like we're all grown-ups anyway anyway we will discuss and decide I don't feel like my skills

00:32:49.420 and IT are not good enough to go back

00:32:51.580 and put a trigger warning on anything.

00:32:53.780 Yeah, we should probably discuss this

00:32:56.380 when we're not recording.

00:32:57.240 We will discuss this.

00:32:58.820 Tell us your thoughts.

00:32:59.900 Are they a good idea?

00:33:00.960 I don't know.

00:33:01.860 But we have got some good episodes coming out.

00:33:04.740 The one we just recorded is really interesting

00:33:06.560 and we've got some other stuff,

00:33:07.500 including a woman who's a sports sociologist,

00:33:11.180 which initially you might go,

00:33:12.300 well, what's that got to do with anything?

00:33:13.940 A lot.

00:33:15.060 So we'll be talking to her,

00:33:16.280 which will be really interesting,

00:33:17.380 and various other great guests.

00:33:18.840 so we're going to try really really hard to get back to fortnightly podcast episodes hang on first

00:33:24.300 of all we've played that so many times it's technically gaslighting at this stage it's not

00:33:30.140 it's with the best of intentions i'm not saying it meaning yeah right i'm saying it meaning i

00:33:35.560 believe in us claire i believe in us baby i do i do okay see the sports scientist

00:33:41.540 sociologist sociologist they're not training raccoons are they i don't really know her well

00:33:48.980 enough to ask her that yet just just cool your jets all i all i want to be clear about is i do 0.95

00:33:54.840 not want you getting an expert on ostensibly on some women's issue only to find out is for your 0.74

00:34:02.180 own raccoon training purposes i think you'll find that my training academy is for everybody's benefit

00:34:09.360 and i'll just leave it at that okay i saw a really cool thing today which was about um somebody

00:34:15.820 protesting like really horrible kind of hate preachers and they were they were really kind

00:34:20.300 of like anti lgbtqia plus really anti-women you know anti-abortion and what this person was doing 0.67

00:34:26.900 was throwing down i don't know if it was seeds or whatever and encouraging all these glasswegian

00:34:31.900 pigeons to pile on so that the the preacher was there trying to talk and then there's just like

00:34:37.440 a flurry of pigeons and pigeons to me

00:34:39.400 are the street fighters of the world

00:34:40.940 so I very much enjoyed that

00:34:43.300 I could do that on a grander scale

00:34:45.420 with ravens

00:34:46.080 and because

00:34:49.440 ravens are so clever and they remember

00:34:51.300 people's faces I feel like there's

00:34:53.600 let's forget about AI

00:34:54.960 let's be thinking about raven

00:34:57.480 intelligence let's get into the real world

00:34:59.680 yeah R.I. I've just

00:35:01.500 invented that Claire write it down 1.00

00:35:02.720 raven intelligence

00:35:03.980 right okay are we gonna say cheerio for now

00:35:07.840 cheerio for now

Witches of Scotland - April 19, 2026

EP 83 BONUS RANT

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