As of yesterday, Observer columnist and leader writer Sonia Sodha, LGB Alliance co-founder Malcolm Clarke, Rosie Duffield MP, For Women Scotland and many other very high-profile “Gender Critical” figures were still following Nicola Murray on X/Twitter.

Murray is one of Scotland’s best-known anti-trans activists; she was one of the key figures in the witch-hunt against Mridul Wadhwa, the trans woman driven out of her job at a rape crisis centre in Edinburgh.

And as Edinburgh Live reported last week, Murray was arrested in 2022 for, and has now been found guilty of,  “a shocking campaign of physical and sexual abuse against four children” over a 20-year period, and placed on the sex offender’s register. The case was reported in other regional newspapers and in both The Sun and The Times, at least in Scotland. But the non-Scots who follow her on X will know about the case too, because she was posting about her trial while it was ongoing.

Imagine the immediate and ongoing outrage if Murray were a trans woman: the furious phone-ins, the condemnation in endless columns, the social media hashtags, the demands for the government to do something, the calls to place her in a male prison to protect women. But of course, she isn’t trans, so none of that is going to happen. The “gender-critical” movement wants you to hate imaginary monsters, not actual ones. And that makes it an excellent place for real monsters to hide.