The transgender-woman couple Sophie Molly and Heather Herbert have long characterised the transgender-activist milieu in Scotland, but after the brutal murder of the English politician Ann Widdecombe, Herbert became known also outside Scotland when he distinguished himself with distasteful comments and was subsequently arrested by the police. His partner Sophie Molly is also a transgender woman and activist, and together the couple have made it a career path to sneak money for themselves, for naïve donors willingly open their wallets.
Sophie Molly is a name I first became aware of after a former mother in the class of one of my children continually spoke of “her” and shared pieces about the transgender activist on Facebook. Euan “Sophie Molly” Weddell is a former candidate for The Greens in Scotland – the equivalent of the MDG here at home. They are as radical as the MDG and have a major focus on the transgender cause. He later fell out with the party, according to himself, and wanted to stand for election as an independent. I noticed that this mother continually shared “cries for help” from Sophie Molly – he has disabilities, supposedly, and cannot work. He regards himself (of course) as continually discriminated against. One fundraising drive concerned the fact that he needed money in order to stand as an independent candidate in Aberdeen at the parliamentary election.
Sophie Molly then describes a series of causes he will work for, among other things rent regulations and other classic left-wing politics, as well as “ending the ban on puberty blockers for transgender children”. Of course. Sophie Molly supposedly needed donations in order to carry this out and collected around NOK 13,000.
What the money was used for is uncertain. He was not elected. And did he really fall out with the Greens? No, he was expelled from the party after having called J.K. Rowling a torn-faced cow on social media. Exactly what this expression is to be translated as I do not know, but that it was an ugly expression which scarcely befits a politician to use about another human being is clear. He claims to have joined the Scottish National Party since then, but whether he is a member is uncertain.
In recent times Sophie Molly has again collected money, this time for an operation for Heather Herbert, his cohabitant. Herbert needed a kidney operation, and Sophie Molly claimed that he was not receiving this operation from the health service. Once again the transgender sympathisers went all in. Only days before Herbert was operated on – at the taxpayers’ expense, that is by the public NHS – Sophie Molly had reached his target of collecting around NOK 100,000 for the operation, a sum that would not in any case have been sufficient to cover the expenses.
Sophie Molly had collected money among other things by carrying out two “Walks for Heather” in which he walked 16 English miles (25 kilometres). Sophie Molly has claimed that he has a neurological illness that affects his ability to walk, and receives a disability benefit on account of this. Sophie Molly can be seen standing and walking at a series of demonstrations, such as for example here, where he encourages transgender women to use women’s toilets, even though an English court judgment has determined that only biological women shall use them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJgVPTioO0g
After Herbert received his operation (which had been refused him on account of transphobia, supposedly) Sophie Molly proclaimed that the money that had been collected should go to a “worthy cause”, but according to British laws it is not permitted to use money that has been collected for one particular purpose for something else, and it must instead be returned to the donors.
The police have in the meantime charged Heather Herbert for an unspecified post on social media. Freedom of expression is under hard pressure throughout Great Britain, not least in Scotland, but there must be a certain Schadenfreude for gender-critical activists – that is those who work for the understanding of sex still to be based on biology, such as J.K. Rowling and For Women Scotland – to see that the long arm of the law is coming for the repulsive Herbert. I do not use the adjective carelessly – Herbert has shared on social media how he must insert objects into his constructed vagina in order that it shall not grow shut. His comments about Ann Widdecombe’s death were also distasteful. He wrote on BlueSky after the murder that the death was “good news” and hoped that it had been an “extremely painful death” in which she “screamed in pain”.
Herbert, who is employed by the University of Aberdeen as a web developer, is also being investigated by his employer, as well as by Labour, of which he is a member and for which he has been a candidate.
The story of the transgender couple Sophie Molly and Heather Herbert is only a small fragment of the activist culture and the associated activist economy that has built itself up around themes such as transgender and racism. We all know activists who claim that they work for a good cause, but who for one reason or another always make this “good cause” concern themselves and their own interests. Whether they receive state support or are supported financially by naïve individuals and organisations, they appropriate means which they receive solely by virtue of their identity and opportunism, not talent or what they produce. Or is it perhaps a talent in itself to manage to generate so much publicity about one’s own person and excellence that they can sometimes live off it?
The case of Jason Arday is now on everyone’s lips, and the former professor at the University of Cambridge was completely exposed just before his tragic death. Not only was his academic work questionable, his entire life history was built on lies. But Arday was at least sympathetic, and one can understand that it took longer before he was exposed. In the case of Sophie Molly/Heather Herbert there is little charm to be traced. Both appear completely raving mad. It is for me a riddle that people voluntarily donate money to them. I have arrived at the conclusion that those who support mentally unstable people such as this probably have a degree of mental disturbance themselves, and are so deeply inside the ideology for which these activists stand that red flags which most other people would see are not visible to them. They sincerely believe that transgender people, and especially transgender women, that is men who wish to present themselves as women, are misunderstood, discriminated against and marginalised, and therefore willingly open their wallets for them.
The rest of us see that the emperor is naked.