THERE is, in response to the announcement, last week, that Ruth Davidson and her same-sex partner are having a baby, a right level of fuss to make.

There are, after all, things to celebrate here. First, someone who really wants a baby is having one – albeit someone whose politics you might not agree with. That’s quite lovely, though common. We like to celebrate babies. Sometimes people like to celebrate them a bit too much, as we’ve seen in the whole fanfare around the birth, last week, of the new royal, Louis Arthur Charles.

Secondly, Davidson is a lesbian, and I’m not saying that alone deserves a round of applause, but the pictures of her and her partner Jen Wilson, two women, sitting with their dog and announcing their family of three is expanding to four has got to go some way to making same-sex parenting seem far more normalised. Perhaps people will stop being so weird and prurient about lesbian mothers after they’ve seen Ruth do it. It just so happens that the couple announced their pregnancy on Lesbian Visibility Day. Whether it should have been “breaking news”, as it was on the many news feeds, however, is more questionable.

So, yes, I think Davidson’s pregnancy deserves a little fuss. But, one thing we know about fuss over women and babies is it so often tips over into the wrong kind of fuss. I was just thinking how nice it was that we were now so chilled in Scotland that a lesbian leader of a party could announce her pregnancy, and everyone would just be happy for her in a normal happy way, when I looked on Twitter and saw how wrong I was. First, for instance, were the men who didn’t seem to think that her pregnancy was remotely possible – “#itsamiracle #virginbirth #doeshergirlfriendknow” – or were solely interested in who provided the sperm to make the baby. There were also those who purported to feel sorry for the child, and not just because its mother “is a Tory”, but because its being raised by two women. All this, in spite of the fact that countless studies show that children raised by same sex parents do just as well as those raised by heterosexual parents.

But what also worries me is how Davidson is treated from here on in. She is, notably, the first leader of a party to have become pregnant while occupying such a role in the UK, and it feels as if before long we could find ourselves in the grip of a Tory bumpwatch.

We know, after all, that high profile women rarely get to live out their pregnancies without being scrutinised. When, at the beginning of the year, New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern announced her pregnancy, such was the reaction that people started talking about Jacindababymania, referring to the child as the “royal baby”. Such was the response that she felt the need to say, “I’m just pregnant, not incapacitated.”

So, yes, a little bit of fuss is a fine thing. We can enjoy another person’s joy regardless of whether their politics are the same as ours or not. But let’s keep it to a momentary congratulations – and then let these two women get on with their lives, work and journey towards becoming parents. 'Woman has baby' is not a story. 'Two women have baby' is a story - particularly in our culture, and when one is famous, since it is linked to a wider tale of rights and attitudinal change. But not it is not a great big story. Just a little one, worthy of a brief baby shower of fuss.

THE DANGEROUS CULTURE OF THE INVOLUNTARY CELIBATE

PEOPLE talked about the 'incels' back in 2014 when Elliott Rodger, a regular visitor to now banned incel pages on Reddit, shot six people in Isla Vista, California. They were talking about them again last week when Alek Minassian drove a van into a packed Toronto pavement, killing ten people. Only moments before he had posted, "The Incel Rebellion has already begun!”

Incel, for those who don't know, is shorthand for “involuntary celibate”, and is a label adopted by men who see themselves as unable to get sex because modern women won’t give it to them. If you want to know what incel culture is like, just imagine it as a phrase that is easily interchanged with the term “extreme misogynist” – for woman-hate seethes through its stories.

Having spent some time over the past week looking at dehumanising incel posts, my overwhelming feeling is that this isn’t new. It’s an mythology -infused version of a long and old story. An incel, for all the sci-fi like jargon, is someone who is having trouble getting laid. Incels, meanwhile, complain about “Chads”, who are just the sexually successful jocks of old, and their female partners, "Stacys". These frustrations have always been there, but now an ideology has been created around them. The feelings have been glorified.

But that is not the sole problem. Rather, I think the bigger issue is that of increasing social isolation. It’s tragic that these forums are where men are coming with their pain. That people, with all kinds of pain do this, is one of the calamities of the internet age. Yes, they may find solace there, but also something far more dangerous and destructive.