It should be evident from the UK Government’s (outrageous) section 35 block on the Scottish Parliament’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill and from the story of Isla Bryson, the convicted rapist whose temporary solitary confinement in Cornton Vale has been much discussed in the news this last week, that how prisoners are currently assessed for risk to others is not impacted by the GRR’s proposed change to gender recognition certificates. The existing gender identity policy of the Scottish Prison Service, currently under review, has existed since 2014 without much mainstream attention.

We should expect Scottish prisons to protect all prisoners under their care, while striving to provide the conditions for rehabilitation, but they do not always succeed in doing so. Cornton Vale, the only women-only prison in Scotland and a facility which also houses young offenders and the babies and children of inmates, has a troubling history of violence, unmet psychiatric needs, and dehumanising conditions.

A report found women waited over an hour to use a toilet, and were sometimes instructed to use sinks instead. Until 2006, prisoners due to give birth were “double cuffed”, handcuffed immediately prior to and after giving birth. Conditions were described as "Victorian”. A replacement facility in Inverclyde has not yet been completed.

When last week Douglas Ross used the words “absolute beast” in the Scottish Parliament to describe a convicted rapist, and in his next sentence brought up the Gender Recognition Reform so as to link the two, his tabloid language was reminiscent of Facebook vigilante groups that exist to whip up fear, violence, and moral panic. But moral panic has never, historically, been a friend to women – even when supposedly for our sake.

In an infamous poster, entitled A Suffragette’s Home, a man arrives home from “a hard day’s work” to domestic upheaval, an absent wife, and a “back soon” note left on a Votes for Women! poster. In a British Library article, Dr Julia Bush writes: “This image embodied a widespread feeling that women’s suffrage was merely the tip of the iceberg. Below lay the dark forces of a radical feminism which could eventually subvert the entire social order by undermining the gendered foundations of domestic life.”

While some opponents to suffrage plainly believed women were too weak and unintelligent to partake in politics, others, including the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League claimed that withholding women’s voting rights was for our own good. When equal marriage was brought into law in Scotland in 2014, those who claimed it would lead to the downfall of society were mostly bit-part players, their homophobic waffle drowned out among the tide of acceptance.

But it wasn’t that long ago Section 28 brought the worst stigmatisation of gay men, with the infamous Daily Record headline “Gay Sex Lessons for Scots Schools” exemplifying the era’s sensationalist and perverse interpretation of the advancement of gay rights as inherently linked to paedophilia and threatening to children.

It is a classic mechanism of prejudice to use the bad behaviour of individuals, like convicted rapist Isla Bryson, to demonise an entire social group (Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA)

Besides crude hatred, most equality and civil rights movements throughout history have had to overcome public perception that the full, fair and free participation of their members in society equals an immediate risk to the safety, security and way of life of a dominant social group. In the absence of evidence for this, it is common for fearmongering propaganda to hold up the bad behaviour of individuals in order to demonise and sanction punishment of an entire social group. This is a classic mechanism of prejudice. Don't fall for it.

Transgender debate in Scotland: Isla Bryson's case is being used to demonise all transgender people – Laura Waddell