SNP MP John Nicolson warns of ‘explosion’ of transphobia in Scotland

He said the Gender Recognition Reform Bill had ‘been mischaracterised to a grotesque degree’

John Nicolson was speaking at the Fringe on Saturday

An MP has told how it is a “grim time” for trans people in Scotland as a result of an “insidious culture war” imported from the United States.

John Nicolson said while Scotland had become the “most gay friendly country in all of Europe” it was “important not to be too complacent about equality”.

The SNP MP, who in a previous career in journalism was the first BBC presenter to come out as gay, said that there had been “an explosion of transphobia in Scotland” in recent years.

In a comment made about his MP colleague Joanna Cherry, a vocal critic of the Scottish Government’s controversial gender reform legislation, he said the SNP group at Westminster was “very LGBT” (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) or was “in Joanna’s case LGB without the T”.

Mr Nicolson went on to say that the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which was passed by Holyrood last year before being blocked by Wesminster, had been “mischaracterised to a grotesque degree”.

Speaking at an ‘in coversation’ event with journalist Graham Spiers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he said: “We have imported a very insidious culture war from the United States into Scotland.

“If I was a young trans kid I would be finding this a grim time to be alive.”

The Ochil and South Perthshire MP continued: “The bottom line is this. It is horribly, horribly easy to attack women in society, women get attacked all the time, often in a family unit statistics show, but all over the place.

“It just doesn’t seem credible to me that a heterosexual man, because that is who attack women, it’s not gay men, and it’s not trans women, heterosexual men attack women. They are not going to go to the problem of getting themselves a gender recognition certificate, to dress up in heels and wig in order to go into a private place in order to assault women.”

Mr Nicolson went on to liken the prejudice suffered by trans people today to the abuse endured by gay people previously, as he called on politicians and “powerful people” with a platform not to attack them.