The SNP’s transphobia muddle

For a party so devoted to trans rights, it seems strange that the SNP is less than forthcoming over its new definition of transphobia that their National Executive Committee adopted in recent days. The mind boggles over what they may be hiding.

Despite the twin pressures of Brexit and Covid-19, not to mention a key Scottish election three months away and the ongoing Alex Salmond affair, it seems that the party is prioritising the gender debate. As a trans person, even I am getting exasperated by this relentless focus. 

Let’s be clear: transphobic hate crime exists but it is nowhere near as commonplace as the transgender lobby would like us to believe. Indeed, when Channel 4 checked the facts, they found that a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person in Britain.

Of course this doesn’t mean that some transgender people aren’t targeted for abuse. But thankfully this is why we have the Criminal Justice Act, which offers key protection in law for people like me. 

Yet the SNP appears to have a milder form of transphobia in its sights: ‘misgendering and dead-naming people’ in the words