The relevant comparators for how trans people are being used as a political scapegoat by politicians in the heart of the ruling party in Scotland are the Law and Justice Party of Poland and the Republican Party of the United States.

Other than the SNP, I don't think any centre or centre-left party in the Anglophone world has provided such a safe home for anti-trans rhetoric. As far as I know, the only other governing party in the Anglophone world that has done so is the Republican Party.

Scotland is making itself an international outlier in its political treatment of trans people. The combination of an echo chamber of political misinformation and a convenient scapegoat for factional advancement is obscuring just how bizarrely hostile Scotland is making itself.

I cannot find words to express how it feels to be in the minority that is being treated this way. For rank, open hostility across media and government to be the daily reality. To have to come to terms, every day, with how to respond to endemic institutional transphobia.

I have largely retreated from day-to-day political discourse, and entirely retreated from social media fights, in favour of more focussed in depth work on trans healthcare, and to focus on direct mutual aid. But even this is becoming untenable.

I now have to deal with the reality that any tiny change in public policy to improve trans life, down to even minor reforms of the healthcare system, is going to be subject to mass, popular opposition and media misinformation. We will be made to fight for every scrap of life.

The betrayal I feel is intense. I have good comrades, but whole sections of the Scottish left enable this situation through silence & support.

@Common_Weal, shame on you for allowing your name to be used this way. Shame on you for your long-term tolerance of this tendency.

"Radical Independence" team, where are you? I've marched with you, organised with you. What's radically possible, when a tiny minority is being demonised for factional gain? I've read your tepid comment pieces and I'm ashamed.

Across the SNP and the left, you're losing huge swathes of your youth wing. Because while leaders are silent, plenty of us can see where this story goes. When populist nationalism and a populist left allows this scapegoating, nothing good comes of it.

Trans people have been made into a monster in Scotland, collectively and individually. There are very few of us with a public voice, and, speaking as one with only a small voice, the experience is intolerable. Turned into a silencing horror, when it is impossible to speak.

I have no answers for the people who want to help. I'm grateful for any voice raised in solidarity, but it's now going to take a lot more then hashtags and flag emojis. Turning Scottish life away from this course is going to be gruelling work. I am tired and I need some hope.

For folk outwith Scotland who don't really know what's going on, here's a very basic primer: https://twitter.com/HarryJosieGiles/status/1318214318949912576