The SNP’s deputy Westminster leader has claimed that gender-critical commentators are no better than white supremicists.
Mhairi Black made the comparison during an appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe.
According to The Telegraph:
Mhairi Black said that “bad actors” and “50-year-old Karens” were responsible for the debate over transgender rights and suggested those who vocally disagreed with her views on such issues could not be “decent” people.
In comments likely to deepen an already bitter divide in Scotland, she said those who made “intellectual” arguments against extending trans rights were akin to past generations who claimed non-white ethnic groups were inferior.
For Women Scotland, a prominent gender-critical campaign group, claimed that the MP’s comments called into question her fitness for office.
Speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Ms Black said: “Once upon a time, you had intellectuals who made these big prolific statements about how race was a key factor.
“[They argued] ‘I think you’ll find statistics show that if you have more Bame [black, Asian and minority ethnic] people; crime goes up’ or whatever it is. We now rightly look back on that and go, ‘You were a racist. You might be an intellectual, but what you were saying was racist.’
“If you’re not educating yourself on things, then you can’t complain when people from a minority say, ‘You’re not treating us right’, and that’s exactly what’s happening with the trans community right now.”
She added: “There are definitely bad actors at play who are radicalising people who are vulnerable. They are radicalising people who are too online.
“And they’re also using this small community as a wedge issue to cause chaos and make people divide amongst themselves.
“When you start tracing it back, the money always links back to fundamental Christian groups in America, Baptist groups, anti-abortion organisations.”
Later in the talk, at The Stand Comedy Club, Ms Black was asked whether she believed that someone with a different philosophical view to her on gender issues could still be “a thoroughly decent person”.
She responded: “If you keep it to yourself, aye,” to applause from the audience.
“To me, a decent person is someone who tries to make others comfortable and accept them, particularly when it’s a marginalised, oppressed group.
“That’s just human progress. And to me being decent is being part of that progress, not hindering it.”
Susan Smith, a director at For Women Scotland, said Ms Black’s comments were a “damning indictment of her intellectual capacity and her fitness to act as a legislator”.
She added: “Her inability to grasp why highly vulnerable women in prison, fleeing domestic violence, or being cared for in hospital might not want to share intimate spaces with someone of the male sex suggests that it is long past time she got out of her highly cosseted, gilded bubble.
“Women who disagree with her should not be forced to be silent like some latter-day scold, nor are they the racist or religious fundamentalist bogeywomen.”
