Why do men who want to be women deserve more protection than we do?

VAL Mcdermid has been commenting on Nicola Sturgeon apparently suffering from misogyny, saying: “A lot of men do not like the idea of a successful, powerful woman.” What she fails to acknowledge is that many of the comments criticising the former First Minister are from women who feel that they have been let down by a fellow woman.

When Ms Sturgeon should have been standing up for women and our rights, she branded opponents of the Gender Recognition

Reform Bill as misogynist, transphobic and racist. There’s that word again: misogynist, defined as a “hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women”. Was she really saying that women who are protesting that our rights are being stripped away to provide those born male access to women’s spaces, have a hatred or aversion to women?

We now have the current First Minister, Humza Yousaf, saying that transwomen will be protected by the planned misogyny law, claiming that they will “often be the ones who suffer threats of rape or threats of disfigurement” (“Author Rowling accuses Yousaf of ‘showing absolute contempt for women’”, The Herald, April 17).

It is utterly soul-destroying and insulting to hear a man tell us women that those who grew up as boys and men are often the ones who suffer threats of rape when it is women who have experienced or feared rape all their lives. Women know what it is like to walk home at night from the bus stop in a state of high alert, women are the ones who are propositioned and harangued by men, women are the ones who can sympathise with every woman who has ever quickened her step when she hears someone walking behind her. No matter how confident, how physically strong and how tall a woman is, she knows that most men are capable of overpowering her.

Women are now expected to accept that men who identify as women should be allowed into women-only spaces such as public toilets and changing rooms. When the men in our lives, our fathers, brothers and sons, defend our rights, they will find that they are accused of breaking the law. What law protects women from being threatened by transwomen who are not willing to allow us womenonly spaces?

How did we end up with a situation where men who identify as women deserve more protection than the women they futilely aspire to be?

Jane Lax, Aberlour.