Graham Linehan, the co-writer of the sitcom Father Ted, has been given a verbal warning by police after a complaint by a transgender activist.

Linehan was told by West Yorkshire police not to contact the activist Stephanie Hayden, after a row on Twitter.

Hayden reported him for transphobia after he referred to her as “he” and for “deadnaming” her by referring to her by names used before she transitioned.

The pair had been involved in a dispute on Twitter about gender identity, resulting in the writer retweeting a post to his 672,000 followers that gave Hayden’s previous names with pictures.

Linehan alleges that Hayden posted several addresses linked to his family in an attempt to “shut me up”.

Hayden, who is pursuing civil proceedings accusing Linehan of harassment, defamation and misuse of private information, said she spent five hours providing a statement and evidence to police after the exchange.

Posting on Twitter, Hayden said she had urged police to take “swift and proportionate action to make clear that transgender harassment was unacceptable”.

She said: “This has been a difficult week for me. Transphobia in any form is unacceptable. Now the police matter has been resolved anything else is between the parties. Thank you to the transgender community (and beyond) for your continued support.”

Linehan said he would speak to his lawyer on Monday about potentially taking legal action against Hayden. He said: “The police asked me to stop contacting someone I had no intention of contacting. It was a bit like asking me to never contact Charlie Sheen.”

Linehan, who is also known for writing The IT Crowd and co-writing Black Books, defended his stance of referring to Hayden as “he”, adding: “I will call all of my trans friends ‘she’. I think of them as women, they are respectful and are not misogynists. But I refuse to respect the pronouns of misogynists.”

The writer said Hayden had posted details of his wife’s business. On Friday he locked his Twitter account citing “abuse and harassment”.

In the same tweet, Linehan highlighted a petition he had signed calling on Stonewall, an LGBT charity, to acknowledge the conflict that exists between “transgenderism and sex-based women’s rights”.

The petition calls for a respectful debate on the issue, and contends that Stonewall is failing to recognise the diversity of viewpoints on transgender issues, including among LGBT people.

Linehan had given his backing to a support group of trans women who are opposed to self-identification and said he would back their campaign on social media. Hayden was also a member of the group before it disbanded following an internal row.

Hayden has previously accused Sussex University of being a “temple of transgender hate” and supported the campaign to oust female academics if they challenged transgender orthodoxy.

She was also among the activists who pressurised a billboard company to remove a poster in Liverpool, which said the dictionary definition of “woman” was an “adult human female” because it was offensive.

• This article was amended on 31 May 2019 to clarify the manner of the police communication with Linehan.