This is the full transcript of the speech given at Òran Mór for the LGB Alliance launch event.

I’m going to be talking a bit today about my experience as a young person in navigating this topic. I’m a co-founder of forwomen, along with Trina Budge, Marion Calder (who you’ll hear from later) and the late Magdalen Berns. We are campaign group that aims to combat the proposed changes to the gender recognition act. I’m also a student at Edinburgh University, at the art school, so as you can imagine I’m surrounded by…likeminded activists.

I have been engaged with this topic since I was seventeen, so I’m very unforgiving of my peer group, who seem to make up the bulk of protesters at women’s meetings and events like these. The forwomen meeting in the Apex hotel in Edinburgh last year had protests and threats so severe we had to double our security and involve the police — all simply so women could assemble and discuss their rights.

I’m embarrassed for them. You won’t hear any excuses from me about social media leading the naive astray, as I was also a ‘Tumblr feminist’ and was quite capable of following links outside the site to scanned pdfs of second wave texts, rather than Jezebel articles. There really is nothing standing in the way of these young people and a good book.

With that being said, these activists are useful idiots at the forefront of a lobby effort that’s been decades in the making. The push legally to accept the “international best practice” of an affirmative, self-id approach — one that nullifies sex based rights and legal recognition for homosexuals — runs parallel to a culture war among my generation.

At the universities, systems put in place by feminists seeking to protect women are now the very procedures used to discipline them. Three years ago, my former partner Magdalen Berns graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in physics; however, she was also permanently reprimanded by the uni for “violent and disorderly conduct” for stating the fact men cannot become women and consequently, can never be lesbians. Interestingly, she was first called a TERF after she disagreed with Edinburgh University Students Association (EUSA) LGBT Liberation group’s statement of support for the drag ‘ban’ of Glasgow LGBT Pride in 2015.

The individual who put forward the compliant, Ada Wells, campaigned for “TERFs” to be kicked off campus. Now, if homosexuality is same-sex, not same-gender attraction, then this surely would mean all the lesbians at Edinburgh University would be TERFs. The complainant wants lesbians out of Edinburgh university — homophobia plain and simple. Later, Wells had to resign as LGBT Officer after tweeting an anti-Semitic remark and other controversial tweets on police deaths. Yet Magdalen’s counter complaint against him was unsuccessful. This person has a history of mental health problems and it is apparent that Edinburgh University are guilty of enabling a harassment campaign against a lesbian student. For history’s sake, I would recommend the University right this wrong by seeing that the reprimand gets expunged from her record and there is a public apology.

Although the conversation has been gaining traction, not much has improved. In June last year, Julie Bindel was speaking at an event at Edinburgh University and was assaulted by a protestor when she tried to leave. In December, another event was cancelled after the university’s staff pride network emailed hundreds of staff, accusing guest speakers of “a history of transphobia”.

I was warned by Magdalen, if I didn’t want my degree compromised, to stay out of the LGBT spaces and student politics. It is a shocking step backwards that this is a choice gay women have to make.

Despite this, I did attend some LGBT events. As you can imagine, we sat in a circle and were made to introduce our pronouns. What an act of gaslighting for gay students, that in a space supposedly for them, a member of the opposite sex can be sat across from you and mandate your referral to them as that of your own sex.

At club nights, organisers distribute leaflets on the safe space values of the night and, of course, preferred pronouns feature. I’d be more upset about my complete alienation from my peer group if it weren’t for the fact these people seriously don’t know how to party. “Queer” nights have replaced gay and lesbian bars. Organisers fall over themselves to host the most inclusive night, with sex-segregated toilets opened up as gender neutral. Speaking to bouncers at these venues, they know exactly what a safeguarding issue this is, but are unable to say anything for fear of losing their jobs. At one of the few remaining gay bars (because there are no lesbian bars) Magdalen and I were stared down by a trans identified male and felt the need to leave. I was recently refused service at a bar due to my political opinions.

As a fresher, I attended a debates workshop. At the very start we were told that all participants in debates must introduce their pronouns. How illiberal, to start a debate by declaring that which cannot be debated.

To those who say, “there’s extremists on both sides” — the worst transgender people face from feminists, is not being referred to the way they might like. Transgender activists, however, are unrelentingly vitriolic. I had to witness my partners death being celebrated online by high profile transgender activists like Rachel McKinnon before we’d even buried her. I have never seen the like from a feminist. And you can bet the philosophy professor who laughed at the death of a young lesbian from brain cancer still has a job, whereas women are hounded out from theirs, or are staying silent in fear of it.

Recently, Maya Forstater lost her job due to her belief that men cannot become women. Her case to assert this as a protected belief was unsuccessful, her position deemed “absolutist” by the judge. She apparently “misgendered” a non-binary person but “non-binary” is not covered by UK equality law. Similarly, a recent report titled ‘(Trans)forming single gender services and communal accommodations’ makes repeated reference to fictitious “single-gender spaces” whereas the equality act protects single sex spaces. They are working ahead of the law, normalising language that is fundamentally at odds with the rights of women and LGB people. If sex is a belief “not worthy of respect in a democratic society” what, then, is proud homosexuality?

I don’t have a job to lose, though I have potentially lost my entire future career. The punishment of vocal women socially and within university institutions and the workplace sends a message. Young LGB students must watch this unfold, quietly devastated. Or worse: advocates for the trampling of their own rights for the sake of popularity. Those with whom I otherwise have shared interests with are convinced I’m their enemy.

This is the division of the LGB community. By the T. We no longer have the networks we used to have, the solidarity, the culture. Instead, we have isolated students who are unable to engage in the university societies and student life. We are no longer able to be proud. We are having to watch our own transition and denounce us. Hearing those that are not us insist we are discriminatory if we do not consider them as sexual partners, as is the case with the theory of the cotton ceiling.

Groups like LGB Alliance are a beacon of hope that these communities can be rebuilt and this gaslighting stops. If we concede that sex doesn’t exist, we stand to lose everything we’ve fought for.

In the upcoming months, forwomen will be encouraging and supporting the start up of local groups all across Scotland. We will be going through the consultation and simplifying the process of responding for others. We will be creating leaflets and taking to the streets to reach the public.

What can you do? Gay or straight, visit your MSPs and ask them what they are doing to protect the legal category of sex and the rights of LGB people. Fill in the consultation. Talk to your friends, make them aware of what’s happening, encourage others to fill in the consultation. Seven thousand of the fifteen thousand responses for the original consultation were from Scotland. What happens in Scotland is of significance everywhere. Today included. Let’s keep up the good work.