Jessica Yaniv (left) accuses beauty salons of discrimination for refusing to see her. Meghan Murphy (top right) is regarded as a heroine to some feminists.

A feminist journalist who has been banned from Twitter for her views on transgender rights has warned about the “risks to women” of allowing individuals to self-declare their gender.

Meghan Murphy, a Canadian blogger, will speak at the Scottish parliament this week, where she will raise concerns that “self-ID” proposals will undermine women’s rights to female-only spaces, such as changing rooms, prisons and domestic violence shelters.

She received a lifetime ban from Twitter in November last year after she used a male pronoun to refer to Jessica Yaniv, a Canadian transgender woman who is not thought to have had gender reassignment surgery. Yaniv had attracted Murphy’s attention after attempting last year to book a series of appointments with beauticians, including for “Brazilian” waxes, which remove