The violent misogyny of the trans movement

It ought to be obvious that men who make violent threats and resent women’s rights have a good chance of being dangerous. In the case of former SNP equalities officer Cameron Downing, who was jailed this week for a string of sexual and physical assaults, there were plenty of clues that he was a wrong’un.

Downing, a 24-year-old who identifies as ‘nonbinary’, was convicted last month at the High Court in Edinburgh. A jury found him guilty of a total of 10 charges, including sexual and physical assault, assault to injury and domestic abuse. One of his victims was a young man he blackmailed into maintaining a sexual relationship by threatening to falsely accuse him of rape.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service branded Downing a ‘dangerous individual whose predatory and manipulative behaviour has inflicted unimaginable trauma’. Judge Alison Stirling similarly said he showed a ‘hostility towards women, lack of concern for others, sexual preoccupation and deviant sexual preference’.

There was certainly no lack of prior evidence for exactly what kind of person Downing is. His social-media posts reveal violent fantasies about hurting women who reject trans ideology. In 2022, he posted on X about wanting ‘beat the fuck out of some TERFs and transphobes’ and said that they made him want to scream. He resigned from his position as equalities officer at the London branch of the SNP that same year, after JK Rowling drew attention to one such post.

Of course, these are the sorts of threats and slurs that critics of trans ideology have long come to expect. The level of vitriol directed towards gender-critical people is routinely ignored by the police and overlooked by the smug commentariat who bleat about ‘both sides’ in the trans debate being as toxic as the other. It’s true that many of the angry male trans activists who post abuse online are all mouth no skirt. But, as the judge explained, Downing posed a real threat.

Thankfully, he won’t be much of a danger to anyone now that he is inside a (male) prison. Yesterday, he was handed a six-year custodial sentence, with an additional three years on licence once released back into the community. He will be on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely and has been banned from contacting one of his victims.

Downing may be behind bars, but the kind of hostility he directed toward women can still be found out in the open. The attitudes displayed by men like him have become a part of the mainstream political culture, particularly in Scotland.

Last year, SNP MSP Kaukab Stewart and former SNP MPs Kirsten Oswald, Stewart McDonald and Alison Thewliss were pictured smiling at a ‘trans rights’ march. Clearly in the background was a sign that read ‘Decapitate TERFs’. They each subsequently condemned the sign, while maintaining that they had no idea it was behind them.

Worse still, former SNP MP Joanna Cherry has faced at times criminal levels of harassment for her outspoken stance on women’s, and especially lesbian, rights. And yet neither former first minister Nicola Sturgeon nor her successor, Humza Yousaf, has ever found the breath to condemn the abuse their own MP suffered at the hands of trans activists.

The problem is not confined to the SNP, either. Male trans activist and former co-convener of the Rainbow Greens group, Beth Douglas, frequently enjoyed praise from MSPs. That is, despite posting about his desire to ‘throat punch’ women he considers to be ‘fascists’ for defending their sex-based rights.

Downing’s behaviour is extreme, but the views he expressed are depressingly widespread within self-identified ‘progressive’ circles. Now that he has been brought to justice for his sexual crimes, Scottish politicians have a lot of reflecting to do. Bigotry and violent threats have been all but normalised under the guise of ‘trans inclusion’.

Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.