I’m not finding it easy to start this column I have to say, firstly because it’s about the debate on trans rights (and we all know how that debate can end up) and secondly because I want to talk about where I got it wrong (and we all know how social media treats people who get it wrong). But I’ll have a stab anyway and see where we get to.

Specifically, there are two things that made me want to write the column and the first is the Scottish minister Lorna Slater. Asked about trans reform, Ms Slater said there was false balance in media coverage of the issue and that we would never seek such a balance on racism or anti-Semitism. In other words, she appeared to compare campaigners against self-identification to racists.

However, the other reason was a piece I’ve written for The Herald, to be published on Saturday. The idea of the piece was to give a representative from each side of the debate the chance to talk about their views and motivations and explain their opinion on the Scottish Government’s legislation without any of the usual anger and nastiness you get on social media.

What I wasn’t expecting was the effect the piece would have on me, firstly because it was initially hard to find people willing to speak publicly. Some said it was because they knew my own views on the subject (supportive of the legislation) and feared they wouldn’t get a fair hearing but mostly people said they were concerned about the abuse they might receive online. That’s really something: people have got to the point where they are worried about expressing their views.

The conversation I had with the campaigner against the government’s reforms was also really interesting. It wasn’t easy – we talked for over two hours about some difficult subjects – but it was respectful and calm and the way she explained her views, based on her experiences, as well as some of the reaction she’d received, made me think that in the past I have dismissed people with her opinions a little too angrily and a little too quickly.

I have to admit my basic position hasn’t shifted – I still believe the self-identification legislation is the right move – but I do think that proponents of both sides, including me and certainly Lorna Slater, have been guilty of ramping up the criticism too much. A former colleague of mine who works for the Scottish Government said to me recently that I’d started out being open-minded but had “doubled down” and started accusing people of transphobia and I think, looking back, he’s right.

The problem here, I think, is the way the debate about the trans reforms developed. The opponent of self ID I spoke to said she’d been called a hateful bigot online by people she’d worked with. The trans woman said she’d also been the victim of abuse and most of it, if not all of it, is also online. The trans woman also told me that her gender was irrelevant in the vast majority of her life – but not online.

So the biggest culprit without a doubt is Twitter. It encourages us into camps, into trenches, it ushers “us” over here and “them” over there, and before you know it you feel threatened and you’re lashing out. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote about the effect in The Atlantic this week: platforms like Twitter, he said, devolve into the Wild West and before you know it you’re shooting at the other side.

What I’m not trying to do here is deny real-life transphobia – I’ve spoken to people who’ve been victims of it – but I am sure the online nature of the debate on the Government’s new law has helped to heighten things and led to both sides feeling under attack and therefore liable to hit back. It’s become a kind of war of escalation with words the main weapon – you’re a bigot, you’re a transphobe, you’re hateful, you’re wrong, I hate you.

So, if I’ve played a part in all of that, I regret it and I’ve got it wrong in some of the language I’ve used. I probably did “double down” and I do think the abuse has got out of hand and I do think that Lorna Slater is wrong to compare opponents of self-ID to racists. I also think it would be helpful if we paid more careful attention to the other arguments. I realise now that both sides are worried. Both sides have been abused. And both sides should listen.

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