JK Rowling has attacked Labour over its support for Nicola Sturgeon's controversial plans to allow Scots to self-identify their legal gender, accusing it of ignoring "widespread opposition" in its own ranks.
The Harry Potter author tweeted that Scottish Labour's support for the legislation meant that "the Tories have been handed an open goal on safeguarding" women.
Ms Rowling, who donated £1 million to Labour in 2008, also accused the Scottish party of having ignored public opinion, the United Nations and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) watchdog.
Renewing her attacks on Ms Sturgeon, whom she has previously accused of being a "destroyer of women's rights", she said the First Minister had treated criticism of the plans as "an impertinence" rather than listening to "serious concerns."
The legislation would allow Scots aged 16 and upwards to self-identify their legal gender without a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
It would also cut the time in which someone must live in their "acquired gender" from two years to only six months and lower the age for obtaining a gender recognition certificate from 18 to 16.
SNP ministers forged ahead with the Bill despite the EHRC warning it could harm "measures to address barriers facing women" and arguing the existing system struck the right balance.
Last week Reem Alsalem, the UN's special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, warned that the plans were were open to abuse from predatory men.
Critics of the self-identification plan have said male sexual predators would have a new means of gaining access to women's spaces, such as changing rooms and refuges, as they would be able to easily obtain Gender Recognition Certificates making them legally female.
Although Labour has so far supported the Bill, a leaked report from the party's women's committee claimed nearly half of female members did not agree with it amid "grave concerns".
The report stated that 45 per cent of women who responded were against the changes, 28 per cent were in favour and 27 per cent did not answer.
Ms Rowling tweeted a picture of Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, and Jackie Baillie, his deputy, warning that the party "continues to ignore public opinion, criticism from both the UN and the EHRC and widespread opposition from women in its own ranks and supports Sturgeon, meaning that the Tories have been handed an open goal on safeguarding" women.
Her tweet came after feminists staged a protest outside a Scottish women's prison on Saturday over a trans paedophile being housed there.
Around 60 protestors brandished pots and pans, spoons, whistles, drums and placards as they demonstrated outside Cornton Vale women’s prison near Stirling.
They were protesting against Katie Dolatowski, who was born male but identifies as female and is almost 6ft 5in - being held at the prison after being given a four-month jail sentence.
She is understood to have been in a segregated unit at the women’s facility since October after being sentenced to four months for breaching an order requiring her to notify police of any new address.
In Mar 2018 Dolatowski targeted a 10-year-old girl in the toilet of a Fife supermarket. The attack came a month after Dolatowski had filmed a 12-year-old girl on the toilet in another supermarket in Fife.
Dolatowski is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty at Falkirk Sheriff Court to assaulting a fellow inmate while detained alongside male prisoners at Polmont Young Offenders Institution in Jan 2021.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Decisions by the SPS (Scottish Prison Service) as to the most appropriate location to accommodate transgender people are made on an individualised basis, informed by a multi-disciplinary assessment of both risk and need which brings together expertise and evidence to support decision making.
"The Scottish Government does not comment on individual cases."
