If Nicola Sturgeon had devoted half the energy that she devoted to calling lifelong feminists like me a transphobe and devoted half that energy to go… - Joanna Cherry

In my view, it would be perfectly simple to have stronger safeguards in this Bill without causing any detriments to genuine trans people who wanted to get a gender recognition certificate.
In holding this view, I'm not going against my party policy. The Scottish National Party has never voted for self-ID as a policy at conference and it wasn't in our manifesto.
What it did promise to do was make the process of gender recognition easier for trans people which I support. What I don't support is opening it up to just anyone with minimal safeguards.

[Cherry was concerned about the] absence of tailored defences for women who hold the view that sex is immutable and who wish to speak plainly about this.

To many people, it will look like this convicted rapist has gamed the system in order to try and garner sympathy, and to end up in a women's prison. And I think a lot of people will be shocked by that.
So I think we should be talking about these cases. And women in prison are very vulnerable. Many women in prison have themselves been abused, and have suffered injuries over the years. ... But the point about human rights is that they're universal, and they apply to everyone. So I'm very concerned about the safety of women prisoners, with whom a convicted rapist has been placed.
And under Scots law, the crime of rape can only be committed by somebody with a penis, and that's a man. And I think we should call out what's happened here.