THANK you to Russell Leadbetter for his excellent comment piece ("Online hostility to issues of gender identity", The Herald, March 9). If you "read below the line" of online news, you can find all sorts of unpleasantness about all kinds of communities. A lack of understanding of, and in some cases deliberate hostility towards, trans people is also still evident in some mainstream newspapers, and in commentary by some high-profile public figures.
We know from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey that, in Scotland, the proportion of people who would be unhappy if a close relative married a trans person fell from 49 per cent in 2010, to 32 per cent in 2015, and the figure is now only 13 per cent amongst people under 30. That's a big change, which is likely to continue.
Only a minority of people have negative attitudes, and a much smaller minority act on them. But our research shows that 80 per cent of trans people have experienced hate crime. More than 90 per cent have experienced or witnessed discrimination or prejudice in the past year. Progress is continuing towards equality, and it is supported by the majority, but there is more to do before Scotland is a truly inclusive and welcoming place for trans people.
Tim Hopkins,
Equality Network, 30 Bernard Street, Edinburgh.
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