Scottish National Party (SNP) leaders have been ridiculed for suggesting rapists are a separate gender from men and women.
Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon struggled to answer questions from Scottish Conservatives leader Douglas Ross in the devolved Holyrood parliament on Thursday about the whether transsexual double rapist Isla Bryson, who changed his name from Adam Graham after his first court appearance, was man or a woman.
Sturgeon said Bryson, who attended court in tight leggings accentuating his penis and a wig to hide his large facial tattoos, was "almost certainly" only pretending to be transgender in order to escape punishment or be sent to a women's prison.
"That individual has been convicted of rapes and that, therefore, is the terminology," Sturgeon said.
Her comments were seized upon by For Women Scotland, one of several feminist groups that opposed the controversial new Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) bill pushed through by the SNP and Scottish Greens in December.
That legislation, which the Conservative UK government has blocked from becoming law, would allow men as young as 16 — including convicted sex offenders — to be legally recognised as women after just three months living under their new identity and without a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
"It appears that Nicola Sturgeon has concluded there are three sexes — male, female and rapist," the group tweeted. "Does the 'rapist' gender wear off after time served and will Graham be in a women's changing room thereafter?"
Bryson was held for at least three days at the Cornton Vale prison in Sterling, where violent transgender child abuser Katie Dolatowski is also housed. Both were reportedly in the jail's 'care unit' where pregnant and mentally-ill women are kept and use communal showers.
SNP MSP Jenny Gilruth, the Scittish transport minister, echoed Sturgeon's evasions when she appeared on BBC2's prestigious Question Time public debate show late on Thursday night, repeatedly referring to Bryson as an "individual" or a rapist, but not a man or woman.
The episode was billed as featuring a panel of two men and three women — although one of those was transgender activist India Willoughby, leaving journalist Ella Whelan as the only gender-critical female voice among the guests.
Both Sturgeon and Gilruth's comments contradicted the SNP's official policy that transsexuals must be accepted as members of the sex of the sex of their choice on the basis of self-identification alone — as publicly reiterated by Scottish justice secretary Keith Brown earlier this week.