Helen Pitt

I think you would agree that Stonewall has been through some pretty tough years and quite a lot of that can be traced back to its pretty uncompromising position on trans rights.

And I just wondered, do you think it was a mistake of Stonewall to not make any exceptions when it came to trans inclusion?

But do you think that previously Stonewall was really engaging publicly in that messy grey area?

I'm really talking about 2015 onwards, after Stonewall decided to add the T to the LGB.

There was a feeling that Stonewall wasn't engaging in these really knotty, difficult questions.

Would you agree?

And do you think that in the past, too much of Stonewall's

time was taken up with trans issues and forgetting the L, the G and the B?

Let's talk just about the kind of tone of the debate.

And we're sitting now in Edinburgh, the city where arguably the world's most famous and vociferous gender-critical feminist lives, J.K.

Rowling.

What do you make of the way that she's shared her concerns about transgender people?

But trans people I know say that the way that she has voiced her opinions on this issue has become cruel and dehumanising.

The way she behaves on social media, sort of deliberately misgendering people, has really, they feel, contributed to them feeling unwelcome and unaccepted in society.

And it was a Scottish gender critical group, For Women Scotland, that brought the case that led to the landmark Supreme Court judgment last year on trans rights and the Equality Act, which Stonewall at the time greeted with dismay.

And the Supreme Court ruled that sex refers to biological sex and not gender identity and made clear that organisations wishing to provide single sex services can exclude trans people.

What do you think of the judgment one year on?

And you talked about being willing to have

difficult conversations, sort of this grey area on trans issues.

How is Stonewall going to go about that while still trying to reassure trans people that you're not abandoning them, that you're still fighting for them?