NEW Scottish Green chief Lorna Slater has revealed that she was threatened with being “outed as trans” just minutes after her election.

The engineer, who was the surprise winner in the party’s co-leadership contest last week, said she was contacted on Facebook by someone she didn’t know soon after the results of the member’s votes were revealed.

Slater told The National: “The threat was just to ‘out’ me if I didn’t say what my ‘real sex’ was.”

The Green shared details of the threat on her social media soon after, publicly telling the person who messaged her: “Your threat does not bother me. I think it’s hilarious, but I’m sorry for people who have to deal with this abuse all the time.”

She told The National: “From the supportive messages that I’ve received, I gather this is a fairly standard thread to women who are trans allies.

“It is a bit of an odd one, to try to shame me for being trans when I don’t think being trans is anything to hide or be ashamed of.

“When I responded on twitter saying that the trans people I’ve met are kind and brave, it is because I think to make the transition, you have to really do some self evaluation and reflection.

“You need to really know who you are and accept who you are, and the consequence of doing that work is that you live an examined, meaningful life.

“People living that kind of life are brave and kind. I think it is those who lead un-examined lives, who haven’t really accepted themselves, who are frightened and insecure, who are unkind.”

One of Slater’s big ambitions as co-leader of the Greens is to support more women and non-binary people to stand for election.

“This sort of treatment puts people off standing,” she said. “As does the everyday sexism in a lot of journalism where women, in positions of responsibility and leadership are evaluated for their appearance and clothing rather than for their ability.

“There seems to be a certain type of man who objects to quotas for women because ‘everybody should be judged on ability’ who is at the same time completely incapable of judging women by their abilities, and also fails to see the irony in his position.

“I think the struggle to normalise having women in politics, and positions of leadership in general, is a long one. It makes me think a bit about the ‘take back the night’ walks. Instead of advising women to avoid attack by not walking at night, let’s get more women out at night. The more women around the safer everybody is.

“And so it is with politics. When there are enough of us, when we have passed the tipping point where it is normal to see panels of women experts, when it is normal to have 10 women standing and 1 man – instead of the other way around as it was in the Leith Walk by-election - then things will improve.

“You need to have a critical mass of women, more than 40% to see cultural change, and politics is still a long way from this.”

Slater, who replaces Maggie Chapman, who was previously co-convener of the Scottish Greens along with Patrick Harvie, said she wants at least half of the candidates on each of eight regional lists to be women or non-binary people.

There are currently no trans people in the Scottish or Westminster parliaments.

That could all change if there’s a snap general election after the Brexit Party chose a transgender woman as their candidate in Margaret Thatcher’s old seat.

Jessica Swift, currently the finance and systems director at the Fruehauf Group, a business that makes tipping trailers for lorries, will be the candidate for Grantham and Stamford.

She said, “I feel so lucky to live in beautiful Lincolnshire, a safe and vibrant county which I would be proud to represent in Westminster for The Brexit Party. I am a passionate supporter of education. And as a proud as a transwoman, I will always fight for equality and the rights of all groups in society.

In the 2017 snap election, seven trans people stood as candidates.