The Proclaimers: ‘Trans activists are truth-phobic’

The belief that a man can be a woman is pure myth, Scottish music duo The Proclaimers have said.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, 64-year-old twins Craig and Charlie Reid — who hit the charts with I’m Gonna Be (500 miles) in the 1980s — expressed astonishment that people are being vilified for defending biological reality.

Explaining the reason behind their new album, ‘You May Offend’, Craig warned: “We’re getting to the stage now where people are getting scared to say what they think because people are being cancelled.”

Free speech

Questioned on whether the duo feared being branded ‘transphobic’ due their views, Craig responded that all he was opposed to is a man “saying that he actually is a woman when he’s not a woman.

“A lot of these folk are basically truth-phobic. They’ll deny the biological reality. Then if you insist on it, they’ll say that you are hurting their feelings. That you’re disrespecting them. But I respect reality and scientific fact, not myth.”

He continued: “There’s women, actual women, who are threatened with violence — sometimes get violence — and de-platformed because they have the temerity to say that a woman is an adult human female.”

Charlie defended Graham Linehan and JK Rowling for speaking out against transgender ideology, arguing, “you’ve got the right to stand up for science and logic”.

Gender self-ID

Craig described his “anger” at the “self-ID bill” — the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, tabled in March 2022, which sought to allow 16-year-olds to change their legal sex by self-declaration without a medical diagnosis.

In January 2023, the then Scottish Secretary Alister Jack – exercising powers under Section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 – prohibited the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament from submitting the Holyrood-backed Bill for Royal Assent.

A subsequent legal challenge by the Scottish Government proved unsuccessful, after the Court of Session ruled that Mr Jack had ‘reasonably and lawfully’ blocked the plans in order to protect the integrity of UK-wide equalities legislation.