Alan Cumming gave an interview to The Times in which he said some genuinely kind things about trans people, described the Gender Recognition Reform Bill as an act of kindness, and defended Nicola Sturgeon against what he saw as unfair blame. For Women Scotland responded by calling him a "silly little man" and publishing a point-by-point social media dismantling of his comments. That, in miniature, is what public allyship looks like in Scotland right now.

What Cumming actually said

He said that the debate around trans rights had narrowed, in his view, into an argument about toilets, when the real question was whether trans people could live safely and with dignity. He said the Scottish Government's intent behind the GRR Bill was "kindness and looking after people and giving them a safety net." He said he gets a lot of flak for supporting marginalised communities, and that he finds it dispiriting that the same energy is not directed at wars or child poverty. None of that strikes me as inflammatory. It is the kind of thing a person says when they genuinely care about other people and are puzzled by the hatred directed at them.

He also, it is fair to say, got one fact wrong. He described the bill as having been "voted through unanimously," which it was not. It passed with strong cross-party support, but not unanimously. For Women Scotland were correct to flag that.

The response, and what it tells us

A factual correction is one thing. Calling a person a "silly little man" on social media, telling him to focus on "selling tickets to his half-empty productions," and accusing him of thinking "women are nothing more than support animals" is quite another. The tone of For Women Scotland's response was not that of people correcting the record. It was designed to humiliate, to warn off, and to make the cost of speaking up very obvious to anyone watching.

That is not an accident. When a well-known, well-liked actor says something publicly supportive of trans people, the calculation from groups like FWS is that a sufficiently vicious pile-on will discourage others from doing the same. Make it painful enough, and people will keep their heads down. It has worked on enough people that it has become the standard playbook.

Cumming himself put it plainly: "The people who are against trans rights don't like you saying that you support people who are marginalised and who are being legislated out of existence." He is right about that. And then, characteristically, he shrugged it off. "Who cares? Poor Alan." I find that rather admirable.

The "toilets" argument, and what is actually at stake

FWS objected to Cumming's framing that the debate had become about toilets, insisting that their concerns extend to prisons, hospitals, and rape crisis centres. They are entitled to make that argument. But the framing of trans women as an inherent threat in those spaces is not a neutral factual claim; it is a position, and one that is contested by the evidence, by the lived experience of trans people, and by the professional judgement of the organisations that run many of those services.

What I notice, every time this debate surfaces, is that the people who insist they are not talking about toilets are, in the same breath, talking about what spaces trans women should be allowed to enter. The question underneath is always the same: do trans women belong, or don't they? My answer has not changed. They do.

On Nicola Sturgeon

Cumming made a separate argument about Sturgeon: that she was being blamed for her husband's crimes despite having been cleared herself, and that a woman in her position would not have been treated this way had she been a man. For Women Scotland rejected this as "faux feminism," arguing that she bore governance responsibility regardless of gender.

That is a genuinely complicated political argument, and I am not going to referee it here. What I will say is that it is entirely possible to hold Sturgeon accountable for her political decisions while also noticing that the ferocity of the public reaction to her has a gendered quality. Both things can be true. Cumming was pointing to something real, even if FWS chose to read it as deflection.

Why visible allyship still matters

Trans people in Scotland, and everywhere else, are watching how this goes. They see who speaks up, and they see what happens to those people. When someone like Cumming takes the flak without flinching, it tells trans people something important: that they are not invisible, that their lives are worth defending, and that not everyone in public life has calculated that staying quiet is the safer option.

He got one fact wrong. He should correct it. But the substance of what he said, that trans people deserve safety, dignity, and the chance to live their lives, is not wrong, and the way he was spoken to for saying it was not proportionate, not decent, and not designed to advance any argument. It was designed to silence.

I hope it does not work. I hope more people say the kind things they believe, in public, and shrug off the pile-on the way Cumming did. "Who cares? Poor Alan." That, honestly, is the right attitude.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives at the centre of both.