Senior councillor under fire over social media posts about trans 'fantasists'

Concerns have been raised over the social media conduct of the Labour deputy leader of Preston City Council.

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Avery Greatorex, 21, a trans woman, is the LGBT officer for the Preston constituency Labour Party, co-chair of Pride in Labour and chair of the Labour society at UCLan.

Her concerns relate to a recent post from Coun Martyn Rawlinson's X account which compared trans people to fetishists and fantasists and concluded that 'it's not real'.

Ms Greatorex: "The councillor has shared or himself posted content online that accuses the transgender community of being fetishists, fabricated and having a lack of sanity.

"Transgender people in Preston have heard him loud and clear and I am certainly not comfortable with this rhetoric."

Coun Rawlinson said in response to the criticism: "You can't be discriminatory by stating facts. You can't change sex, that's a scientific fact, so it is a fantasy. It is also a fetish, it's welldocumented."

It came after a public row between the two on Trans Day of Visibility earlier this year.