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A feminist group says proposals to make sex a protected characteristic will allow men to undermine the work of female organisations.

Men will seize upon new legal protections against sexism to “maliciously” target women, a feminist charity funded by the SNP government has warned.

The group Engender claimed proposals to make “sex” a protected characteristic under Scottish hate crime laws risked sending the message that there was a “parallel relationship” between misogyny and misandry. Engender said that men did not deserve equal protection.

The proposals are being put forward by SNP ministers after they ditched legislation designed to criminalise misogyny, which they feared would prove too controversial.

Instead, they are proposing that “sex” will be added as a protected characteristic to existing hate crime laws, meaning men who commit offences against women because of their sex can be treated more harshly by the courts.

However, Engender claimed this risked also handing males a tool to target women, as those who were victims of offences motivated by misandry — hatred or prejudice against men and boys — would be entitled to the same protection.

“The equal protection that men will have from sex-based protections in the Hate Crime Act could also be utilised maliciously by those seeking to undermine the work of women’s organisations and to make claims of misandry by individual women,” the group said.

“We believe that the current political and cultural climate increases the risk of these occurrences.”

The group cited the example of Marieha Hussain, a teacher who held up a sign at a 2023 pro-Palestine rally in London depicting black Tory politicians as “coconuts”, as an example of a woman unfairly targeted under hate-crime laws. Hussain was cleared of a racially aggravated public order offence at a trial last year. She had held up a sign showing Rishi Sunak, then the prime minister, and Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, as coconuts, a slur implying someone with brown skin is “white on the inside”.

Hussain claimed her sign was “satirical and humorous”, a view backed by Engender, which receives about 98 per cent of its funding from the SNP government.

The Scottish charity cited her case as an example of a “woman from a minority ethnic background” being unjustly prosecuted “for a satirical sign at a protest that criticised UK politicians who were also from a minority ethnic background”.

In its submission to the government consultation, Engender added: “Although cleared of the charges, the case shows clearly how hate crime protections can be misused to criminalise marginalised people expressing views that others disagree with.”

The group also criticised the fact that under the proposals, sex is to be defined by biology, which the government has said is in line with the Supreme Court ruling in April.

Engender, which continues to support the view that trans women are women, said it was “deeply concerned” about the definition, which it said “risks being an overly expansive application of the Supreme Court judgment”. Trans people already have legal protections as a separate category under the hate crime legislation, which came into force in April last year.

The Engender claims were criticised by Marion Calder, a director at For Women Scotland, which won the Supreme Court ruling.

“There really isn’t anything problematic about handing women the same legal protections other groups have,” Calder said. “Yet time and time again, so-called feminist groups heavily funded by the SNP government attempt to throw a spanner in the works to anything that confirms the reality that sex is binary.” She added: “The fact that groups like this are also now apparently think it is acceptable to call black politicians coconuts just goes to show how warped and detached from reality they have become.”

The plan to add sex as a protected characteristic in hate crime legislation, which gender critical campaigners had spent years calling for but had previously been rejected, came after John Swinney ditched plans to create a standalone misogyny offence.

The Labour peer Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws had called for the move, after being commissioned by Nicola Sturgeon to write a key report on the issue, which cost taxpayers more than £140,000.

However, ministers claimed earlier this year that the Supreme Court ruling had complicated matters, because it was previously planned that men who identified as women would receive protections as women under the law. After the promised legislation was repeatedly delayed, ministers claimed in May that there was no longer time for it to be passed before the parliament dissolved in March.

Rachael Hamilton, the Scottish Tory deputy leader, said that “eyebrows will be raised” by Engender backing the case of Hussain. “This group which have pushed their gender ideology at every turn must urgently explain why they see fit to defend somebody who paraded a banner that many people will have found offensive,” she said. “In doing so, they just sum up the toxicity surrounding this debate.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The addition of sex as a characteristic into hate crime law will provide new protections for women and girls. This will also provide protections for men and boys, though women and girls disproportionately experience prejudiced behaviour relating to their sex and so will benefit them the most.”