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The headline act of a transgender event in Dundee has pulled out after calling on people to “throat-punch” radical feminists.

Peyton Rose, a transgender singer-songwriter from Edinburgh who was to top the bill at the Trans Pride Scotland event in Dundee next week, posted the tweet last Friday.

Above an image of a leaflet distributed last summer by For Women Scotland, a women’s rights group, she wrote: “If you catch one of these assholes in the act, please undo their work or throat-punch them.”

She deactivated her Twitter account afterwards and has since withdrawn from performing at the event.

A spokeswoman at For Women Scotland said that “gender-critical feminists”, who campaign against people being able to self-report their gender and highlight conflicts between the rights of biological and transgender women, often receive such threats. The group gained national prominence last year in its opposition to the Scottish government’s proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act so that people can self-identify their gender ithout a medical diagnosis.

It also gave evidence to the Scottish parliament’s culture committee, arguing against the addition of a third option to the sex question on the 2021 census which it claimed would lead to a conflation of sex and gender.

In her tweet, Ms Rose referred to the activists as “terfs”, a pejorative acronym which stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminists”.

Susan Smith, of For Women Scotland, rejected the term, which she said was used to dehumanise women. “Not a single one of us would refer to ourselves as trans-exclusionary,” she said. “Whenever we’re told we want to have a proper debate about the issues, we’re told even talking about them is the equivalent to nasty threats. They’re stabbing their best allies in the back here.”

The Trans Pride march on March 30 is set to end at Bonar Hall at the University of Dundee, where there will be stalls, workshops and performances.

A spokeswoman for the university’s student association, which manages bookings for the venue, said that it operated a zero-tolerance policy on violent and threatening behaviour so “in the process of contacting the event organisers, we will be encouraging them to take appropriate action in relation to this matter”.

Ms Rose described the tweet as a “tongue-in-cheek comment” written in anger and retracted the use of “terf”, although she declined to say whether she still considered For Women Scotland transphobic. “I have decided not to do Trans Pride and will be taking a step back for the foreseeable future to work on my mental health,” she said.

A Police Scotland spokeswoman said: “On March 19 police in Edinburgh received a report of threats being made via social media and email, and inquiries are ongoing.”

Ms Rose said she was “deeply sorry” for any offence caused.

“I will in future think before I speak and about how I conduct myself online,” she said.

Trans Pride Scotland did not respond to a request for comment.