Sturgeon: I'm ‘partly' to blame for loss of rationality in trans debate
Sturgeon's gender bill – which would allow a person to self-identify as the opposite gender from the age of 16, after living as their acquired gender for six months and without a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria – grew to become an extremely divisive piece of legislation that was initially passed in Holyrood before being blocked by Scotland Secretary Alister Jack. On the subject, Sturgeon admitted that her handling of the Bryson case – where institutional creep past the point of the law saw the male rapist end up in a female prison – hadn't been optimal, adding that rapists 'probably forfeit the right to be the gender of their choice'. At the time, the ex-FM refused to admit whether Bryson was male or female – and it seems not much has changed.
Julie Etchingham: You became unstuck over the questions about the transgender prisoner, the rapist Isla Bryson. Why couldn't you answer that question?
Nicola Sturgeon: I think I was caught up in the…
JE: Will you answer it now whether you believe Isla Bryson…
NS: Isla Bryson identified as a woman. I think what I would say now is any anybody who commits the most heinous male crime against women probably forfeits the right to be, you know, the gender of their choice.
JE: They forfeit to be the gender of their choice? That's, quite, I mean, this actually goes to the heart of the difficulty.
NS: That probably was not the best phrase to use… If you rape a woman, then I think you probably… the debate about whether they should be called a woman or not. Probably.
JE: Well, why don't you simply say then Isla Bryson is a biological male.
NS: They are a biological male. But that's about whether it gets back into the self-ID thing. I should have been much more straightforward. I wasn't, but that's because of the debate. We'd lost all sense of rationality in this debate. I'm partly responsible for that.
How very revealing. Watch the clip here:
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