JK Rowling was wrong to label Sturgeon a 'destroyer of women's rights'

The Herald Scotland

7 hours ago

Depressingly, it echoed the trans activists' habit of framing this debate as a zero-sum game, where one side's victory entails the other's destruction, when a more constructive tone was plainly required. Sturgeon was already being personally targeted over self-ID by other politicians, but Rowling's actions ratcheted up the pressure to another level.
Whether it marked the moment 'rational debate' became 'impossible', as Sturgeon claims, is more contestable, but it almost certainly made the debate more toxic.
Then again, I thought exactly the same about Nicola Sturgeon's own comments, when she linked concerns around self-ID to transphobia in an apparent attempt to discredit critics.
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In one interview I saw at the height of the controversy, she was asked about women's worries around gender reforms. She claimed that of course the Scottish Government took women's concerns seriously, but then insisted fiercely and pointedly that there was a great deal of transphobia in the debate.
Stressing transphobia when asked about women's concerns became the standard Scottish government response, not just from Sturgeon but from other ministers like Patrick Harvie. It seemed like an unambiguous attempt to smear their opponents.
As someone who had often agreed with Sturgeon, I was taken aback. There are transphobes in the debate, as we can see more clearly now than ever – and misogynists on the other side too – but the repeated emphasis ministers put on this point did an injustice to the majority whose views were motivated by concern for women's rights. Like Rowling's T-shirt, it just further poisoned the climate.
Did Nicola Sturgeon really take women's concerns seriously? She had by then already made clear her lack of sympathy with those objections, saying they were 'not valid' and insisting rather patronisingly that campaigners should focus on the 'real threat' to women – 'abusive and predatory men' – instead of trans people.
She studiously ignored what deep down she must have known: that it was precisely those 'abusive and predatory men' that women's campaigners were most concerned about. The Scottish Government was backing a gender ideology that was much contested but relentlessly enforced by an activist community online and in person. Women had been hounded out of their jobs simply for dissenting from the orthodoxy. Those who disagreed that a trans woman and a woman were one and the same, or questioned someone's gender identity, were and still are framed as bigots and liable to find themselves and their employers the target of public campaigns of humiliation.
In that climate, it would take a brave person to challenge someone's claim to be female in a women's only space. How, with a government that appeared to back gender ideology wholesale, could women's only spaces possibly be policed to keep out bad actors?
Sturgeon seemed oblivious to these concerns. SNP MSPs even voted against an amendment by one of their own colleagues which would have halted the granting of a gender recognition certificate to rapists.
Liberalism is not about placing the rights of one discriminated against group above that of another; it's about balancing interests fairly. This felt like the politics of the far left.
Ultimately it was the controversy around Isla Bryson – who as Adam Graham had been charged with two counts of rape before declaring himself female and being remanded in a women's prison – that decisively destroyed trust in the Scottish Government's reassurances that gender self-ID was wholly benign.
So yes, Nicola Sturgeon, like JK Rowling, has poured petrol on the flames. But, credit where it's due, she has also now held up her hands to being part of the problem. She told ITV: 'We'd lost all sense of rationality in this debate. I'm partly responsible for that.'
She has also said that she wishes she'd paused the gender recognition act legislation to find consensus.
Nicola Sturgeon has reignited the row (Image: PA) In their different ways, Nicola Sturgeon and JK Rowling have both tried to stand up for a vulnerable group, but we have watched them become increasingly radical, probably as a consequence of having to defend themselves constantly against those who monster them. They exist, as we all do, in a truly horrible climate of so-called debate.
Rowling was accused without evidence of transphobia from the first moment she dared raise her head above the parapet, and has been on the receiving end of death and rape threats since. These days she seems less measured. She's described the nurse Sandie Peggie, no poster girl for tolerance, as a 'heroine'. She has continued to attack Sturgeon.
Sturgeon for her part became more intransigent as opposition to her position on trans rights increased, closing her ears to pleas to moderate her approach. It did not help either women or trans people. Many trans people now feel they are in a worse position than before Sturgeon's attempt at gender recognition reform.
Both women have gone too far. Both women bear some responsibility for the bitterness of the debate. But both women could also be part of a reset, if they chose to be. Arguably, Sturgeon is showing a willingness to try. It would take a dramatic change of tone and approach, but God knows, it's needed.
Rebecca McQuillan is a journalist specialising in politics and Scottish affairs. She can be found on Bluesky at @becmcq.bsky.social and on X at @BecMcQ