Nicola Sturgeon: 'Women not owed apology over trans debate'
Speaking to reporters after an event to launch her memoir on Thursday, the former first minister said she won't say sorry to people on the other side who feel vilified for their views.
'No, I won't apologise,' Sturgeon replied.
'People on both sides of this debate are vilified. I've been vilified and received some awful abuse – nothing like the abuse trans people are getting right now.
'I tried to stand up for rights of one of most stigmatised minorities in the country. I don't believe that is in conflict with the rights of women which I have stood up for and will continue to stand up for.'
Sturgeon's gender reform legislation was designed to make it easier for trans people to change their legal gender without a lengthy medical process.
Despite fierce opposition from some women's rights campaigners who feared it would give biological males access to female spaces, it was passed in Scotland with cross-party support.
But the Gender Recognition Reform was never enacted after it was blocked by Westminster.
The former SNP leader often faces criticism for the way she has handled it.
The former SNP leader has since admitted she should have paused the legislation and said she didn't anticipate some of the concerns that would be triggered.
Sturgeon said she respects the view of people who disagree with her, but she said she 'deeply regrets the way in which some are punching down on trans people who have done nothing to harm anybody'.
At the event on Thursday, Sturgeon said people who call themselves feminists have laughed at her miscarriage on social media, which she revealed in her memoir, and said they want her to be 'raped in a toilet'.
'I will continue to stand up for women's rights and I will continue to stand up trans rights,' she said after the event.
'I didn't come into politics to back away from the things I believe in because it got a bit difficult for me personally.'
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Remember when having women in power was supposed to change everything?
Nicola Sturgeon was always afraid of failure. But it was a very particular kind of failure she feared; one that follows a very particular kind of success. Living up to the fact of being Scotland's first female first minister became, she writes in her new memoir, 'almost an obsession', which is arguably unhealthy but not unreasonable. To be the first woman (or indeed the first minority) in any field is to be uncomfortably aware of being on probation: the test case that sceptics will use to decide whether women in general can really hack it, but also the yardstick by which other women will judge whether representation actually makes a difference. You daren't betray anything that looks like a sign of weakness, yet at the same time you're endlessly under pressure to spill your guts on all the intimate stuff – miscarriage and menopause in Sturgeon's case, pregnancy in high office for New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern, also the author of a recent memoir – lest other women feel you're either holding out on useful information, making it all look too infuriatingly easy, or failing to do your bit to break some taboo. (Even Sturgeon, in an interview this week with the midlife women's podcast The Shift, expressed surprise that, when she was figuring out how to manage menopausal symptoms in office, she couldn't find anything to read about how other senior politicians had coped.) Suddenly, you're not just a woman but an everywoman, supposed to magically embody every female voter who ever existed, even on issues where women in real life are impossibly divided – as they were over trans rights, the issue that ultimately holed Sturgeon's premiership below the waterline. Representation can be a blessing and curse, even for a politician as gifted as Sturgeon undoubtedly has been. But is it also ultimately a distraction? Her book completes a trio of recent memoirs, alongside those of Ardern and Germany's Angela Merkel, which feel like a final full stop on the end of an era in which putting a woman in power was expected somehow to change everything. All three at their peak were somewhat romantically held aloft as examples of a kinder, more emotionally literate politics: Merkel for opening her arms to Syrian refugees; Ardern for the unifying way she led her country through the immediate and potentially divisive aftermath of the Christchurch terrorist massacre; and Sturgeon for being the remain voter's feminist yin to Boris Johnson's laddish Brexiter yang. All three functioned at times as queens across the water for English leftwingers, wondering wistfully why they couldn't have a leader like that. During the 2015 televised election debates in which Sturgeon took part, viewers furiously Googled whether it was possible to vote SNP south of the border. Merkel's principled pushback against Donald Trump in his first presidency – remember that iconic image of her looming commandingly over a seated Trump at a G7 summit? – was as much admired and envied in parts of the UK as Ardern's 'zero Covid strategy' of sealing borders, at least until the latter was overwhelmed by new variants. Yet all three became bitterly polarising figures in time, as Sturgeon herself acknowledged to The Shift's Sam Baker. The nature of the tribe in charge might have changed, but not the angry tribalism endemic in politics: so much for the patronising Barbieworld fantasy that if women ran the world, peace and love would rule the day. With hindsight, though, what all three of those pioneer female leaders really represented was a longing for someone to break the mould, and that hasn't gone away. If anything, the impatience and frustration with mainstream politics building up in younger women suggests it is intensifying. The Scottish journalist Alex Massie wrote this week of the English tendency to idolise Sturgeon from a distance, even as Scots who experienced her government's failings up close were losing patience with it. As an English journalist, I have to concede some truth in that. From a distance, it's too easy to get hung up on the performance of leadership, at which she genuinely did excel, and forget about what it actually feels like to be governed by someone day in and day out. During the pandemic, I remember envying the way Scottish lockdown restrictions took into account children's need for play, but more broadly the thought and seriousness that seemed to be going into Sturgeon's policymaking when Johnson was still making jokes about squashing sombreros or turning a blind eye to drunken parties. Yet death rates in Scotland weren't noticeably better than in England, for reasons the Covid inquiry is still exploring. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Ardern was failing to hit her much-vaunted targets on child poverty, a reminder that personal values don't necessarily trump the realities of a post-lockdown economy. The obvious moral to be drawn from all of this is that putting women on a pedestal simply because they're women makes no more sense than taking lumps out of them for the same reason: that in a mature democracy, they would be judged simply on results. Since the least interesting thing about Kemi Badenoch's increasingly erratic leadership of the Conservative party is her gender, perhaps it's not too much to hope that we're moving in that direction: that the joy of being the third or fourth or fifth woman through the door is that eventually people simply cease to care. But, if so, it will be the Sturgeons and the Arderns and the Merkels, with all their flaws, who paved the way. Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Frankly by Nicola Sturgeon (Pan Macmillan, £28). A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Pan Macmillan, £25). Freedom by Angela Merkel (Pan Macmillan, £35). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
What J.K. Rowling misses about Sturgeon's memoir
When someone one day writes a true history of Scotland during the baleful tenure of Nicola Sturgeon and reflects on what brought about her downfall as first minister, 'Isla' Bryson might be worth a footnote but J.K. Rowling surely merits a chapter. No one has managed to articulate the opposition case to Sturgeon with the verve, intelligence and penetrating wit of the Harry Potter author. Rowling's review of Frankly, Sturgeon's recently published memoir, is in many ways as brilliant as her other mainly tweeted thrusts. It is incisive and damming, outclassing her adversary and doing so with courage humour and originality. In other ways though it misses the mark, failing, as many observers of Scottish politics do, to see the details in the rotting wood for the petrified forest of trees. What is good is Rowling comparing Sturgeon to Bella Swan, heroine of the Twilight series, in that it conjures the image of blood being sucked from the body politic of Scotland (the SNP have been positively vampiric in their predations). It also highlights the eternally adolescent quality of the Sturgeon persona, a woman who had never had a serious job outside politics, a woman who avoids all serious scrutiny (even yesterday she cancelled what could have been uncomfortable interviews with the media) a woman who didn't learn to drive until she was in her 50s, a woman who recently got a tattoo. Sturgeon never moved on from her teenage obsession with independence. She never seriously addressed independence's huge practical obstacles or seemed interested in doing so, and certainly does not attempt this in Frankly. She never seems to have acquired wisdom or depth or humility, and never truly managed to emerge from the shadow of a charismatic mentor – Alex Salmond. Rowling takes a well-aimed swipe too at Sturgeon's propagandistic assertions that the 2014 referendum was a glorious inclusive positive exercise in democracy, a revisionist mantra from the still active veterans of the Yes camp repeated so often it's in danger of becoming accepted as gospel truth. The actions of those Yes voters at the time would suggest otherwise. As Rowling says: 'Oddly, this message didn't resonate too well with No voters who were being threatened with violence, told to fuck off out of Scotland, quizzed on the amount of Scottish blood that ran in their veins, accused of treachery and treason and informed that they were on the wrong side of, as one 'cybernat' memorably put it, 'a straightforward battle between good and evil.'' She is also right to have a dig at Sturgeon's 'London friends' who were dazzled and beguiled by the first minister, and couldn't see or were not interested in hearing about her and her party's endless failings. Rowling points out that these serial calamities get no serious mention in the book. As she rightly says, the omission of any reference to Scotland's soaring drugs deaths figures in particular is, frankly, appalling. Rowling is also relentless and remorseless in highlighting the dangers of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill (GRRB) and the culture of intolerance and vilification of any criticism Sturgeon engendered in its wake. Many political commentators focus on this piece of legislation in terms of its apparent consequences for Sturgeon's career, for her party, and for the broader independence cause, ignoring or downplaying the surely more important point that it relegated biological women to a sub category, putting them potentially in harm's way, and then told them to shut up and live with it. As Rowling puts it: 'She's caused real, lasting harm by presiding over and encouraging a culture in which women have been silenced, shamed, persecuted and placed in situations that are degrading and unsafe, all for not subscribing to her own luxury beliefs.' But where Rowling perhaps misses the target is in taking Sturgeon's support for the GRRB at face value, in assuming that her interest in self-ID was genuine and sincere. She says that Sturgeon was 'unshakeable in her belief that if men put on dresses and call themselves women they can only be doing so with innocent motives.' Really? Not everyone agrees with that, starting with Alex Salmond who once remarked that Sturgeon had never shown any interest in the issue of gender self-ID in the long time that he had known her, hinting in that Salmond-ish way that perhaps something else was going on. To find out what that something might be, one must, as so often with Scottish politics, depart the mainstream and head to the media by-waters, to the bloggers that pick through the rank smelling weeds of Scottish politics. Robin MacAlpine, a freelance journalist and former director of the Common Weal think tank (and independence supporter) has charted Sturgeon's shifting positions on gender issues over her career and sees them in purely strategic terms. As he puts it: 'Sturgeon and Murrell operated through fear… and their most aggressive punishers were young, digitally savvy activists – who happened to be strongly committed to trans politics. Sturgeon's most effective thug squad had to be kept placated. That (I believe) is why Sturgeon was so quick to announce gender ID legislation and so slow to produce it. She needed their rage, but not the legislative headache…' Which might explain the initial interest. But why then actually push for full enactment of self-ID? Why not just fudge the issue? MacAlpine explains: 'Then something else happened; the fall-out of the Salmond trial and the parliamentary inquiry. This nearly finished her career and some of the most dangerous revelations were down to her lack of a parliamentary majority when the Greens voted for disclosure. It is really important to understand the significance of this. Sturgeon was utterly desperate to close down the Scottish Parliament as a body that would scrutinise her and the way to do that was to have an overall majority bound by collective responsibility.' MacAlpine points out that Sturgeon could have had a parliamentary majority with the Scottish Greens in 2016. But she didn't pursue one, preferring to pass most of her legislation with votes from the Scottish Tories. MacAlpine calls the Bute House agreement an 'anti-transparency' move which he believes was designed to ensure total control at a critical moment and ensure the Greens were friends not foes. In other words, the GRRB perhaps had little to do with trans rights and was more about keeping a lid on a potentially explosive scandal. In which case, the cause of independence, her party's reputation, the women and girls of Scotland were expendable. Rowling ends by admitting she may have missed the point of Frankly, that perhaps it isn't intended to entertain, or enlighten but to serve as a CV distinguisher, and assist her on the way to her long coveted 'cushy sinecure' with UN Women. Well perhaps, though cynics might suggest that unlike the ferry Sturgeon 'launched' back in 2017, that ship has sailed. More likely Frankly is not just a CV distinguisher. It may just be a pre-emptive plea for mitigation.
The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Sturgeon takes swipe at Boris Johnson in book launch event
Speaking on stage at her alma mater, Ms Sturgeon said: 'I've been a politician for most of my adult life. I don't really enjoy reading political memoirs. 'I didn't want to write a memoir that was what most are, which is dry and quite detailed and also just recounting things that happened with the person writing it saying: 'wasn't I great and didn't I get everything right and everything else was wrong?' 'I didn't want to write that, I wanted to write something that was absolutely unashamed about the things I'm proud of'. Ms Sturgeon later told the audience she was 'really proud' of her memoir, saying 'It's my story'. READ MORE: 'There's no shortage of other people's opinions on what I say, what I did, what I do," she said, "And this was about me putting that into my words. And it feels good to have done it. 'Some people read it and love it, some people might read it and not love it. Many of the people who are writing about it now haven't and never will read it.' The former first minister later referenced ex-Tory Prime Minister Johnson and dubbed his memoir 'not worth reading'. Discussing Mr Johnson, Ms Sturgeon said: 'I do think there are strengths that women have that are a lot more conducive to leadership sometimes but they don't always get recognised as strengths. 'Sometimes it isn't a good thing to have people like Boris Johnson in positions of leadership. 'He's got a memoir out too, it is not worth reading.' At the Thursday night event, Ms Sturgeon was interviewed by UK Journalist Sam Baker. The former first minister answered a small number of audience questions, which had to be submitted to organisers over 24-hours prior to the event. Attendees were also told they were not allowed to take photos or drink in the event space.
