Sturgeon says she has been 'vilified' amid toxic abuse in trans debate

The former first minister said social media users had “laughed” at her miscarriage and expressed their hope she would be "raped in the toilet".

It came as she admitted she had not been inclusive enough to those who disagreed with her on the issue when she was in office.

Ms Sturgeon made the comments during the official launch of her new memoir, Frankly, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

In the book, she wrote that she wished she had “hit the pause button” on controversial legislation to allow trans people to self-identify their legal gender when she realised just how polarised the debate was becoming.

Despite fierce opposition from some women’s rights campaigners, who feared it would give biological males access to female spaces, the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was passed by Holyrood in late 2022 – though it has never been enacted after being blocked by Westminster.

Speaking to broadcaster Kirsty Wark at the book festival, Ms Sturgeon said: "If I look back, what stopped me at the time, I felt - and every time I say this, I get howls of derision even though I caveat it the way I'm about to caveat it - I don't think everybody who disagrees with me on this issue is transphobic or homophobic, but this whole issue has been hijacked and weaponised by people who are transphobic and homophobic.

"I perhaps worried that to pause at that time would have been to give in to that. Now, I might have been wrong, and I probably was wrong about that."

Asked if she was inclusive enough in the debate, the former first minister said: “Probably not, no, I don’t think I was.”

She added: "The debate is toxic on both sides. It's not all one way. Sometimes it is presented as if it is. I’ll just give you the last couple of days. Before I say this, I don't spend a lot of time looking at the bowels of social media.

"But I've had occasion to see a couple of things in the last few days. People on the other side of this debate, I'm not saying people whose names you'd recognise, but not faceless bots either - people who interact in this debate, saying things about me.

"These are people who call themselves feminists, standing up for women's rights, saying things about me such as, when I described my miscarriage experience the other day, 'I haven't laughed as much in years'. Accusing me of making it up. People saying they hope I'm raped in the toilet. These are the kinds of things that go in both directions."

Ms Sturgeon’s memoir details her continuing grief and guilt around her miscarriage in early 2011. She reveals she was “deeply conflicted” about the pregnancy because of the potential impact on her political role, and later “consumed by guilt” when she lost the baby.

She told the book festival she regretted her inability to find a more “collegiate way forward” when it comes to the trans debate.

However, she made clear her support for trans rights, saying: “To my dying day… I will just never accept that there is an irreconcilable tension between women’s rights and trans rights.

“I don’t believe you have to choose between being a feminist and standing up for one of the most stigmatised minorities in our society. Who has threatened women for all the years I have been alive? Abusive men have threatened women.

“You get bad people in every group in society but you don’t tar the whole group with the bad people, and that I really regret appears to be what some are trying to do with trans people, to take some people and say that is representative of the whole trans community.

“My life might be easier if I just [given] in on this issue and said, yeah, I got it wrong and we should never try to make life better for the trans community.

“But I will never, to make my own life easier, betray a stigmatized minority, because that is not why I came into politics and it is never what I will do in politics.”

Speaking to journalists after the event, Ms Sturgeon said: "People on both sides of this debate are vilified. I've been vilified and received some awful abuse, nothing like the abuse that trans people are getting right now."

She added: "I still hope we can find a way out of where we are right now. I totally respect the view of people who disagree with me on this, contrary to what is sometimes said."

Ms Sturgeon also said she disagreed with an Edinburgh venue’s apparent decision to bar Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes from speaking at future events because of her views on trans issues.

Ms Forbes was interviewed last week at Summerhall as part of a series of events hosted by The Herald newspaper. The venue later said the event had been booked “prior to the guest list being confirmed”, adding: "Summerhall Arts primary concern is the safety and wellbeing of the artists and performers we work with, and going forward we will be developing robust, proactive inclusion and wellbeing policies that would prevent this oversight in our bookings process happening again."

Ms Sturgeon told journalists: “I don’t agree with cancel culture, and I don’t agree with that.”

Earlier, she took a swipe at Joanna Cherry, the former SNP MP who is an outspoken critic of Ms Sturgeon’s leadership of the SNP, including around trans issues.

Ms Cherry previously said she will publish new information about the “conspiracy” against Alex Salmond in her own memoir next year.

"Well, I look forward to reading it, because there was no conspiracy,” Ms Sturgeon told the book festival. "Having just written a memoir, I wish anybody well who's embarking on this.

"The only other thing I would say is there are certain people in this world who spend a lot more time thinking about me than I spend thinking about them."