Nicola Sturgeon has spoken out about the abuse she has suffered in recent days as a result of the “toxic” debate on trans rights.
While the former Scottish first minister said she does not “spend a lot of time looking at the bowels of social media”, she is aware some people online have “laughed” about her miscarriage, and said they want her to be “raped in a toilet”.
She spoke about the miscarriage she had in 2010 as part of events and interviews in recent days to publicise her memoir, Frankly.
She says in the book that she “should have hit the pause button” on controversial legislation to allow trans people to self-identify and gain legal recognition in their preferred gender without a lengthy medical process.
Despite fierce opposition from some women’s rights campaigners who feared this would give biological males access to female spaces, the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was passed by Holyrood – though it has never been enacted after being blocked by Westminster.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Thursday, Ms Sturgeon said the debate was “toxic on both sides”.
Highlighting comments made on social media this week, she said: “There 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 am raped in a toilet.”
She accepted that “in all of the tone and tenor of this I am not saying I was blameless at all”, saying she “desperately” wished she had been able to “find a more collegiate way forward” on the controversial issue.
She described transphobia as “the soft underbelly of other prejudice”.
Ms Sturgeon insisted not all opponents of gender reform are either transphobic or homophobic, but the issue of trans rights “has been hijacked and weaponised by people that are transphobic and homophobic”.
She said she was “worried” that if she paused the gender reforms at Holyrood, this would have seen her “give in to that”.
However she said: “I might have been wrong, and I probably was wrong about that.”
Ms Sturgeon also made clear her support for transgender 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 gave 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.”
She later confirmed she had not contacted the police about the abusive comments.
She told journalists: “I think in terms of online abuse, sometimes we just have to kind of all take a step back and stop doing it, rather than think that the recourse is always to go to the police.”
But she also said she feared the abuse politicians receive could “drive out so many good people” from politics, with the former first minister warning this “will be a disaster for democracy”.
While she said there were now more women in senior positions, she added: “In many, many ways it is more difficult for women now in politics because of the toxicity and social media.
“I don’t have the magic answer to that but I do know that unless we get to grips with it and address it better, we’re going to drive out so many good people, women and men, from politics and that will be a disaster for democracy.”
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