Nicola Sturgeon ebook reignites trans row with JK Rowling

JK Rowling has hit again at Nicola Sturgeon after the previous Scottish first minister’s memoir reignited their long-running row over gender.

Within the ebook, Sturgeon stated she had endured a surge of “vile” abuse after Rowling posted a selfie in a T-shirt with the slogan: “Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of girls’s rights”.

Sturgeon stated it had made her really feel “extra liable to attainable bodily hurt”.

Defending her actions, Rowling accused Sturgeon of a shameless denial of actuality over transgender points.

In a evaluate of the ebook, printed on her personal web site, Rowling stated her intention had been to encourage journalists to “confront” Sturgeon on the subject.

Sturgeon, the MSP for Glasgow Southside, had beforehand advised the BBC’s Newscast podcast that the Harry Potter writer had each proper to disagree along with her however that the T-shirt “appeared to me fairly incendiary”.

The pair – arguably essentially the most distinguished public figures in Scotland – have lengthy disagreed about politics, with Rowling essential of the previous Scottish Nationwide Social gathering chief’s try to legislate to make it simpler to legally change gender.

The Scottish Parliament handed the laws however it was blocked by Westminster earlier than it may very well be enacted due to its potential impression on GB-wide equality legislation.

Opponents of the proposed new legislation had been delighted, having argued that it will have threatened girls by giving organic males entry to feminine areas.

The campaigners, supported by Rowling, have since gained a landmark case in London when the UK Supreme Courtroom dominated {that a} girl is outlined by organic intercourse for the needs of the 2010 Equality Act.

Sturgeon says she stands by the precept that a person has the appropriate to self-identify within the gender of their selecting.

Nonetheless she has additionally expressed remorse that she didn’t pause the Holyrood gender self-ID invoice, in an effort to search widespread floor between supporters and critics, when the difficulty turned mired in “rancour and division”.

“We might misplaced all sense of rationality on this debate. I am partly answerable for that,” she advised ITV Information.

Rowling is unimpressed, writing on her web site that Sturgeon “precipitated actual, lasting hurt” by presiding over a tradition during which girls who didn’t subscribe to her “luxurious beliefs” had been “silenced, shamed, persecuted” and positioned in degrading and unsafe conditions.

“She is flat out Trumpian in her shameless denial of actuality and onerous details,” provides the Edinburgh-based writer.

Talking on BBC Breakfast this week Sturgeon stated she believed “forces on the far proper” had sought to “weaponise” the trans subject to “push again on rights extra typically”.

The feedback echoed language she had utilized in an interview with The Information Brokers podcast in 2023 when she stated that some opponents of the SNP’s gender reforms had been “deeply misogynist, usually homophobic, presumably a few of them racist as effectively”.

Rowling describes that as Sturgeon’s “basket of deplorables” second, a reference to Hillary Clinton’s disastrous dismissal of half of her rival Donald Trump’s supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic.

With these feedback, Rowling claims, Sturgeon “demonised and stigmatised” survivors of sexual trauma, lesbians, girls with disabilities and “everybody involved about security, privateness, equity and dignity for women”.

In her memoir, Sturgeon additionally discusses double rapist Adam Graham – who was initially despatched to a feminine jail after self-identifying as a girl referred to as Isla Bryson – admitting she had struggled to reply questions on whether or not the rapist was a person or a girl.

“I appeared weak and evasive. Worst of all, I appeared like I did not have the braveness to face behind the logical conclusion of the self-identification system we had simply legislated for,” she writes.

“In case you’re ready to just accept the foundational falsehood that some males are girls, you may inevitably end up panicking like a pheasant caught in headlights someday,” writes Rowling in response.

The writer, who in 2014 donated £1m to the marketing campaign to maintain Scotland within the UK, additionally accuses Sturgeon of omitting or taking part in down essential issues in her memoirs, such because the deletion of presidency WhatsApp messages throughout Covid; “tanking” instructional outcomes; failures in procuring new ferries; and a police investigation into the SNP’s funds.

“Maybe essentially the most disgraceful omission,” she continues, “is the truth that Scotland continues to guide the entire of Europe in drug deaths.”

In a collection of media interviews to publicise her ebook Sturgeon has predicted that Scotland shall be unbiased in 20 years or much less and has defended her file as first minister from 2014 to 2023.

She has insisted that she acted in the very best pursuits of the nation throughout Covid and that reforms in Scotland designed to scale back poverty at the moment are resulting in progress in narrowing the attainment hole between the richest and poorest college students.

Sturgeon, who will stand down as an MSP subsequent yr, additionally factors out that she was exonerated by police investigating the funds of the SNP in an inquiry which is codenamed Operation Branchform.

Her husband, former occasion chief govt, Peter Murrell, faces a cost of embezzlement. The couple have since separated.