Male rapists should “probably” lose the right to choose their gender, Nicola Sturgeon has said.
The former first minister, in an interview with ITV to mark the release of her memoir, also said she was partly to blame for the debate on gender recognition laws in Scotland losing “all sense of rationality”.
Sturgeon came under intense pressure in 2023 after transgender offender Isla Bryson was remanded in a women’s prison before being moved to a men’s facility.
It came during a fierce debate over the proposals to make it easier for people in Scotland to change their legally-recognised sex.
Publishers Pan Macmillan had said Sturgeon’s book, Frankly, would be released on Thursday. However, the memoir was available to buy in Waterstones from Monday afternoon.
Waterstones said that it could sell the book as soon as it received copies as no embargo was in place.
Bryson was jailed for eight years in 2023 after being found guilty of two counts of rape.
The attacks were committed in Clydebank and Glasgow in 2016 and 2019.
Having initially been charged as Adam Graham, Bryson had self-identified as a woman while awaiting trial.
Bryson was initially remanded to Cornton Vale women’s prison in Stirling, but was later moved to a men’s jail.
It led to a change in policy so that all newly-convicted or remanded transgender prisoners are initially placed in jails according to their birth sex.
Sturgeon repeatedly refused to call Bryson a man at the time.
Asked about the case by ITV, the former SNP leader said: “Isla Bryson identified as a woman.
“I think what I would say now is that anybody who commits the most heinous male crime against women probably forfeits the right to be the gender of their choice.”
When pressed about that comment, she added it was “probably was not the best phrase to use”.
The former first minister then described Bryson as a “biological male” and said she should have been “much more straightforward” in the past.
The Bryson controversy came during the debate about Scotland’s proposed gender self-identification laws, which were passed by MSPs but ultimately blocked by the UK government.
Sturgeon told ITV: “We’d lost all sense of rationality in this debate. I’m partly responsible for that.”
In April, the Supreme Court ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.
The case marked a major victory for gender critical campaigners over the Scottish government, and has had major implications for how sex-based rights apply across Britain.
In another segment of the ITV interview released on Sunday, she said that in retrospect she should have paused the self-ID legislation.
“I fervently believe that the rights of women and the interests of trans people are not irreconcilable at all,” the former first minister said.
“I should have taken a step back and said, ‘How do we achieve this?”‘
‘Not the actions of a feminist’
SNP MSP Michelle Thomson, who along with Conservative MSP Russell Findlay proposed an amendment to the gender recognition bill that would have halted gender recognition certificates being given to rapists, said Sturgeon’s comments came “too late”.
“Had she stopped to consider or engage with concerns regarding women’s existing rights she would not have forced the SNP group to vote against my amendment to temporarily pause the granting of GRCs to rapists.
“Her decision made clear that their rights should trump those of the raped.”
Thomson added: “This was not, and never will be, the actions of a feminist.
“For that reason I think that Nicola should really apologise for her failure to listen and act on the views of others.”
Findlay, now Scottish Tory leader, said: “Frankly, Nicola Sturgeon must be delusional if she thinks the women of Scotland will swallow this drivel.”
He added: “Her absurd ideological belief in self-ID collapses with her belated mealy-mouthed admission that this rapist is a man, but she still can’t bring herself to say sorry for all the pain and misery she has caused.”
Sturgeon also reflected on the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, when she campaigned for Yes while serving as deputy first minister to Alex Salmond.
She claimed Salmond did not fully read the Scottish government’s white paper Scotland’s Future, which set out its plans for setting up an independent state.
Sturgeon said Salmond “didn’t engage in the work of the drafting or the compilation of the white paper at all”.
‘Abdication of responsibility’
She said: “He hadn’t read it. He’d maybe read bits. I don’t even know if he’d read bits of it.
“I knew I was going to have to sit him down and say, ‘look, you’re going to have to read this, and you’re going to have to tell me now if there are bits you want to change, because it has to be signed off’.
“He told me he was going on a trade mission to China.
“I don’t think I’d ever felt as much cold fury at him as I did in that moment. It just seemed to me like an abdication of responsibility.”
Sturgeon said she suffered a panic attack while trying to complete the white paper.
“I was sobbing on the floor of my office at home and just my heart was racing,” she told ITV.
Sturgeon succeeded Salmond after the referendum but the pair later fell out, with Salmond successfully suing his former protégé’s government over a botched investigation into harassment complaints against him.
Salmond was cleared of 13 sexual offence charges in 2020, including attempted rape, but during the trial his lawyer admitted his client could “have been a better man.”
He died aged 69 in October.
After leaving the SNP, Salmond set up the pro-independence Alba Party.
The former Alba general secretary Chris McEleny described Sturgeon’s claims as “laughable”.
He said Salmond “had spent several years guiding SNP policy to form the basis of a credible case for independence on the back of having ran the most competent government in the history of Scotland”.
McEleny added: “Nicola’s upset that Alex went on a trade mission and left her to complete a task she was responsible for sums up her lack of personal political accountability.”
Nicola Sturgeon was never going to get through her book promotion without having to talk about gender – it was an issue that caused a real fissure in the SNP.
But what’s notable is her position seems to have shifted a bit.
First of all, she concedes she should have paused the controversial gender legislation in Holyrood.
And she seems to be saying now that not everyone has the right to change their gender – specifically those who have committed sexual crimes.
During the passage of gender legislation (that was ultimately blocked by the UK government) loud voices in her own party openly called on her to do both these things.
But Nicola Sturgeon chose to approach the issue differently.
Michelle Thomson has gone public with her criticism of how this was all handled. But there are others in the SNP who can’t quite believe the change of heart this interview has elicited.
