Nicola Sturgeon has revealed she has received more abuse over the issue of trans rights than at any other during her tenure as Scotland’s first minister.
It came as the outgoing SNP leader said she would argue she was “not out of step” with the country around the issues of trans rights and the gender recognition act.
Concluding a mammoth day of media rounds on Monday to mark her final week in office, Sturgeon was asked by Sky News political editor Beth Rigby whether it “hurt” to face scathing criticism from JK Rowling.
Specifically, the Harry Potter author has previously tweeted a picture of herself wearing a T-shirt calling Sturgeon a “destroyer of women’s rights”
She replied: “No, because it’s not true.”
Sturgeon continued she was not “going to get into a spat with JK Rowling”, before making a “general comment” that was “not a comment directed at JK Rowling”.
She said: “I’ve had more toxic abuse, on this issue, much of it from women claiming to care about women’s rights and women’s safety than I have from probably any other issue,” she said.
“All of us need to take a step back and reflect on that.
“We can disagree and obviously do disagree but whether it’s on this issue or other issues, we need to relearn how to disagree in a way that is civilised and respectful and brings a bit of good faith back into some of these debates.”
Sturgeon said she had listened to stories from transgender children who told her they wanted to kill themselves due to the “stigma, discrimination and recognised for who they are”.
She said: “I think I can sit here and argue I wasn’t out of step with the Scottish public (on GRA).
“I’ve sat in rooms with young trans kids talking to me about wanting to kill themselves because of the stigma and the discrimination and the inability to be recognised for who they are.”
She added: “The threat to women is abusive and predatory men, not trans people.
“My regret was that I wasn’t able to take the debate and the discourse around it into a more rational place.”
Sturgeon was also asked if she regretted her handling of trans rapist Isla Bryson, a convicted rapist placed in a women’s prison.
“These are tough issues, but they are issues fundamentally about basic human rights,” she said.
“There is no other group in society where we take the behaviour of a tiny minority and use it to deny rights to that group.
“What gender that person said they were, was less important than saying they were a convicted rapist.
“The fact they were a convicted rapist should not have been used by anybody as a pretext for denying rights to the wider trans community.”
Sturgeon’s final week in office has been overshadowed by the resignations of the SNP’s head of communications, Murray Foote and her husband Peter Murrell as chief executive over claims press officers gave journalists misleading information on membership figures.
She acknowledged the party was going through a “difficult” time, but believes it will emerge “stronger”.