Nicola Sturgeon: 'People who call themselves feminists laughed at my miscarriage'

Nicola Sturgeon has said people who call themselves feminists have laughed at her miscarriage and said they want her to be “raped in a toilet” on social media.

Although the former first minister said she does not “spend a lot of time looking at the bowels of social media”, she said she has seen several offensive comments about herself in the last few days.

Speaking at an Edinburgh International Book Festival event to launch her memoir, Frankly on Thursday, Sturgeon said the comments have come from people on the other side of the gender reform and trans rights debate.

She said the abuse is coming from people who are calling themselves feminists who stand up for women’s rights.

Sturgeon’s gender reform legislation was designed to make it easier for trans people to change their legal gender without a lengthy medical process.

Despite fierce opposition from some women’s rights campaigners who feared it would give biological males access to female spaces, it was passed in Scotland with cross-party support.

But the Gender Recognition Reform was never enacted after it was blocked by Westminster.

Sturgeon often faces criticism for the way she has handled it.

The former SNP leader has since admitted she should have paused the legislation and said she didn’t anticipate some of the concerns that would be triggered.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, she called the argument “toxic on both sides”.

“People on the other side of this debate – not names you’d recognise, but not faceless bots either – are saying things about me, and these people who call themselves feminists that are standing up for women’s rights, such as when I described my miscarriage experience, saying ‘I haven’t laughed as much in years’,” Sturgeon said.

“They’re accusing me of making it up. People are saying they hope I am raped in a toilet. And I don’t think that is just at the extreme.”

Sturgeon was asked on Thursday about why she did not hit pause on her gender reform legislation when the debate began to become divisive.

“I don’t think everyone who disagrees with me on this issue is transphobic or homophobic, but this whole issue has been hijacked by people who are,” Sturgeon answered.

“I perhaps worried that to pause the legislation at that time would be to give in to that. I probably was wrong about that.”

Sturgeon also wished former SNP MSP Joanna Cherry, who has been among the loudest internal critics of her party’s former leader, good luck with a memoir she said she is currently writing.

“Having just written a memoir, I wish anyone well who’s embarking on this,” Sturgeon said.

“The only other thing I’ll say is that there are certain people in this world who spend a lot more time thinking about me than I spend thinking about them.”