The Endless Screeching Of Scotland’s Gender-Crit Mob

As more and more of Nicola Sturgeon’s memoirs seep into the public sphere like disinfectant poured over a rotting carcass, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of rancid drivel bubbling up from her critics, desperate to frame every sentence as corruption and lies.

First they audaciously claimed Sturgeon was spouting lunacy when she suggested Alex Salmond might have leaked news of his own arrest. The allegation wasn’t mad — it was plausible in a political world where reputations matter more than women’s safety. But apparently, shouting “Liz Lloyd!” on repeat is meant to cleanse Saint Alex of all suspicion.

For good measure, they then howled that she smeared the MSPs investigating her as puppets. Yet anyone watching those hearings knows some of them behaved like they were auditioning for his defence team. The idea that Murdo Fraser was some noble independent mind rather than a partisan hatchet-man is too idiotic to contemplate.

And their sewage cannon still wasn’t empty. Up came the shriek that Sturgeon slandered Salmond as being lukewarm on equal marriage. Except her government actually delivered equal marriage in 2014. Fact. Pretending she had nothing to do with it is historical amnesia dressed up as outrage.

(Or perhaps just jealousy that she was the one who actually changed the law, while their heroes only managed to polish their own reputations.)

But even so, this might be their boldest Hail Mary yet.

Because even for the gender-critical mob, trying to rewrite time itself is an ambitious move.

Their justification runs like this:

So before October 2022, “rational debate” was still possible, was it?

The moment debate becomes impossible is the moment you declare trans people’s basic existence invalid. That’s not debate — it’s bigotry with a thesaurus. You can disagree, sure, but insisting someone else’s humanity is a fantasy? That’s not “rational,” it’s cruelty dressed up as concern.

Sturgeon said she’d “listened carefully” over years of consultations and concluded the reforms posed no threat to women’s rights. That wasn’t arrogance; it was her weighing the evidence. But the antis screeched it meant “shut up and comply.” Translation: they didn’t like the conclusion, so democracy had obviously failed.

They, of course, never listened themselves. The Bill had been debated to death in Parliament, in the media, in endless consultations. Feminist lobby groups weren’t “locked out” — they were heard. They just couldn’t cope with being disagreed with.

And no, she didn’t “ignore” the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She considered their cautious intervention, alongside every other human-rights body saying move ahead. Critics spin it as her jamming fingers in her ears, when really she just didn’t privilege their side. Boo-fucking-hoo.

The Government delaying publication of consultation responses wasn’t proof of a sinister cover-up. It was bureaucracy and politics. But once the Isla Bryson case exploded, the antis treated it like the Book of Revelation. One individual’s crimes became the golden goose of their culture war.

Everything was apparently “fine” until voters “saw the light.” Bollocks. What actually happened is that one case gave them the bogeyman they craved. Safeguards worked, Bryson was moved — but why let boring facts ruin a juicy moral panic?

(It was never “abstract” risk. The abstract bit was pretending every trans woman was a lurking rapist. Bryson didn’t prove them right — he proved they’ll milk one case forever to smear thousands.)

It’s not possible to have “rational debate” with people who start from the position that your existence is invalid.

And Rowling’s t-shirt? A cheap stunt masquerading as profound truth. Sturgeon called it out for what it was — bigotry. Critics shrieked that this was smearing dissent. Aye, and calling a racist slogan racist would be “smearing” too, right?

Perhaps we’re meant to believe that “You’re Trumpian transphobes” is a nastier slur than equating trans women with sex offenders for a decade. Get tae fuck.

And then the pearl-clutching about Rowling’s “safety.” As if tweeting a slogan made her Joan of Arc at the stake. Meanwhile, actual trans women in prisons and on streets are the ones at risk of violence, but they’re dismissed without a thought.

It’s obvious Sturgeon regrets not the principle but the failure to get the Bill passed intact. And damn right. She sees trans women as women — she just couches it carefully because any blunt truth is immediately weaponised by the press.

(Even then, critics sneer about her book advance while their own movement hoovers up donations to churn out bile on blogs and podcasts. The hypocrisy could power the national grid.)

Gender-critical campaigners spent seven years demanding she “listen” while serving nothing but reheated slurs. Everything they swore would happen never did — except Bryson, which was handled. She was right to ignore their hysteria. By the time Rowling was printing slogans on cheap cotton, the “debate” was already in the gutter.

The bigger insult is pretending the public can’t see it. Sturgeon said their views were invalid because they were. And yes, she didn’t jump to defend them from online abuse — because they were the ones inciting tidal waves of it against trans people. They’re the arsonists howling at the fire brigade for using water.

She was NEVER interested in their “rational debate” because it wasn’t rational — it was a panic dressed as policy. And “No Debate” wasn’t fear; it was refusal to be entertainment while your humanity gets dissected like roadkill.

Even now they howl that she “can’t say what a woman is,” as if shouting GCSE biology answers settles politics. She hasn’t changed her mind because she didn’t need to. Her only mistake was not hammering her point harder before the mob drowned it out.

Because in her head, she’s still a progressive — and that’s because she fucking is. Her book admits to failings, but it doesn’t indulge the biggest lie: that giving trans people dignity is somehow dangerous.

The true message of Frankly is that the real failure wasn’t Sturgeon’s — it was the cowardice and bile of a media and political class that fed off culture-war hysteria. If only they hadn’t been such screeching arseholes, they’d see she was right all along.

And it can only be hoped that once the first-day frenzy of the hate-brigade dies down, their outrage shtick collapses into irrelevance. Sturgeon’s book will still be read; their bile belongs in the bin. And honestly, any fucking bin will do.