Sturgeon accuses JK of toxic trans debate

"Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir has claimed independence from factual accuracy."

(Yes I know it's been posted several times but it's so apt.)

She has apparently included several pages about conversations with the Queen, even a working class lass should have known that isn't "classy". Wearing a T shirt that actually represents the truth - classy in my book and I dont generally like T shirts with slogans.

I wonder how fast the book will go from bookshop to charity shop to being pulped as even in a charity shop no-one wants to buy it. Might be tempted to bid for JKRs copy though.

I don't see why not, but someone better qualified than me might like to comment

it is, in fact, a comment that bears repeating. And i wonder if the women attending holyrood on 4th sept would be able to put that on a banner...

Sorry, just seen that I'm one of many to post the opening sentence.
Thought the comment was good though.

Not fully up to date on this thread,so apologies if someone's already said this.

There's an article in today's Times by Jack Blackburn slagging off NS 's work of fiction.
He starts the article:

"Nicola Sturgeon's memoir has declared independence from factual accuracy"

In the comments online someone has credited NS with inventing "rapist gender"

Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir has claimed independence from factual accuracy.

Hacks are thoroughly enjoying this, aren't they?

She wasn’t really challenged for a long time in power - very authoritarian - squashing people who disagreed with her. I guess she believed she had become infallible which is probably why her book has so many errors in it.

I am pleased Sammond’s widow has taken Sturgeon to task about it as well.

Other politicians need to take note.

NS also gets a mention in The Times Diary

"Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir has claimed independence from factual accuracy. The book, Frankly, is littered with small errors, such as the former first minister’s claim that the reconvened Scottish parliament of 1999 contained more women than had ever been elected to Westminster. This could not have been achieved even if every single MSP had been a woman, but it evaded a fact-checker’s pen. Other mistakes are more personal. Sturgeon recalls how, after wiping out all bar one of the Labour MPs in Scotland in 2015, she boarded a flight for London to wild applause. She even claims that Tom Harris, one of the defeated MPs, was there looking on. “It isn’t true,” said Harris, who was confused with another ex-MP. “What is the point of the anecdote in the first place other than to crow … about a defeated opponent?” Harris said. “Stay classy, Nic.” This would be another example of Sturgeon’s self-proclaimed emotional intelligence."

Thank god she’s out of power now. What a relief. The comparison with Liz Truss is very apt. Sturgeon’s not of any consequence now without that powerful role, so I hope there is not going to be any follow up or attention on anything else she says, after this naked attempt to flog her book. Come September I hope her misogynistic authoritarian views will seem like a baffling distant past anachronism. How could anyone have got behind those ideas.

Fi Glover is on Times radio.

great article in the Times ! @Igneococcus thanks for the share

“ Ms Truss and Ms Sturgeon have much in common in retirement. Both are seeking to rewrite their own pasts. Both are wielding sophistry to show faux ­humility. And neither is being honest by failing to tell readers the truth about their time in power……..

Her memoir makes scant mention of the mess the Scottish National Party made of governing Scotland during her leadership ……

The book is especially disingenuous on trans rights. After attacking JK Rowling, who has shown admirable clarity and bravery on the question of what defines sex, Ms Sturgeon offers only a minimal apology for the decision to push ahead with the self-ID legislation that ended her career …..

No amount of recasting of history can overcome such blunders”

So it’s not just us wonderful MN posters who are calling out Sturgeon on her past actions. Obviously Fi on Radio 4 will be kind and paint Sturgeon as some sort of saint

Just seen this in one of the comments underneath the Times leader:
Now, much more interesting is the fact that For Women Scotland are holding a rally entitled Women Won’t Wait at Holyrood on 4th September from 11am to 12 noon. The many-time loser Swinney will see just what he’s up against for his failure to implement the Supreme Court ruling. All welcome. Hopefully the witty woman outside the Peggie tribunal in Dundee will bring her ‘Nae Manny has a F_anny’ placard!

Posters on here to scold us should be mindful of who held (still holds) the power in Scotland. Who has personal security details, who appointed the Lord Advocate, who called those who disagreed with her homophobic and racist - while bearing in mind that she also presided over the Hate Crime Act that introduced new crimes relating to these sort of prejudices.

A FM inevitably attracts criticism and when she or he has treated the electorate with the insults and contempt Sturgeon did, anger is unsurprising. She ran party, country, and government in an increasingly authoritarian way, which is why criticism is inevitably levelled at her personally. The party itself was hollowed out and power concentrated ever more tightly in a shrinking circle. See the NEC changes for example.

Political protest is stirring things up and one could call it 'divisive' by nature. What the fuck do you think the point of protest is?!

People who want to chide women for criticising politicians should think carefully about where that kind of narrative leads.

Nicola Sturgeon is being interviewed by Fi Glover on Times Radio at 3.30 today. I think Fi Glover is in the 'Be Kind' camp but still could be worth a listen.

All of this. She was an elected representative who attacked her own voters and the voters for her party for having genuine concerns about a pet project of her own. She had the platform to try to damage these women and she used it plenty of times. She fell on the sword of her own hubris and is still looking to blame others for her demise. She is an absolute fool.

God forbid women have strong views on politics and express them! So unladylike.

They'll be giving us the vote next.

If you want to whine about your policy hitting public opposition because you want to be able to lock up a man who is doing time for two rapes with women and the public says stuff like "wat du fuck? or "no fucken way" or "not on my fuuucken watch" or "fuck no" or (a posh) "No"?

The whine is still not the danger to women to whom she had a direct duty the whine is because she got caught.

She is selling a book and done with her old career and has time to reflect and still decided to use JKR as a book sale prop when her pet project put male rapists into any single sex womans space.

And the Tshirt and JKRs opinion would not have mattered a dam if the people she was passing laws for agreed with the proposed law.

She got the publicty she wanted and may even sell a few extra books as a result.

Personal opinion not about posters :
I mean. It was hardly classy of JKR to wear a tahirt slagging her off, was it? Hardly the height of reasoned debate. I'm defending neither of them,
Personal opinion about posters :
but a lot of you hate Sturgeon, take cheap shots and then somehow think you've the upper hand and are cutely hilarious.

Being called cutely hilarious when objecting to a view on rape and rapists.

Anthony Howard was fond of quoting Enoch Powell saying: "all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs". It's a saying that always comes to mind when I think of rejoicing at the misfortune of politicians. And it was for occasions like that that it was deployed: when a politician had left the stage once and for all in defeat.

Sturgen is tough and intelligent; dogged but pragmatic - she's not eloquent, but she has good political instincts. It's a mystery that she not only allowed this to destroy her career but to derail the entire SNP project. Why this?

After her stepping down, the very next day(!), Starmer made his - "that for 99.9%" of women "of course they haven't got a penis", pronouncement. You can draw a line directly from that debacle - a position into which Starmer seems to have sworn to never again to be put - to the SC ruling this year. So, maybe that is simply the role that destiny ordained her to play.

I have lived in Scotland since 2003 and watched it change in this time. I will hold NS in contempt no matter how many scolders appear.

Times leader piece in the Scotland section:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/54279838-2d76-421f-bee7-83f7d024e433?shareToken=8e52c495bd22f4fc754363f69c6d1059

In this thread, Sturgeon has basically been painted as the AntiChrist.

Aside from the hyperbole of this phrase, let's examine why the posters on here (particularly the Scottish ones who have actually been affected) might be a tad pissed off by Sturgeon.

As First Minister/Leader of the SNP, she presided over -

Rape survivors being painted as transphobes and bigots by their elected representatives during the six words amendment debate of the Forensic Medical Examiner Services Bill.

Called women who raised the obvious issues about the GRR bill 'bigots', 'probably racist too' and their views 'not valid'. Her Government refused to hear from women's rights groups and only asked for input from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women at the last minute of stage 3 of the GRR debate.
She ignored women leaving the SNP in swathes but did the infamous 'broom cupboard video' to plead with TRA members who were leaving because they didn't feel she was sufficiently women hating.

Allowed the Scottish Prison Service, an executive agency of the Scottish Government, to place violent male sexual offenders into the male prison estate. For years.

Presided over the Bute House agreement, going into partnership with the virulently women hating Scottish Greens.

Stripped rape crisis services across Scotland of their funding unless they provided solely mixed sex funding. Was fulesomely pally with the man who was the CEO of a rape crisis service which according to a damning independent review caused rape survivors to suffer harm and self exclude.

And so on and so on.

But no, no, the very idea that we might point this out. It might be 'polarising'

Can't.stop.rolling.my.eyes.

In this thread, Sturgeon has basically been painted as the AntiChrist

The hyperbole is spectacular there.

Destroying women's rights isn't that big a deal and we aren't allowed to be really angry about it, because if we are we might be seen as mean and really unfair to Nicola. Our response to her sheer brass neck in trying to rewrite history and pretend that we didn't try and talk about this reasonably for YEARS is totally unjustified. We should just accept she's got a point that we turned the debate toxic.

Shall we shut up now so that other people can rush to her defence and there can be a debate about whether we are being fair? I mean Nicola is big on wanting debate rather than getting her own way isn't she? Sure, it was really hard work in the face of a huge amount of abuse that she never once criticised to turn it around, but that ok. It wasn't really that big a deal for us after all. We should be kind and we should be meek and placid and absolutely wet and acknowledge it's not that bad really. Cos it's be really harsh on Nicola to do otherwise.

Or do we not give a fuck at this point? Cos it's just not fucking true.

Kumbaya. Let's all hold hands around the camp fire and celebrate her achievements.

Got it. Women having a strong opinion just isn't ladylike enough.

Ah. The now well worn path to resurrect a dying career. Pick a fight with JK Rowling. Call her transphobic a few times and hey presto. You too can be interviewed on the telly and in various newspapers. Job done!

Sturgeon just brought out a book didn't she? Hmmm

You’re centring on one phrase - and that isn’t even a particularly insulting one - when that poster has been given much worse. In this thread, Sturgeon has basically been painted as the AntiChrist. This is what happens to anyone who tries to say anything different, however mild, on this board. It’s ridiculous, polarising and designed to drive others away.

Only if you are wearing Barbie pink lipstick 😂