Nichola Sturgeon, The First Major Casualty Of The Right-Wing War Against Transgender people

In the not-too-distant future, when historians examine Nichola Sturgeon’s fall, there’s a good chance her spectacular demise will be acknowledged as the moment the UK’s political class turned decisively against the trans community. 

Nichola Sturgeon, a serial election winner, recently failed at a press conference to credibly define what makes a man a man and a woman a woman and fatally undermined her leadership credentials.

Sturgeon has claimed her gender helped her to understand minorities and the oppressed, and this empathy was behind her commitment to broadening spaces that women and minorities operated in. Her liberal tendencies encouraged her to pass the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill, a law intended to simplify the legal process for individuals to change their gender. Sturgeon’s support for transgender men to be housed in women’s prisons was seized upon by the media. News outlets focused on cases of male rapists who had self-identified as women after being sentenced and were a clear and present danger to women in prisons. 

The message is clear: Politicians beware. You can win national elections,  see off a succession of UK Prime ministers, continue to fight and push for national independence, survive backstabbing from former colleagues, standoff against a hostile press, and build a formidable political base, but if you foolishly wade into the trans-culture war, you can lose your head. 

Sturgeon's calamitous fall has sent shudders of fear across the UK’s political spectrum. After years of being battered by the liberal left on topics such as contested colonial history, racism, gender equality and climate change, conservatives have finally found a divisive wedge issue they can consistently win on.

And why not? Trans advocacy pisses off the religious, the conservative, and countless institutions proclaiming to be protectors of traditional values while fracturing groups that usually consider themselves to be bastions of liberal thought.  Politically expedient relationships within the LBTQ coalition are fracturing and becoming openly combative. The leader of the Labour Party avoids discussion of trans rights more than his position on Brexit. 

During any open public discussion, any left-leaning politician will have to bridge contradictory positions of supporting trans rights while defending established conventions of biology and speaking up for traditional family values. Anyone who can juggle these contradictory arguments into a logically coherent and inoffensive soundbite (besides being acknowledged as a  political genius) will only be accused of defending the indefensible. 

Politicians are elected and well-paid to represent all their constituents, particularly the vulnerable and the isolated; if they do not speak up for the oppressed and the unpopular, who will?   

Without sane and balanced leadership from our elected representatives, the public discourse will only become more ugly and corrosive. Fear and hate will grow. As a result, trans kids will continue to get beaten up in school. Trans men and women will continue to be murdered. 

Attacks on transpeople are a matter of public record. The data shows that brown trans people are bearing the brunt of the violence. These numbers don’t lie. However, within the increasingly fertile ant-trans climate, this information is increasingly irrelevant to politicians who fear losing their careers if they speak up.