No, Nicola Sturgeon, ‘Isla Bryson’ was never a woman

To most sane people, a bloke in a dress is exactly that: a bloke in a dress, no matter how he identifies. Nicola Sturgeon’s view, however, is apparently a touch more ‘nuanced’. According to the former first minister of Scotland, a man is a woman if he identifies as one – unless he commits rape.

Sturgeon’s latest bewildering pronouncement on the trans debate came in an ITV interview broadcast yesterday, where she was promoting her new memoir, Frankly. She was asked about the infamous case of ‘Isla Bryson’ or Adam Graham, the double rapist housed in a women’s prison on her watch. ‘I think what I would say now’, Sturgeon mused, ‘is that anyone who commits the most heinous male crime against women probably forfeits the right to be… the gender of their choice’.

Nicola Sturgeon tells ITV people who 'commit the most heinous crimes against women forfeit the right to be the gender of their choice'. The first minister was answering a question on convicted rapist Isla Bryson, who is transgender.

You can watch Nicola Sturgeon: The Interview… pic.twitter.com/aY23KcgPpp

— ITV News (@itvnews) August 11, 2025

The Bryson case has always haunted Sturgeon. It dominated the headlines in early 2023, soon after Sturgeon’s flagship Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill had been approved in Holyrood. Had the bill not been blocked by the UK government, it would have made gender self-identification the law of the land in Scotland.

Bryson, often pictured in the press in a lopsided platinum wig and pink acrylic nails, conveniently began transitioning following his first court hearing in 2019. At the time of the Bryson scandal breaking in 2023, a freedom-of-information request sent by The Times found that there were 19 transgender prisoners in Scotland – 12 of whom only began transitioning once behind bars. Here was cast-iron proof of the recklessness of Sturgeon’s flagship trans policy. Dangerous men were already claiming to be women to enter women’s spaces – a process that would be made even easier by her gender reforms.

Yet despite this, Sturgeon continually dismissed all public concern as illegitimate. The gender-critical feminists who opposed self-ID, she insisted, were merely fanning the flames of a ‘culture war’. ‘Just as they’re transphobic’, she once infamously said, ‘you’ll also find that they’re deeply misogynist, often homophobic, possibly some of them racist as well’.

‘Why don’t you simply say that Isla Bryson is a biological male?’, the ITV journalist put it to Sturgeon in this week’s interview. ‘They are a biological male’, Sturgeon replied, diplomatically opting for a gender-neutral pronoun. That she cannot describe a biologically male rapist as ‘he’ suggests she still has a long way to go before the penny drops.

The fact remains that men who call themselves ‘Isla’ do not ‘revert’ to being men only at the point when they sexually assault someone. They were men all along. And they should never have been put in a women’s prison in the first place. Sturgeon’s refusal to accept this even now shows the hold trans ideology continues to have over her.

Georgina Mumford is a spiked intern.