Sturgeon and other senior SNP politicians were accused of blocking some of the country’s leading feminist voices on social media, and ignoring emails and letters.

“There was nothing feminist about her throwing very bright, capable women to the wolves, and male wolves in particular,” says Susan Smith, a director of campaign group For Women Scotland.

So why is Sturgeon set on this path? Many of the women now campaigning against the Scottish Government believe that she saw this issue as an easy win and a chance for virtue signalling and prioritising woke policies.

“I think that they thought it would be an easy win,” Smith says. “I don’t know that Nicola Sturgeon has a particularly profound understanding of feminism or women’s issues; she has been a very narrowly focused politician.”

There is also a political consideration. Last summer, Sturgeon announced a groundbreaking co-operation agreement between the SNP and the Scottish Greens, to give her a majority in the Scottish Parliament – and what she described as “a cast-iron mandate for giving the people of Scotland the choice of independence”. Although Sturgeon made it clear this was not a coalition, the parties’ shared manifesto included a promise to “reform the Gender Recognition Act in a Bill introduced in the first year of this parliamentary session. This will ensure the process by which a trans person can obtain legal recognition is simplified, reducing the trauma associated with that process.”

Perhaps she thought this was an easy concession to enable the march to achieving independence. Certainly, before 2018, most of the voices in their ears came from the trans lobby. The Scottish Government has paid controversial LGBT charity Stonewall thousands for advice on policies and on attending its events and training courses. Or did it just look like an “easier fix” suggests Smith, than dealing with social injustice or violence against women?

Sturgeon should not be blamed alone. says Lisa Mackenzie, a director of policy analysis collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie (MBM). “The people who I reserve my anger for,” says Mackenzie, “are the institutions which have not realised that there are two groups of people who need to be considered. It is an institutional failure.”

MBM and For Women Scotland are now among a number of groups that are taking up the fight against the First Minister and the government they believed were meant to protect them. As Smith puts it, “women have been abandoned by groups supposed to protect them, the groups that are funded by the Scottish Government have really abdicated responsibility for this.”

Women won’t wheesht

So why did the First Minister and so many institutions make such a catastrophic misjudgement that those they usually purported to stand up for would be left feeling abandoned and betrayed?

In part, says Smith, it was a political miscalculation; she points out that the SNP was “complacent” about its support because it believed independence would remain the most important issue for voters. But also, “They underestimated Scottish women,” Smith says. “One of the things that has been quite noticeable is how we have been very vocal,” and that “people have been horrified about how loud Scottish women are.”

In particular, a rallying cry has emerged: “Women won’t wheesht” – which means women won’t be silenced. Before 2018, “wheesht” was a little known word, but one mother, concerned about her disabled daughter who needs sex-based care and it is feared will be unable to request a female nurse or doctor, turned the phrase into a hashtag that is now used by the feminist movement in Spain, France and Germany, too.

The woman, a SNP supporter, who tweets using the name @dis_critic and has asked to remain anonymous for the sake of her daughter, says she was “surprised by the response” but believes it is testament to the strength of feeling about the issues. “We feel robbed of something and we feel that we haven’t been listened to,” she says.

“I am now female first and Scottish after that. If people are fighting for female sex-based rights and single sex services then I am happy to join their discussion, no matter what party they are from.”