EUAN McCOLM: in Praise Of JK Rowling

For years, now, women have actually been after bold to reveal the view that biology is genuine and crucial.
Companies and public bodies, captured by the needs of extremist trans activists, have exacted cruel penalties on those expressing completely mainstream – and legal – views on sex and gender.
Inevitably, tribunals have actually followed a number of these cases. During these, we’ve heard horrifying details of women dealt with abominably by companies in thrall to advocates who advised and enforced the prohibited adoption of self-ID policies when it came to single-sex spaces.
We have actually heard of females bullied and avoided for questioning the right of those born male to self-identify into ladies’s areas, from changing rooms to domestic violence refuges.
Equally undoubtedly, those females capable of fighting back have been winning legal actions.
But even a rock solid case does not make it simple to strike back. Good attorneys are costly and the process is draining, both physically and emotionally.
For every female who has actually thrived in court, there are a lot more for whom launching a legal case appeared impossible.
The facility by the novelist and philanthropist JK Rowling of a fund to support women’s legal security of their rights right away gets rid of any monetary barriers to action for those with viable cases.
Author JK Rowling has actually established a fund to support ladies’s legal defense of their rights
The intervention of Ms Rowling should, right now, be focusing minds in human resources departments across the country.
Since the Supreme Court ruled, last month, that sex, in law, was a matter of biology instead of paperwork, a variety of organisations – in both the public and private sectors – have released statements revealing their choices to “consider” the implications for their policies.
This widespread and negligent complacency stands to cost business – and taxpayer-funded bodies – dear. The realities are basic. If a service is offered on a single sex basis that implies biological sex, not individual identity.
The law is the law and no further factor to consider is needed in order for employers to fulfill their obligations under it.
A number of previous legal actions after women were unfairly dismissed or bullied out of tasks for refusing to agree with the mantra “trans ladies are women” were possible thanks to the assistance of online crowd-funding projects. Ms Rowling often promoted – and donated to – such charity events.
Now, she’s a one-woman crowd-funder, prepared to back the cases of every lady wronged at work for speaking the reality about sex.
The JK Rowling Women’s Fund will change the battleground when it concerns ladies victimized for their genuine, reality-based views.
At the heart of commercial tribunals there may be susceptible individuals betting high stakes but the human cost means absolutely nothing to the insurance providers underwriting employers’ expenses. For them, it’s everything about the bottom line and the prospect that every female with a case now has access to the best lawyers in the service will, I suspect, encourage numerous to advise settlement instead of the humiliation, and inescapable cost, of more doomed defences.
If one required proof that females’s rights are in need of the fiercest defense, it can be found in the response to the launch of Ms Rowling’s fund.
With tasty pathos, one activist attorney stated online that the Harry Potter developer had “emerged from the shadows” as the funder of what he referred to as the “anti feminist biology is destiny motion”.
Ms Rowling has never remained in the shadows when it pertains to her views on women’s rights, has she?
Other actions were, naturally, more violent in tone.
The continuous tribunal involving nurse Sandie Peggie, declaring discrimination and harassment versus NHS Fife and trans-identifying doctor Beth Upton, brought the problem of the way so called “gender critical” women had been treated at work to wide attention. This is a case that “cut through” with the public and forced some politicians to attend to a concern they chose to prevent.
Scottish Labour’s leader Anas Sarwar and his deputy, Jackie Baillie, announced their support for Ms Peggie and stated their belief in the importance of biological sex.
If they ‘d understood what they understand now, they added, they would not have voted in favour of the SNP’s eventually doomed plan to permit anyone to self-identify into the legally-recognised sex of their choosing.
But while the Peggie case and the subsequent judgment on the legal meaning of sex by the Supreme Court may have forced an embarrassing U-turn by the Labour leadership on the matter of biological reality, others stay stubbornly dedicated to defiance of the law.
Naturally, the Scottish Greens – a fantastic Wodehousian satire of an advanced cell – remain committed to using single-sex areas by anybody who feels they come from that sex.
There have been current statements of resistance from trade unions, too. Unison has actually permitted a trans female to run for a women-only position on its nationwide executive council.
But every act of performative defiance by well-funded trade unions – or taxpayer-funded local authorities and health boards – is another pricey legal action in the making.
It must not have been necessary for JK Rowling to ensure to finance the legal expenses of ladies discriminated versus for their views on sex and gender. Nobody ought to ever have actually lost a job, a promotion, or an agreement on the basis of their view that sex is immutable and important.
Nor should the novelist have actually felt it required to establish, in 2022, Beira’s Place, a women-only assistance service for victims of sexual violence in the Lothian area.
Ms Rowling’s decisions to fund Beira’s Place and to finance the legal costs of ladies discriminated against for believing in the truth of sex are acts of feminist philanthropy which, in a world not made batty by gender ideology, would have been hailed by our politicians.
I understand that recognition is the last thing on the author’s mind however isn’t it downright unusual that, when he talks of the achievements of successful Scots, First Minister John Swinney never ever mentions the support Beira’s Place has offered to numerous women?
Money is not the only thing females doing something about it to defend their rights require. Ask anybody who has actually been through the tribunal procedure and they’ll inform you that the psychological support of friends and allies is essential.
This convenience will not be in short supply for those females who receive support for their cases from the JK Rowling Women’s Fund. The author becomes part of a global network of advocates, combating to safeguard women’s rights versus the demands of trans activists, and contacts us to action and assistance do not go unheeded.
Let the nation’s human resources departments brace themselves. A most amazing plot twist has simply been composed.