EUAN McCOLM: in Praise Of JK Rowling

For years, now, women have actually been losing tasks after daring to reveal the view that biology is real and important.

Companies and public bodies, recorded by the demands of extremist trans activists, have actually exacted vicious punishments on those revealing completely mainstream – and legal – views on sex and gender.

Inevitably, tribunals have followed a variety of these cases. During these, we have actually heard scary details of females treated abominably by companies in thrall to advocates who prompted and enforced the prohibited adoption of self-ID policies when it concerned single-sex spaces.

We’ve heard of ladies bullied and shunned for questioning the right of those born male to self-identify into ladies’s areas, from altering rooms to domestic violence sanctuaries.

Equally undoubtedly, those women efficient in battling back have been winning legal actions.

But even a rock solid case does not make it simple to retaliate. Good legal representatives are expensive and the procedure is draining, both physically and mentally.

For every single lady who has actually thrived in court, there are much more for whom launching a legal case appeared difficult.

The facility by the author and philanthropist JK Rowling of a fund to support ladies’s legal protection of their rights right away removes any financial barriers to action for those with practical cases.

Author JK Rowling has developed a fund to support ladies’s legal protection of their rights

The intervention of Ms Rowling should, today, be focusing minds in personnels departments across the country.

Since the Supreme Court ruled, last month, that sex, in law, was a matter of biology rather than documents, a number of organisations – in both the general public and personal sectors – have issued statements revealing their decisions to «consider» the ramifications for their policies.

This widespread and reckless complacency stands to cost business – and taxpayer-funded bodies – dear. The facts are basic. If a service is used on a single sex basis that suggests biological sex, not individuality.

The law is the law and no further factor to consider is needed in order for employers to satisfy their obligations under it.

A number of past legal actions after ladies were unfairly dismissed or bullied out of tasks for refusing to concur with the mantra «trans ladies are females» were possible thanks to the support of online crowd-funding projects. Ms Rowling frequently promoted – and contributed to – such charity events.

Now, she’s a one-woman crowd-funder, all set to back the cases of every female mistreated at work for speaking the reality about sex.

The JK Rowling Women’s Fund will change the battleground when it comes to ladies victimized for their legitimate, reality-based views.

At the heart of industrial tribunals there might be susceptible people playing for high stakes however the human expense suggests nothing to the insurers 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 finest lawyers in business will, I believe, encourage numerous to prompt settlement rather than the embarrassment, and unavoidable expense, of more doomed defences.

If one required proof that ladies’s rights are in requirement of the fiercest defense, it was available in the response to the launch of Ms Rowling’s fund.

With tasty pathos, one activist legal representative declared online that the Harry Potter creator had «emerged from the shadows» as the funder of what he explained as the «anti feminist biology is fate movement».

Ms Rowling has never been in the shadows when it concerns her views on women’s rights, has she?

Other reactions were, predictably, more violent in tone.

The ongoing tribunal nurse Sandie Peggie, claiming discrimination and harassment against NHS Fife and trans-identifying medical professional Beth Upton, brought the problem of the method so called «gender important» females had been dealt with at work to broad attention. This is a case that «cut through» with the public and required some politicians to attend to an issue they chose to avoid.

Scottish Labour’s leader Anas Sarwar and his deputy, Jackie Baillie, revealed their support for Ms Peggie and declared their belief in the importance of biological sex.

If they ‘d understood what they understand now, they included, they would not have actually enacted favour of the SNP’s ultimately doomed strategy to allow anybody to self-identify into the legally-recognised sex of their picking.

But while the Peggie case and the subsequent ruling on the legal significance of sex by the Supreme Court may have required an embarrassing U-turn by the Labour leadership on the matter of biological reality, others remain stubbornly devoted to defiance of the law.

Naturally, the Scottish Greens – a fantastic Wodehousian satire of an advanced cell – remain dedicated to the usage of single-sex spaces by anyone who feels they come from that sex.

There have been recent statements of resistance from trade unions, too. Unison has actually allowed a trans female to run for a women-only position on its national executive council.

But every act of performative defiance by well-funded trade unions – or taxpayer-funded regional authorities and health boards – is another costly legal action in the making.

It should not have been necessary for JK Rowling to guarantee to underwrite the legal expenses of ladies discriminated versus for their views on sex and gender. Nobody needs to ever have actually lost a job, a promotion, or an agreement on the basis of their view that sex is immutable and crucial.

Nor needs to the novelist have felt it needed to establish, in 2022, Beira’s Place, a women-only support service for victims of sexual violence in the Lothian location.

Ms Rowling’s choices to fund Beira’s Place and to underwrite the legal costs of ladies discriminated versus 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 political leaders.

I understand that recognition is the last thing on the author’s mind but isn’t it downright unusual that, when he broaches the achievements of effective Scots, First Minister John Swinney never points out the assistance Beira’s Place has offered to numerous women?

Money is not the only thing women taking action to defend their rights need. Ask anyone who has been through the tribunal process and they’ll inform you that the psychological support of buddies and allies is important.

This convenience will not remain in brief supply for those females who get support for their cases from the JK Rowling Women’s Fund. The author becomes part of a worldwide network of advocates, fighting to protect ladies’s rights versus the needs of trans activists, and calls to action and support do not go unheeded.

Let the nation’s personnels departments brace themselves. A most impressive plot twist has actually simply been written.