EUAN McCOLM: in Praise Of JK Rowling

For several years, now, females have actually been losing jobs 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 punishments on those expressing completely mainstream – and legal – views on sex and gender.

Inevitably, tribunals have actually followed a variety of these cases. During these, we’ve heard scary information of ladies dealt with abominably by companies in thrall to advocates who prompted and enforced the unlawful adoption of self-ID policies when it concerned single-sex areas.

We’ve become aware of women bullied and avoided for questioning the right of those born male to self-identify into women’s spaces, from altering rooms to domestic violence havens.

Equally undoubtedly, those females capable of combating back have actually been winning legal actions.

But even a rock strong case does not make it simple to strike back. Good attorneys are costly and the process is draining pipes, both physically and emotionally.

For every single female who has actually triumphed in court, there are numerous more for whom releasing a legal case appeared impossible.

The establishment by the author and benefactor JK Rowling of a fund to support women’s legal security of their rights right away removes any financial barriers to action for those with viable cases.

Author JK Rowling has actually established a fund to support females’s legal security of their rights

The intervention of Ms Rowling should, right now, be concentrating minds in human resources departments throughout the nation.

Since the Supreme Court ruled, last month, that sex, in law, referred biology instead of paperwork, a number of organisations – in both the general public and economic sectors – have actually issued declarations announcing their decisions to “consider” the implications for their policies.

This widespread and careless complacency stands to cost business – and taxpayer-funded bodies – dear. The realities are simple. 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 required in order for companies to fulfill their commitments under it.

A variety of previous legal actions after females were unjustly dismissed or bullied out of tasks for refusing to agree with the mantra “trans women are women” were possible thanks to the assistance of online crowd-funding campaigns. Ms Rowling frequently 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 truth about sex.

The JK Rowling Women’s Fund will transform the battlefield when it concerns ladies victimized for their legitimate, reality-based views.

At the heart of industrial tribunals there might be vulnerable people playing for high stakes however the human expense indicates absolutely nothing to the insurance companies underwriting employers’ costs. For them, it’s all about the bottom line and the prospect that every female with a case now has access to the very best attorneys in the business will, I suspect, motivate many to advise settlement rather than the humiliation, and inevitable expense, of more doomed defences.

If one needed evidence that women’s rights are in need of the fiercest protection, it came in the reaction 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 ever been in the shadows when it concerns her views on females’s rights, has she?

Other reactions were, naturally, more violent in tone.

The ongoing tribunal involving nurse Sandie Peggie, claiming discrimination and harassment versus NHS Fife and trans-identifying physician Beth Upton, brought the problem of the method so called “gender vital” ladies had actually been treated at work to large attention. This is a case that “cut through” with the public and required some politicians to resolve a concern they chose to prevent.

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

If they ‘d known what they know now, they added, they would not have actually voted in favour of the SNP’s ultimately doomed strategy to permit anybody to self-identify into the legally-recognised sex of their picking.

But while the Peggie case and the subsequent ruling 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 remain stubbornly devoted to defiance of the law.

Naturally, the Scottish Greens – a terrific Wodehousian satire of an advanced cell – stay dedicated to making use of single-sex areas by anybody who feels they come from that sex.

There have actually been recent declarations of resistance from trade unions, too. Unison has 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 local authorities and health boards – is another pricey legal action in the making.

It needs to not have been needed for JK Rowling to guarantee to finance the legal costs of ladies discriminated versus for their views on sex and gender. Nobody should ever have actually lost a task, a promo, or an agreement on the basis of their view that sex is immutable and crucial.

Nor should the author have felt it required to develop, in 2022, Beira’s Place, a women-only assistance service for victims of sexual violence in the Lothian location.

Ms Rowling’s decisions to fund Beira’s Place and to finance the legal expenses of women victimized for believing in the 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 know that acknowledgment is the last thing on the author’s mind however isn’t it downright weird that, when he broaches the achievements of successful Scots, First Minister John Swinney never ever mentions the assistance Beira’s Place has provided to numerous women?

Money is not the only thing women acting to safeguard their rights need. Ask anyone who has actually been through the tribunal procedure and they’ll inform you that the emotional support of pals and allies is necessary.

This comfort will not be in short supply for those women who get support for their cases from the JK Rowling Women’s Fund. The author is part of a worldwide network of campaigners, battling to protect females’s rights versus the needs 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 impressive plot twist has simply been written.