EUAN McCOLM: in Praise Of JK Rowling

For years, now, ladies have been losing tasks after bold to express the view that biology is genuine and crucial.

Companies and public bodies, captured by the needs of extremist trans activists, have actually exacted terrible penalties on those revealing perfectly mainstream – and legal – views on sex and gender.

Inevitably, tribunals have actually followed a number of these cases. During these, we’ve heard terrible information of females treated abominably by companies in thrall to advocates who advised and imposed the prohibited adoption of self-ID policies when it concerned single-sex spaces.

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

Equally inevitably, those ladies efficient in fighting back have been winning legal actions.

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

For every lady who has triumphed in court, there are numerous more for whom launching a legal case seemed impossible.

The facility by the author and philanthropist JK Rowling of a fund to support females’s legal security of their rights immediately eliminates any financial barriers to action for those with practical cases.

Author JK Rowling has established a fund to support women’s legal protection of their rights

The intervention of Ms Rowling should, today, be focusing minds in human resources departments across the nation.

Since the Supreme Court ruled, last month, that sex, in law, referred biology rather than documents, a variety of organisations – in both the public and economic sectors – have issued statements announcing their decisions to “think about” the implications for their policies.

This widespread and negligent complacency stands to cost business – and taxpayer-funded bodies – dear. The truths are simple. If a service is used on a single sex basis that indicates biological sex, not individuality.

The law is the law and no further consideration is needed in order for companies to meet their commitments under it.

A number of past legal actions after women were unjustly dismissed or bullied out of tasks for declining to concur with the mantra “trans women are females” were possible thanks to the support of online crowd-funding projects. Ms Rowling often promoted – and donated to – such charity events.

Now, she’s a one-woman crowd-funder, all set 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 comes to females 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 cost indicates absolutely nothing to the insurance companies financing employers’ costs. For them, it’s all about the bottom line and the prospect that every woman with a case now has access to the best lawyers in business will, I presume, motivate numerous to advise settlement instead of the embarrassment, and inescapable cost, of more doomed defences.

If one needed evidence that women’s rights require the fiercest security, it was available in the response to the launch of Ms Rowling’s fund.

With tasty pathos, one activist lawyer online that the Harry Potter creator had “emerged from the shadows” as the funder of what he described as the “anti feminist biology is fate motion”.

Ms Rowling has never ever remained in the shadows when it concerns her views on ladies’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 medical professional Beth Upton, brought the concern of the method so called “gender crucial” women had been dealt with at work to wide attention. This is a case that “cut through” with the general public and forced some political leaders to address a problem 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 significance of biological sex.

If they ‘d known what they understand now, they included, they would not have actually enacted favour of the SNP’s eventually doomed strategy to enable 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 might have forced an embarrassing U-turn by the Labour leadership on the matter of biological reality, others stay stubbornly devoted to defiance of the law.

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

There have actually been recent statements of resistance from trade unions, too. Unison has actually permitted a trans woman 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 expensive legal action in the making.

It needs to not have been required for JK Rowling to guarantee to finance the legal costs of females discriminated versus for their views on sex and gender. Nobody needs to ever have actually lost a task, a promotion, or a contract on the basis of their view that sex is immutable and crucial.

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

Ms Rowling’s choices to money Beira’s Place and to finance the legal costs of females victimized for thinking in the reality 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 writer’s mind however isn’t it downright unusual that, when he talks of the achievements of successful Scots, First Minister John Swinney never ever points out the support Beira’s Place has given to numerous females?

Money is not the only thing women acting to safeguard their rights require. Ask anybody who has actually been through the tribunal process and they’ll tell you that the emotional support of pals and allies is important.

This comfort will not remain in short supply for those ladies who receive support for their cases from the JK Rowling Women’s Fund. The writer becomes part of an international network of advocates, fighting to safeguard ladies’s rights versus the needs of trans activists, and calls to action and support do not go unheeded.

Let the country’s personnels departments brace themselves. A most exceptional plot twist has just been composed.