27-05-2025
EUAN McCOLM: In praise of JK Rowling - the one-woman crowdfunder backing women who told truth about sex and gender
For years, now, women have been losing jobs after daring to express the view that biology is real and important.
Companies and public bodies, captured by the demands of extremist trans activists, have exacted cruel punishments on those expressing perfectly mainstream - and legal - views on sex and gender.
Inevitably, tribunals have followed a number of these cases. During these, we've heard horrifying details of women treated abominably by employers in thrall to campaigners who urged and enforced the illegal adoption of self-ID policies when it came to single-sex spaces.
We've heard of women bullied and shunned for questioning the right of those born male to self-identify into women's spaces, from changing rooms to domestic violence refuges.
Equally inevitably, those women capable of fighting back have been winning legal actions.
But even a rock solid case does not make it easy to retaliate. Good lawyers are expensive and the process is draining, both physically and emotionally.
For every woman who has triumphed in court, there are many more for whom launching a legal case seemed impossible.
The establishment by the novelist and philanthropist JK Rowling of a fund to support women's legal protection of their rights immediately removes any financial barriers to action for those with viable cases.
The intervention of Ms Rowling should, right now, be concentrating minds in human resources departments across the country.
Since the Supreme Court ruled, last month, that sex, in law, was a matter of biology rather than paperwork, a number of organisations - in both the public and private sectors - have issued statements announcing their decisions to 'consider' the implications for their policies.
This widespread and reckless complacency stands to cost companies - and taxpayer-funded bodies - dear. The facts are simple. If a service is offered on a single sex basis that means biological sex, not personal identity.
The law is the law and no further consideration is required in order for employers to meet their obligations under it.
A number of past legal actions after women were unfairly dismissed or bullied out of jobs for refusing to agree with the mantra 'trans women are women' were possible thanks to the support of online crowd-funding campaigns. Ms Rowling frequently promoted - and donated to - such fundraisers.
Now, she's a one-woman crowd-funder, ready to back the cases of every woman wronged at work for speaking the truth about sex.
The JK Rowling Women's Fund will transform the battlefield when it comes to women discriminated against for their legitimate, reality-based views.
At the heart of industrial tribunals there may be vulnerable people playing for high stakes but the human cost means nothing to the insurers underwriting 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 the business will, I suspect, encourage many to urge settlement rather than the humiliation, and inevitable cost, of more doomed defences.
If one required proof that women's rights are in need of the fiercest protection, it came in the response to the launch of Ms Rowling's fund.
With delicious pathos, one activist lawyer declared online that the Harry Potter creator had 'emerged from the shadows' as the funder of what he described as the 'anti feminist biology is destiny movement'.
Ms Rowling has never been in the shadows when it comes to her views on women's rights, has she?
Other responses were, predictably, more violent in tone.
The ongoing tribunal involving nurse Sandie Peggie, claiming discrimination and harassment against NHS Fife and trans-identifying doctor Beth Upton, brought the issue 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 address an issue they preferred to avoid.
Scottish Labour's leader Anas Sarwar and his deputy, Jackie Baillie, announced their support for Ms Peggie and declared their belief in the importance of biological sex.
If they'd known what they know now, they added, they would not have voted in favour of the SNP's ultimately doomed plan to allow anyone to self-identify into the legally-recognised sex of their choosing.
But while the Peggie case and the subsequent ruling on the legal meaning of sex by the Supreme Court may have forced a humiliating U-turn by the Labour leadership on the matter of biological reality, others remain stubbornly committed to defiance of the law.
Naturally, the Scottish Greens - a great Wodehousian satire of a revolutionary cell - remain committed to the use of single-sex spaces by anyone who feels they belong to that sex.
There have been recent statements of resistance from trade unions, too. Unison has permitted a trans woman 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 costly legal action in the making.
It should not have been necessary for JK Rowling to guarantee to underwrite the legal costs of women discriminated against for their views on sex and gender. Nobody should ever have lost a job, a promotion, or a contract on the basis of their view that sex is immutable and important.
Nor should the novelist have felt it necessary to establish, in 2022, Beira's Place, a women-only support service for victims of sexual violence in the Lothian area.
Ms Rowling's decisions to fund Beira's Place and to underwrite the legal costs of women discriminated against for believing 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 recognition is the last thing on the writer's mind but isn't it downright weird that, when he talks of the achievements of successful Scots, First Minister John Swinney never mentions the support Beira's Place has given to hundreds of 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 tell you that the emotional support of friends and allies is essential.
This comfort will not be in short supply for those women who receive backing for their cases from the JK Rowling Women's Fund. The writer is part of an international network of campaigners, fighting to protect women's rights against the demands of trans activists, and calls to action and support do not go unheeded.
Let the nation's human resources departments brace themselves. A most remarkable plot twist has just been written.
