JK Rowling’s victory over Humza Yousaf’s hate crime laws is a victory for all women
Fri, April 5, 2024 at 2:00 PM EDT
I was sitting in JK Rowling’s study, eating the biscuits her husband Neil brought us, when she told me about realising that she had to publicly fight for women’s rights. This was at the end of 2022.
Three years earlier, she had become involved in the “gender wars” by tweeting her support of Maya Forstater who was being forced out of a job for gender critical views. This was a landmark case because it established that gender critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act of 2010.
Rowling felt we were going through the most misogynistic era ever and had decided to speak up. This cannot have been easy. She told me, “It’s going to have to be me, isn’t it? Because I will always be able to feed my kids, even if everyone boycotts my books for the rest of my life. That is a phenomenally privileged position to be in. I consider myself one of the most fortunate people on Earth.”
People are always asking me why she does what she does because she could just have a nice life. I think of the Joan Didion line: “In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character…”
When I say she is a feminist to her core, they look bemused. It is as if no one believes anything enough to do anything that would actually cost them, except perhaps the few deluded soup splatterers.
Her nice life, though, is one that now involves seriously horrible threats to her, her family and endless abuse.
The Jo I know has ovaries of steel and a brilliant, biting wit and that is what we have seen over the past week.
To be honest, I think she is a bit disappointed not to be arrested. A lot of people would have happily joined her.I am not sure if Scotland has a big enough prison to put all the women inwho will not call rapists “she”, who will not deny biology, who are sick of being harassed for not thinking that the sterilisation of gay children is a good idea.
We think these things not out of any hatred of trans people but because we want to protect vulnerable women and give children time to decide who they want to be. We don’t want to lie to them about changing sex, when it is gruelling and actually not possible.
Rowling deliberatelydefied the new woolly hate crime laws with a series of tweets calling well-known trans women, men.
Humza Yousaf had been warned that this legislation was unworkable by numerous women’s groups.Men who identified as women were protected but women weren’t.How on earth were the police going to deal with this?
Who would blink first? Rowling or the police?When what she said was not deemed a hate crime, everything began to fall apart.“Oh, it’s OK for her with her wealth” some said and there she was again, asserting that if any other woman was arrested, she would repeat those words and be arrested alongside them.
Here was a lesson in solidarity, in sisterhood and the simple but incendiary power of saying no.
Much of this fight has been about just that. Women saying no and women having boundaries and that is why theliberal left has been so fundamentally useless with their blurry “be kind” mantras, which mean be kind only to men. Or anyone who claims a minority identity.
Rowling has stood absolutely firm and what is more she has done it through the power of words alone on social media. She has made no speeches, given no interviews and yet scored this massive victory.The age of “no debate” is truly over. This is good for women and, of course, for free speech. Many were against these dumb hate crime laws, which were once again the SNP parading its so-called progressive valueswhile undermining Scotland’s proud Enlightenment history and its notion of freedom of belief.=This fuzzy but authoritarian legislation now lays bleedingbecause of one stupendous woman.
Rowling’s detractors, who say do not make her a martyr, really have no idea of who she is. Or how much support she has. For decades she has funded charities, set up Lumos, an NGO helping institutionalised children, and now Beira’s Place, a rape crisis centre in Edinburgh. No one outside her circle knew about it until it was opened.
She told me she set it up because, “I had the lightbulb moment and I thought, ‘I don’t have to pace around my kitchen ranting. I can actually do something about this’.”
This is a woman who knows how to use social media more effectively than almost anyone. Elon is probably begging for a tutorial.
At a do the other night I was chatting to an actual rockstar and he said, “I will tell you who IS a f–king rockstar … JK Rowling”.
Ain’t that the truth?
(https://www.yahoo.com/news/jk-rowling-victory-over-humza-180000433.html