“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling participated in the writing of an upcoming book titled “The Women Who Wouldn’t Weesht,” which is a collection of essays written by women detailing the story of the effort to protect women’s rights.
An excerpt from Rowling’s contribution was recently published by The Times in which she describes her journey leading up to her vocal advocacy against the trans agenda’s seeming effort to reimagine the definition of women.
As an outspoken critic of the trans-activist movement, Rowling has had more than her fair share of arrows fired at her. But one of the more revealing parts of her essay comes when she discusses how people in her inner circle sought to maintain their friendship with her even after publicly distancing themselves from her.
Rowling’s essay starts by describing her hesitancy to speak out against the trans agenda in Europe. She recalls how she “kept my thoughts to myself in public” because “people around me … were begging me not to speak.”
“So I watched from the sidelines as women with everything to lose rallied, in Scotland and across the UK, to defend their rights. My guilt that I wasn’t standing with them was with me daily, like a chronic pain,” Rowling wrote.
The author details the two events that pushed her over the edge into pro-women activism. The first was a 2019 lawsuit filed by a researcher who alleged discrimination against her because of her belief that people cannot alter their sex. While she initially lost, she later won on appeal.
The other event involved the passage of Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which allowed people to change their legal gender.
Polling showed that the public strongly disagreed with what Sturgeon’s government was planning to do. I was so angry that the Scottish parliament looked set to push through the Gender Recognition Reform Bill over public opposition that on October 6, 2022, the day of a women’s protest outside Holyrood, I posted a picture of myself online wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan: Nicola Sturgeon, Destroyer of Women’s Rights.
Rowling described the backlash against her decision to go public with her beliefs about gender, noting that “Nobody who’s been through an online monstering or a tsunami of death and rape threats will claim it’s fun,” but she “had a good idea of what was coming because I’d seen the same thing happen to other women, many of whom were risking careers and, sometimes, their physical safety.”
Later in the piece, Rowling recalls how many who criticized her publicly for expressing her views still sought their friendship with her behind the scenes.
People who’d worked with me rushed to distance themselves from me or to add their public condemnation of my blasphemous views (though I should add that many former and current colleagues have been staunchly supportive). In truth, the condemnation of certain individuals was far less surprising to me than the fact that some of them then emailed me, or sent messages through third parties, to check that we were still friends.
What Rowling describes here is the very heart of the problem. The issue isn’t the fact that the authoritarian left is pushing their ridiculous ideas on the rest of the public – the issue is that people are standing by and letting them do it.
The reality is that those who understand that men cannot become women and vice versa far outnumber those who believe gender is a fluid concept. Last year, RedState’s Ben Kew wrote about a poll showing that most people understand basic biology.
The survey found that around 57 percent of adults do not accept the notion that gender can deviate from biological sex, while 43 percent believe it could differ.
The poll also found significant resistance toward child sex changes. Almost 70 percent of adults expressed disapproval of permitting medication that halts puberty for children aged 10 to 14, while nearly 60 percent opposed providing hormone treatments to 15- to 17-year-olds. However, a majority of respondents supported gender-affirming counseling or therapy, with over 60 percent in favor of it for both age groups.
Similarly, over 60 percent of adults believe that transgender girls and women should not be permitted to participate in sports designated for females, such as those in the professional, college, high school, and youth levels.
Yet, those pushing gender ideology have managed to create an environment so oppressive to common sense that people are terrified at the idea of publicly saying that men are men and women are women. People have been cowed into accepting progressive gender ideology because they fear retribution if they dare to speak out. Indeed, there have been several reports of people’s livelihoods being placed in jeopardy because of their views on gender.
To put it simply, the minority is bullying the majority into pretending that people can switch their sex at will. Yes, it defies all reason, but here we are.
Unfortunately, the authoritarian bullies on the left will continue to succeed as long as good people remain too afraid to stand up against them. We all know that the best way to stop a bully is to confront them head-on while refusing to back down. The reality is that these people should be afraid of us, not the other way around. In this case, we could easily reverse what these people are doing if at least most of us were willing to take a stand like J.K Rowling.
The question is: Why aren’t we?