We don’t leave our doors and windows wide open when we go out because ‘thieves will find a way in, anyway.’ Strangely, I’ve never heard anyone say ‘let’s stop background checking teachers, because paedophiles will always find a way to interfere with kids.’

When men – all men, however they identify – are banned from women’s spaces, those who disregard the ban can be challenged, inside the space and out. They mark themselves out as suspicious by breaking a rule decent men respect. Nobody claims the rule has successfully kept out every single man who wants to commit voyeurism or sexual assault. What we’re saying is that allowing males into female only spaces on the basis of their claim to be a women removes an obstacle that has hitherto been *proven* to increase women and girls’ safety.

88% of sexual crimes committed in changing/locker rooms happen in those that are unisex. Why? Because malign men don’t have to justify their presence near unclothed women and girls. They can’t be challenged. They don’t stand out. This is obvious to all but the terminally naive.

It is too seldom noted that every single man arguing for the removal of single sex spaces is arguing for his *own* right to enter those spaces. I know from experience that they feign outrage when this point is put to them, gibbering that they’re just being good, virtuous progressives who’re standing up for trans women, that they *personally* won’t be availing themselves of the new opportunities afforded them. The fact remains that instead of calling out male violence against trans women, and working to make male spaces safer, these men have thrown their energy into the fight to remove women’s and girls’ rights to safety, privacy and dignity.

And if anyone genuinely believes none of these enthusiastic heterosexual, non-trans-identified male ‘allies’ aren’t personally enthralled by the idea of women and girls losing basic protections, I have several bridges to sell you.

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For years now, women have been saying that self-ID will be exploited by predators and we’ve been told ‘no predator would bother to pretend to be a woman.’ Yet here we are – again.

This paedophile didn’t receive the leniency he hoped for because he claimed to be a woman, but plenty have, including Katie Dolotowski, who, in a very similar case, filmed a 12-year-old in a bathroom cubicle and attempted to rape a 10-year-old in a women’s bathroom, and served his sentence in a women’s prison.

The wilfully blind continue to insist that what is already happening couldn’t possibly happen. They wriggle like eels trying to find a loophole through which they can escape with their precious ideology intact. ‘He wasn’t really trans, though.’ ‘All groups have bad apples.’ ‘You can’t blame all trans people because some of them are rapists.’

So determined are you to cling to your absolutist slogans and your circular reasoning, you’re indifferent to the proven increased risk to women and girls. I watch you lying, equivocating and contorting yourself into knots trying to justify the unjustifiable, and I wonder when, if ever, shame will finally find you.

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It is possible to want trans people to be safe and happy while recognising that there are risks to women and girls in eradicating single sex spaces. Women and girls are being pressured to surrender their hard-won rights to a group that poses a proven danger to them.

Quoted tweet:
I am 100% with you in fighting violence againt women. I just think it can be better achieved through allyship with a group that’s also experiencing oppresion because of the patriarchy! which doesn’t = excusing crimes by tw, much like you dn’t advocate excusing crimes by ciswmn

The statistics don’t lie. Some – not all – trans-identified males have committed sexual and violent offences against women and girls. Some male predators have capitalised on gender identity activism to claim a trans identity they never espoused pre-conviction or assault.

Telling women and girls they must accept increased risk to themselves to appease male feelings is the very definition of the patriarchy you claim to stand against. Vulnerable women are paying the price for a fashionable fallacy that has serious, real world consequences.

Previous writing: « The trans activist outrage that ensues on here…

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The trans activist outrage that ensues on here whenever I share my belief that jailed women shouldn’t be used as validation tools or emotional support props for trans-identified male sex offenders is as revealing as it’s predictable.

Such activists can’t bring themselves to concede that a man who was convicted of harming women/girls ought not to be incarcerated with the demographic to whom he is a proven danger, because if they do, all their stock arguments (‘no sexual predator would bother to pretend to be trans’, ‘no trans woman has ever harmed a woman in a women’s only space’, ‘there is no danger in making all single sex spaces unisex’) are exposed as the lies they are. If they admit that even a single man isn’t a woman because he says he is, the entire edifice of gender identity ideology crumbles. This leaves activists who rely on bullying and slogans with nowhere to go but ‘you hate all trans people’, ‘so you’re saying all trans people are rapists’ and, of course, ‘you are causing a trans genocide.’

I think this particular issue also causes conniptions because it threatens the activists’ self image. These are people who preen themselves on their kindness and virtue, so acknowledging the truth – that they’re indifferent to vulnerable women being assaulted or traumatised – threatens the idea they have of themselves. They therefore double down. The prisoners complaining aren’t really afraid of rape or voyeurism or violence at all, they say. They’re ‘not exactly delicate flowers’, as one self-identified empath put it.

If you support putting violent and sexually predatory men into women’s prisons, you are knowingly forcing those women to live in fear of, and, in some proven cases, to suffer abuse that many of them will have endured pre-incarceration. You are not kind. You are not righteous. Women have the basic human right not to suffer cruel and unusual punishment. #WomensRightsAreHumanRights

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The Honourable Chris Kourakis has issued a statement referring to my ‘anxiety’ about the use of female pronouns for men standing trial for violence against women and rape. He states that ‘a victim of crime would never be asked to address an accused person in a way which caused the victim distress.’

That assurance is welcome, although I note that he’s addressed the matter only after it was raised publicly. No such exemption is mentioned in the Practice Note, which takes the ideological position that the ‘use of preferred gender pronouns is a matter of respect’. The natural inference is that a woman would be considered guilty of disrespect if she, alone in the courtroom, described her male attacker as a man, while all court officials were addressing and describing him as a woman. This is not a hypothetical situation. The judge will be aware, if he’s informed himself – as he implies I have not – that I’ve already cited an example where a 60-year-old woman was violently assaulted by a 26-year-old trans-identified male. She was chided by the judge for displaying ‘bad grace’ by not using her attacker’s preferred pronouns.

The Practice Note does not acknowledge that in sexual and violent crimes committed by men against women, there is a clear clash of rights. The woman has a right – indeed, a legal duty – to speak truthfully about the male violence/sexual violence to which she was subjected. Meanwhile the Practice Note says that court officials should respectfully use female pronouns for the attacker if he says he identifies as a woman. The likely effect on a traumatised woman of hearing her attacker addressed and described as a female by the court is neither mentioned nor addressed in the Practice Note. Respect, it seems, goes only one way.

Millions of women are losing confidence in judicial systems that have adopted an ideological position with which they do not agree. In the very place where they go to seek justice, a woman may now be obliged to listen to court officials asserting they were raped or beaten by a fellow woman. Such women are not merely ‘anxious’, they are furious, about the apparent inability of certain men, judges or not, to understand how dystopian this situation seems to those of us who have suffered male sexual violence.

Previous writing: « The Running Grave

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Last year, I received a long, thoughtful letter from Megan Phelps-Roper, inviting me to take part in a personal, in-depth discussion with her about the issues that have interested me in recent years. Megan proposed bringing in other voices, and looking at the wider picture, bringing her own unique viewpoint as a former fundamentalist who’s dedicated her life over the past decade to difficult conversations. I agreed to sit down with Megan because, having read her wonderful book, Unfollow, I thought the two of us could have a real, interesting, two-sided conversation that might prove constructive. You can listen and find out for yourself here: https://www.thefp.com/p/the-witch-trials-of-jk-rowling

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Some may find the outpouring of British shock and grief at this moment quaint or odd, but millions felt affection and respect for the woman who uncomplainingly filled her constitutional role for seventy years. Most British people have never known another monarch, so she’s been a thread winding through all our lives. She did her duty by the country right up until her dying hours, and became an enduring, positive symbol of Britain all over the world. She’s earned her rest.

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Respectfully, I’ve been facing down the Punch-and-Kill-TERFs brigade for a while now and not once have I thought, ‘what I really want is to hand this over to a man who thinks feminism is one of the worst things to happen to western civilisation.’

Like many women on the left, I despair that so many self-proclaimed liberals turn a blind eye to the naked misogyny of the gender identity movement and the threat it poses to the rights of women and girls. Walsh’s film undeniably exposed what many leftists are too scared to, but a shared belief that women exist as a biological class (and water’s wet and the moon’s not made of cheese) does not an ally make. I believe women are susceptible to certain harms and have specific needs and that feminism is necessary to secure and protect our rights.

Walsh believes feminism is ‘rotten’ and his default appears to be denigrating women with whom he disagrees. He’s no more on my side than the ‘shut up or we’ll bomb you’ charmers who cloak their misogyny in a pretty pink and blue flag.

Previous writing: « I cannot overstate my contempt…

Next writing: Statement to The Times »

I cannot overstate my contempt for those supporting policies that endanger extremely vulnerable girls. This is a travesty. Have we learned nothing from successive abuse scandals? Do we value the disabled so little? Nearly 20 years ago I founded Lumos to reform care systems for vulnerable children. I know from long experience how vulnerable children are in institutions. The statistics on predation are appalling. Disabled women and children are many times more likely to be abused.

Predators go where there is access. Predators love victims who can’t fight back or speak out. Successive studies show that 98-99% of sexual abusers are male. This validation of male feelings over disabled girls’ protection is abhorrent. I’m so bloody angry my hands are shaking. I’m the daughter of a disabled mother and I’ve campaigned for the rights of vulnerable children for many years, but I’m still constantly shocked by the cruelty and indifference shown to those who cannot advocate for themselves. I urge everyone who feels the same way I do on reading this article to contact their MP, as I will certainly be contacting mine and anyone else I know who can stand up to this horror show.

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Small but important point: I’ve never said there are only two genders. There are innumerable gender identities.

The question at the heart of this debate is whether sex or gender identity should form the basis of decisions on safeguarding, provision of services, sporting categories and other areas where women and girls currently have legal rights and protections.

Using the words ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ interchangeably obscures the central issue of this debate. If you’re interested in what I actually said, see https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/ (in which I literally say ‘trans lives matter’ and ‘trans rights are human rights.’)

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