My legal win means it’s less risky to talk about women’s rights – and JK Rowling helped me do it

JK ROWLING stood up for me on my darkest day.

And by standing up for me, the author stood up for thousands of women.

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She has now written about this in a new book, Women Won’t Wheesht.

In December 2019, I had just lost an employment tribunal case where I needed to prove one thing only — that my belief that men are male and women are female was “worthy of respect in a democratic society”.

I was devastated. The judge had declared open season on anyone who spoke up about the harms of gender ­ideology.

We could be bullied at work and denied employment and services.

Women and girls in schools, hospitals and prisons could be forced to share ­spaces with men and told to call them “women” — and any professionals who ­challenged this risked their jobs.

Corrupt system

I did not know that Rowling had been paying attention or that she had a “dark feeling” that I would lose the case.

I am an ordinary woman who found herself fighting a corrupt ­system.

I had read the Harry Potter books to both my sons and watched all the movies when they were younger.

Until I lost my case ­Rowling had kept her thoughts on the issue to herself in public because, she says: “People around me, including some I love, were begging me not to speak”.

She had watched silently as women like me put everything on the line.

She writes that “my guilt that I wasn’t standing with them was with me daily, like a chronic pain”.

Her support came as a complete ­surprise.

I only found out when someone sent me a screenshot of a tweet.

It read: “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security.

“But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill”.

I thought it was a joke to cheer me up.

Then I realised Rowling really had tweeted, that thousands of people were liking the message and #IStandWithMaya was trending.

Rowling writes that in her professional community “there was bewilderment” that she had “abandoned the safe, generally approved position” to support me.

Few of her peers stood with her.

While I was crowdfunding to pay my legal team, tennis legend Martina ­Navratilova had tweeted in support.

So had swimmer Sharron Davies and Father Ted writer Graham Linehan — and I am eternally grateful to them.

But most public figures were afraid.

Politicians, university leaders, celebrities, media figures, charities and the NSPCC, which is supposed to protect children; all refused to talk about the harm done to women and children when men who claim to be women gain access to women’s ­spaces.

And then there was the online abuse.

“The backlash towards me for speaking out about Maya, about gender ideology in general and about the ­situation in ­Scotland has been vicious,” Rowling writes.

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“Nobody who’s been through an online monstering or a ­tsunami of death and rape threats will claim it’s fun, and I’m not going to ­pretend it’s anything other than disturbing and frightening.

“But I had a good idea of what was coming because I’d seen the same thing happen to other women, many of whom were risking their careers and, sometimes, their physical safety.”

Even worse than the anonymous trolls are the friends and colleagues who don’t call, who don’t reply to your emails, or who even join in public condemnation.

And the disapproval 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.

Like Rowling, I have received messages from people I know saying they agree and think I am brave, but don’t dare say so publicly.

I can’t express how much Rowling’s ­support has meant to me.

It gave me the courage to appeal against the first ­judgment and eventually win my case.

Worthy of respect

My legal precedent protects everyone who believes, like I do, that there are two unchangeable sexes, and that sometimes this matters.

This “gender-critical” belief is now ­recognised as being worthy of respect, and employers and service providers can’t ­discriminate against people who hold it.

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Rowling says: “Looking back now, and notwithstanding how unpleasant it’s been at times, I see that outing myself as gender-critical brought far more positives than negatives”

“The most important benefit of speaking out was that I was free to act.”

Since she first spoke up I have carried on taking action.

I co-founded Sex ­Matters, which campaigns for clarity about sex in law and policy.

It now has charitable status.

The legal precedent has made it less risky to speak up — and made it harder for politicians to hide behind the false claim that we are bigots, instead of facing up to the harm done by making it so risky to speak the truth, loud and clear.