Mick Hartley

Joan Smith, at UnHerd, on Rowling and the haters:

Gender extremists hate Rowling not just because she is famous and has a platform, but because her barbs hit home. She uses language precisely, avoiding ad feminam abuse and hyperbole, while they — how can I put this politely? — do not.

Rowling says she has received so many death threats she could paper her house with them, yet she has behaved with dignity and decency throughout. She gives the lie to the frequently repeated claim that the debate over trans rights — more accurately women’s rights, which are under attack from all directions — is ‘toxic on both sides’. What’s more, it’s clear that many people agree with her.

It's hard to see how anyone with any sense at all could fail to agree with her. Male rapists claiming to be women, and being taken at their word by Police Scotland: it's a new level of idiocy.

Rowling’s intervention is crucial because this issue, more than trans-identified males demanding to use women’s toilets or changing rooms, is one that exercises a wide swathe of opinion. People baulk at the prospect of vulnerable women prisoners, many of them victims of domestic violence, being forced to share intimate spaces with men who have been convicted of serious sex offences. Rowling has experienced domestic abuse herself, so she knows how unpalatable this is. She also knows exactly how and when to intervene — and that makes her a very dangerous adversary.