‘The penised individual who raped you is a woman,’ J.K. Rowling tweeted on Sunday, in response to Police Scotland’s decision to log male rapists as women if that is how they self-identify.
The ‘Harry Potter’ author – an outspoken feminist considered notorious in some circles for having taken a stance against progressive transgender initiatives – spoke out against the Police Scotland’s recently introduced policy, which instructs officers to log trans male rape suspects as female.
This is not the first time Rowling has stood up for women’s rights, which she feels are being overstepped by the trans movement. Her previous tweets – which include the assertion that “people who menstruate should be called ‘women’” – have landed her in hot water and essentially resulted in her excommunication from both the ‘Harry Potter’ community and its movie production team. She was even excluded from the filming of the 20th-anniversary special dedicated to the release of the first ‘Harry Potter’ film, which airs on HBO in January.
Her latest tweet – in which she also cites novelist and social commentator George Orwell’s antithetical statement that ‘War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength’, from ‘1984’ – comes as new laws are being proposed in Scotland. They are intended to make it easier for people to self-identify as whichever sex or gender they choose, without the need to present medical or legal records to the authorities as proof. The Scottish government has said it wants to remove medical checks for individuals seeking gender recognition certificates and allow them to live as their new gender before it has been legally certified.
However, now it’s been revealed that the policy will affect police reports, many high-profile individuals have expressed outrage at the initiative, describing it as absurd. It has been pointed out that it will have disastrous consequences, leading to biological men ending up in the same jail cell as women. This has already come to pass in US and Canadian prisons, where some formerly all-female correctional facilities are now being required to supply inmates with contraceptives.
“As a lawyer for 20 years and justice secretary for almost eight, I’ve seen some legal absurdities. But this tops it all and is dangerous. It’s physically impossible and is about dogma overriding common sense. Women prisoners are being harmed by this and vital crime statistics rendered useless,” said Kenny MacAskill, an Alba Party MP.
Besides skewing statistics, many critics point out that the new initiative will also impact rape victims’ rights. Under the proposed and likely to be approved legislation, a victim would be legally obliged to refer to their alleged attacker in any lawsuit using their preferred pronouns, addressing him as ‘she’ and describing the assault as having been perpetrated by a woman.
In response to criticism, Police Scotland officials have only doubled down on the initiative, with Detective Superintendent Fil Capaldi stating that the policy is in line with its values.
“The sex/gender identification of individuals who come into contact with the police will be based on how they present or how they self-declare, which is consistent with the values of the organization,” said Capaldi. “Police Scotland requires no evidence or certification as proof of biological sex or gender identity other than a person’s self-declaration, unless it is pertinent to any investigation with which they are linked.”