You have to stop, take a deep breath and try to grasp what is happening here. Because a woman objects to women being called ‘people who menstruate’ rather than women, she is treated as though she is a racist Nazi. The misogynistic abuse is breathtaking. Her books have been burned and in this ‘cancel culture’ world she is being cancelled in many places.

There is a lovely café in Edinburgh called the Elephant House. It was a place I used to frequent in my student days – for coffee, cake and writing. Another aspirant writer had the same idea. Her name was J K Rowling, who has since become one of the biggest selling authors of all time – selling over 400 million of her Harry Potter series. The Elephant House even has a wee plaque indicating that this is where Harry Potter was birthed. But one wonders how long it will last in today’s intolerant culture. For J K Rowling – once the darling of the literati – has sinned against Woke culture and the revolution is about to eat her.

Last December, she tweeted her support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who lost her job for allegedly tweeting ‘transphobic’ comments. The level of abuse and hatred Rowling got (she has 14.5 million followers) persuaded her to step back from Twitter because it wasn’t doing her mental health any good. She returned to share a free children’s book and inadvertently tweeted about an article that had referred to “people who menstruate”.

“I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” she wrote.

The backlash has been ferocious and revealing.

You have to stop, take a deep breath and try to grasp what is happening here. Because a woman objects to women being called ‘people who menstruate’ rather than women, she is treated as though she is a racist Nazi. The misogynistic abuse is breathtaking. Her books have been burned and in this ‘cancel culture’ world she is being cancelled in many places.

Mercury or Rowling?

My favourite is the school in West Sussex, which has cancelled the idea of one of its ‘houses’ being named after Rowling because “it did not wish to be associated with these views”. The letter from the deputy headteacher Sarah Edwards is a masterpiece of newspeak. Despite cancelling Rowling because she “may no longer be an appropriate role model for our pupils”, Mrs Edwards says the school is “inclusive” – except of course for those who think that being a woman has something to do with biology”. She adds that “as a school, our business is education, it’s not about coming down on one side or another”. To which one can only respond by wondering whether real biology is taught in the school – or logic?

The school actually illustrates the madness of modern culture. Its houses were previously called Austen, Darwin, Elgar, Livingstone and Wilberforce. Now they are all to be renamed “to make them more representative of gender, ethnicity, and sexuality/gender identity”. One wonders in passing why the school is discriminating against the protected characteristic of religion?. One of the houses is to be named after Freddy Mercury, who the school clearly sees as a suitable role model for pupils!

Compassionate and Intelligent

It’s also revealing how Rowling has been dealt with. She wrote an incredibly moving, gracious, articulate, personal blog explaining why she was taking the stand she does. She revealed details of her own personal abuse, concern for transgender people and gave detailed arguments, reasons and facts. J K Rowling is a fabulous writer and in this piece she came across as a wonderful, compassionate, intelligent human being.

But that did not stop the wolves from circling. In fact it seems as though the more gracious she was, the more virulent the attacks; the more intelligent, the dumber the responses; the more conciliatory, the more she had to be cancelled. Feminazi, Terf, Witch were some of the milder names that she was called in social media. But it wasn’t just social media. The mainstream media sometimes joined the pack. Several newspapers carried op-eds and opinion columns that both explicitly and implicitly attacked Rowling. One of the most invidious methods is when they get a trans ‘victim’ who has struggled with their identity to write a piece stating that Rowling is responsible because of her outdated views.

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