JK Rowling hits out at Scotland's new bill that 'will harm most vulnerable women'

JK Rowling has hit out at Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, claiming it will ‘harm the most vulnerable women’.

The author took aim at the Bill which will make a series of amendments to the Gender Recognition Act, which has been in place since 2004.

Should the legislation be passed, it will drop the need for those wishing to change gender to show medical and psychiatric reports.

It will also slash the time someone has to live in their new gender from two years to six months.

JK Rowling, pictured, has spoken out Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, claiming it will ‘harm the most vulnerable women’

Miss Rowling, 56, criticised Social Justice Secretary Shona Robison, who spoke in Holyrood last week about the Bill – but she praised author and journalist Susan Dalgety for her ‘most searing, heartfelt and courageous response yet’ to Miss Robison’s ‘astounding claim’.

Miss Robison told MSPs there was no evidence that ‘predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour’.

Miss Dalgety, who was sexually assaulted as a child, branded the statement ‘crass’.

Miss Rowling tweeted: ‘The law @NicolaSturgeon’s trying to pass in Scotland will harm the most vulnerable women in society: those seeking help after male violence/rape and incarcerated women.

‘Statistics show that imprisoned women are already far more likely to have been previously abused.’

Miss Rowling criticised Social Justice Secretary Shona Robinson for saying there was ‘no evidence that ‘predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour’

Changes to the Bill have been proposed in a bid to ‘streamline’ the process. 

If passed, it will also include the lowering of the age at which people can apply to change their gender from 18 to 16.

Miss Rowling has faced a continued onslaught of accusations of transphobia since publishing an essay on her website in July 2020 in which she argued that biological sex is real.

The Harry Potter author also revealed that she was ‘a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor’.

She was labelled a Terf – trans-exclusionary radical feminist – after taking issue with the term ‘people who menstruate’.

In December Miss Rowling was once again forced to deny that she is transphobic as she argued for sex, not gender identity, to be the ‘basis of decisions on safeguarding’. 

 Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Evanna Lynch, who recently reunited for the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone without Miss Rowling, are among those who have condemned her.

The author previously revealed that ‘hundreds of trans activists have threatened to beat, rape, assassinate and bomb me’.

She vowed to continue speaking out after naming three activists – Holly Stars, Richard Energy and Georgia Frost – who posed with signs reading ‘Don’t be a cissy,’ ‘Trans liberation now’ and ‘Trans rights are human rights’ outside her Edinburgh home in November.

Police Scotland later said no criminality was established. But the writer assumed the three were trying to ‘intimidate me out of speaking up for women’s sex-based rights’.

At the time Miss Rowling said: ‘They should have reflected on the fact that I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them and I haven’t stopped speaking out.

‘Perhaps – and I’m just throwing this out there – the best way to prove your movement isn’t a threat to women… is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us