When the Scottish writer Gillian Philip posted a tweet in 2020, she could not have imagined the devastating consequences that would follow. At the time, her fellow author JK Rowling was under relentless attack for her view that a conflict exists between women’s right to use single sex spaces, such as refuges, and moves to allow trans people to use such facilities on the basis of self-identification.
Philip shared the Harry Potter creator’s concerns about male-bodied individuals accessing places set up to support women traumatised by men’s violence and added the hashtag #ISTANDWITHROWLING to her Twitter bio. And then her world came crashing down. The online mob came for Philip, denouncing her as a bigot, as a vicious transphobe. And those with whom she had enjoyed long working relationships let her down badly.
Philip’s literary agent dumped her.
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