The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

by Andrew Doyle

The Witch Hunt The Rowling case merits further scrutiny, as it seems to exemplify so many of the problems I have been describing. It all started a few years ago, when Rowling accidentally ‘liked’ a contentious tweet. Soon after, she followed on Twitter the gender-critical feminist Magdalen Berns, then in the last stages of the brain cancer that took her life. This online activity was taken as evidence of Rowling’s ‘transphobia’, and she was subject to attacks from activists and in the LGBT press. The major catalyst came in December 2019, after tax expert Maya Forstater lost a tribunal against her employers for wrongful dismissal. She had been fired after voicing her opposition to the government’s proposed amendments to the Gender Recognition Act, which would have allowed transgender people to self-identify as the opposite sex without medical consultation. Rowling tweeted her support using the hashtag #IStandWithMaya, writing: ‘Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?’ The backlash was seismic. Extreme trans activists blitzed Rowling with misogynistic abuse. She has stated that the volume of death threats has been such that she could ‘paper the house with them’

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