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. And publishers HarperCollins, for whom she had been contracted to ghost-write fantasy novels for children under the pen name Erin Hunter, informed her that her services were no longer required.
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