In a tweet about the book, J. K. Rowling explained to non-Scots that the meaning of the word wheesht is to "'be quiet' or 'hush up', but I suspect you could have worked that out from the context".[1]
Summary
The publisher describes The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht as "the story of women who risked their job, reputation, even the bonds of family and friendship, to make their voices heard, and ended up – unexpectedly – contributing to the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's first woman first minister."[1]
In the book, Rowling describes her gender-critical beliefs.[3] She says, in an abridged essay published in The Times, "I'd come to believe that the socio-political movement insisting 'trans women are women' was neither kind nor tolerant, but in fact profoundly misogynistic, regressive, dangerous in some of its objectives and nakedly authoritarian in its tactics".[3][4]
Writing in The Sunday Times, the editors describe the core of the book in the words "I won't be forced to say women's bodies don't matter — aren't matter", which they attribute to the anonymous X account @Dis_Critic, the origin of the hashtag #WomenWontWheesht.[5]
Reception
The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht debuted at number 3 on The Sunday Times list of bestselling general hardbacks.[6]
In The Times, Sarah Ditum begins her review with a quote from the book, "Scotland is the land of the Enlightenment but also the witch craze", which she says explains why the country's establishment adopted trans activism. The book, she says, describes a feminist "fightback through the voices of the women who made it happen".[7]
In the Morning Star, John McInnally describes the essays as being of "major historical, political and social significance", and that they expose what he calls "gender ideology" as being "regressive and reactionary". He further notes that "the voices in this book are of left-of-centre women" and that "each essay rings with that limpid articulacy of truth, defiance, and conviction that defines a movement built by these and many other women in defence of their hard-won sex-based rights".[8]
In PinkNews, India Willoughby described the book as gender-critical and criticised the bookseller Waterstones for including it in a list of new books, given that Waterstones is "famously trans-supportive". In response, Waterstones said the list was a "broad overview reflective of new publishing across genres and subjects".[2]
The book gained widespread attention in August 2025 amid a controversy over whether or not it should be featured and displayed as part of the "Dear Library" exhibition established by the National Library of Scotland during celebrations of its centenary year.[9][10][11]
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