The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht

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The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht: Voices from the front-line of Scotland's battle for women's rights
EditorSusan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn
LanguageEnglish
Subject Feminism
Publisher Constable
Publication date
May 2024
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-40872-070-7

The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht: Voices from the front-line of Scotland's battle for women's rights is a 2024 book of gender-critical essays, edited by Susan Dalgety, a columnist for The Scotsman , and Lucy Hunter Blackburn, author and former Scottish Government civil servant. [1] [2] The book was published on 30 May by Constable, an imprint of the Little, Brown Book Group. [1]

Contents

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]

The book consists of over 30 essays. Essayists include author J. K. Rowling, MP Joanna Cherry, MSP Ash Regan, and former prison governor Rhona Hotchkiss. [1] [2] In the book, Rowling describes her belief in protecting women's sex-based rights. [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]

Transgender journalist India Willoughby described the book as gender-critical and criticized 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]

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]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Ferguson, Brian (16 May 2024). "JK Rowling writes essay on 'standing up for women' for new book on campaign to protect rights". The Scotsman . Retrieved 26 June 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 Perry, Sophie (4 June 2024). "India Willoughby slams Waterstones for promoting 'gender-critical' book". PinkNews . Retrieved 26 June 2024.
  3. 1 2 "Trans rights are 'greatest assault of my lifetime' on women's rights, says JK Rowling". The Daily Telegraph . 29 May 2024. ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 26 June 2024.
  4. ↑ Rowling, J. K. (26 June 2024). "JK Rowling: Why I decided to stand up for women". The Times . Retrieved 26 June 2024.
  5. ↑ Dalgety, Susan; Hunter Blackburn, Lucy (15 June 2024). "We won't wheesht over gender and now our book is making history". www.thetimes.com. Retrieved 19 August 2024.
  6. ↑ "The Sunday Times Bestsellers List—the UK's definitive book sales chart". The Sunday Times . 9 June 2024. Archived from the original on 9 June 2024. Retrieved 26 June 2024.
  7. ↑ Ditum, Sarah (9 June 2024). "How JK Rowling and a feminist fightback turned the tide on trans activism". The Times. Archived from the original on 9 June 2024. Retrieved 27 June 2024.
  8. ↑ McInally, John (7 June 2024). "Gender ideology exposed". Morning Star . Retrieved 26 June 2024.
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