The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht - Respect!
What a great article in the Sunday Times on the 'women who wouldn't wheesht' and shut their gobs over gender ideology.
Inspiring women who simply refused to be fobbed off by Scotland's political establishment after 86 MSPs tried to impose self-ID and remove women's rights to single sex spaces.
We won’t wheesht over gender and now our book is making history
As campaigners’ account goes to No 3 in Sunday Times Bestseller List, Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn explain why they wrote it
A demonstration at Holyrood in September 2021 - Photo IAIN MASTERTON/ALAMY
BY Susan Dalgety, Lucy Hunter Blackburn - The Sunday Times
Our first formal approach to a publisher about our book, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, was almost our last. “There is no market for it, sorry,” we were told.
Last Sunday, only days after it was published, it entered the Sunday Times Bestseller List at number three in the general hardback category.
The book captures the experience of women in Scotland who are fighting to defend the recognition in language, law and policy that sex matters, as a material, unchangeable reality.
They faced a Scottish government committed to the new luxury belief that a person’s sex is whatever they say it is: the idea of self-ID.
In early 2022 Susan scribbled the outline for a book to tell the story behind Scottish women’s campaigning against this establishment juggernaut.
After several tentative inquiries petered out, she filed it away. But in January 2023 when Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, vetoed the SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, we found ourselves in conversation.
Author Lucy Hunter Blackburn - Photo ROBERT PERRY FOR THE TIMES
History was being made. Who, we asked, was making it and, just as importantly, who would be writing it? There was an extraordinary story to be told about what women had done and how politics in Scotland had failed.
This first draft of history should be written by the women who were there.
Then on the morning of February 15, 2023, Nicola Sturgeon unexpectedly announced her resignation as first minister. The ferocious row over self-ID and Sturgeon’s “inclusive” policies, which had ended in the grotesque spectacle of Adam Graham, a double rapist also known as Isla Bryson, being sent to a women’s prison, had weakened her authority. It was evidently a factor in her decision to go, as she admitted last month.
Lucy observed that it was almost exactly the fifth anniversary of the first meeting organised by women in Edinburgh to talk about self-ID, on Valentine’s Day 2018.
That night, young men in masks surrounded the building, banging pots and yelling abuse, while inside women shared their reasons for needing single-sex space to heal from sexual assault.
The arc of the story fell into place, reaching from that bleak evening to Sturgeon’s resignation.
More than 30 women contributed to the book. Dalgety and Hunter Blackburn say that each knew of the others’ involvement but all kept it quiet. “These women know the importance of having each other’s backs”
Women had been talked over enough. So the heart of our book would be first-person accounts from those who had risked jobs, reputations and friendships to tell the truth. And this was about being heard, not making money.
We made an early decision that royalties from the book, if there were any, would go to organisations that help women and girls elsewhere in the world who are among the most silenced.
It was now May 2023. We set ourselves the goal of having a book out in time for Holyrood’s 25th birthday in summer 2024.
Hitting that deadline would mean finding a publisher and turning the book around in a ridiculously short space of time. The initial list of women we felt able to ask wrote itself; they all said yes. Our research led us to others. Given more space and time, there could have been many more.
Our first formal approach to a publisher about our book, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, was almost our last. “There is no market for it, sorry,” we were told.
Last Sunday, only days after it was published, it entered the Sunday Times Bestseller List at number three in the general hardback category.
The book captures the experience of women in Scotland who are fighting to defend the recognition in language, law and policy that sex matters, as a material, unchangeable reality.
They faced a Scottish government committed to the new luxury belief that a person’s sex is whatever they say it is: the idea of self-ID.
In early 2022 Susan scribbled the outline for a book to tell the story behind Scottish women’s campaigning against this establishment juggernaut.
After several tentative inquiries petered out, she filed it away. But in January 2023 when Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, vetoed the SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, we found ourselves in conversation.
Author Lucy Hunter Blackburn - Photo ROBERT PERRY FOR THE TIMES
History was being made. Who, we asked, was making it and, just as importantly, who would be writing it? There was an extraordinary story to be told about what women had done and how politics in Scotland had failed.
This first draft of history should be written by the women who were there.
Then on the morning of February 15, 2023, Nicola Sturgeon unexpectedly announced her resignation as first minister. The ferocious row over self-ID and Sturgeon’s “inclusive” policies, which had ended in the grotesque spectacle of Adam Graham, a double rapist also known as Isla Bryson, being sent to a women’s prison, had weakened her authority. It was evidently a factor in her decision to go, as she admitted last month.
Lucy observed that it was almost exactly the fifth anniversary of the first meeting organised by women in Edinburgh to talk about self-ID, on Valentine’s Day 2018.
That night, young men in masks surrounded the building, banging pots and yelling abuse, while inside women shared their reasons for needing single-sex space to heal from sexual assault.
The arc of the story fell into place, reaching from that bleak evening to Sturgeon’s resignation.
More than 30 women contributed to the book. Dalgety and Hunter Blackburn say that each knew of the others’ involvement but all kept it quiet. “These women know the importance of having each other’s backs”
Women had been talked over enough. So the heart of our book would be first-person accounts from those who had risked jobs, reputations and friendships to tell the truth. And this was about being heard, not making money.
We made an early decision that royalties from the book, if there were any, would go to organisations that help women and girls elsewhere in the world who are among the most silenced.
It was now May 2023. We set ourselves the goal of having a book out in time for Holyrood’s 25th birthday in summer 2024.
Hitting that deadline would mean finding a publisher and turning the book around in a ridiculously short space of time. The initial list of women we felt able to ask wrote itself; they all said yes. Our research led us to others. Given more space and time, there could have been many more.
The slogan Women Won’t Wheesht was adopted to promote the movement - Photo IAIN MASTERTON/ALAMY
Tracing the origins of the viral #WomenWontWheesht hashtag led us to anonymous Twitter/X account @Dis_Critic. Her story, of her fight to secure same-sex intimate care for her disabled daughter, is heartbreaking and uplifting. “I won’t be forced to say women’s bodies don’t matter — aren’t matter,” she wrote. Her words are the essence of the book.
In June last year, we sat on Susan’s sofa, fingers hovering over an email to JK Rowling’s office. Dare we send it? But we knew we had to. Her story was as integral to the project as the others. Two weeks later, Susan messaged Lucy: “Check your email.”
Rowling’s agreement undoubtedly helped us to secure a publishing deal with one of the UK’s most prestigious houses. When you see the book on display in a high street bookshop, there are no stickers on the front about her contribution.
JK Rowling is included in the book simply as “one of the essayists” - Photo SAMIR HUSSEIN/WIREIMAGE/SIMPLY GETTY
She is included on an equal footing with the other essayists, just as she has stood alongside women’s rights campaigners across the UK. She is a sister first and foremost.
All 30-plus contributors have known about everyone else’s involvement for months, and said nothing. These women know the importance of having each other’s backs. We are delighted by the positive response from reviewers and readers.
The book’s existence was only revealed two weeks before publication day, making its instant appearance on the Bestseller List even more astonishing.
One thousand people signed up for the online launch, hosted by FiLiA, a grassroots feminist organisation. An army of women across the UK have proudly posted pictures of their purchases on social media. They are our marketing campaign.
Susan Dalgety: We sat on the sofa wondering about an email to JK Rowling’s office. “Dare we send it?”
We have been most moved, however, by the simple relief women have told us they feel, to be able to walk into a bookshop and see it on display. To go to the till and buy it, without trouble.
Walking out into the street holding this book itself becomes an act of protest — against the years of masked men intimidating meetings, the threats, insults and attempts to shame women for talking about why and when sex matters. Women have had enough, and they won’t wheesht.
Susan Dalgety is a newspaper columnist and author. Lucy Hunter Blackburn is a former senior civil servant in the Scottish government and a member of the policy analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie group.
