Bethany Harris

Be the person your dog thinks you are

[Bethany Harris @Craw4dB]

@HotelChocolat @Tris_Harris

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.

I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.

Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.

However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.

When you've known people since they were ten years old it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn't managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.

The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's 'all witches' speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through' (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.

Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who's identified into the women's prison?

I wasn't a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.

The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest.

Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.

[Mila @EfromAus]

@0hour1 That TikTok confirmed women’s fears around being made fun of and humiliated at the gyno. Their actions could cause women to miss pap smears and life saving early diagnosis.

Being fired isn’t good enough, they should never practice again.

[Emma Hilton @FondOfBeetles]

First, try to escape/run away.

Second, try to attract attention/scream/make noise.

But third, *if you have no choice but to defend yourself*, knee him in balls. Or kick him in the balls. Or punch him in the balls. And do it as hard as you can, make it count.

Said every parent to every daughter, forever, in what used to be an entirely uncontroversial life lesson.

#IStandWithGlinner

[Based Bandita @BasedBandita]

I hated having long hair because it was always in the way when I played outside. my mom didn’t tell me “you’re a boy on the inside,” instead she took the time to French braid my long hair everyday before I went out to play.

I hated wearing dresses because I’d scrape my knees wearing them while I played outside. Not once did my mom say “you’re a boy on this inside,” instead my mom bought me a bunch of cute wranglers just like hers to protect my little legs.

I hated wearing sparkles and sequins because they were itchy. Not once did my mom ever say “you’re a boy on the inside.” Instead my Mom went out and found me a bunch of t shirts, all purple because that was my favorite color.

Her solutions were never to multilate me or brainwash me because my parents were not mentally ill suffering from munchausen.

there was no option to be a boy. I was a girl, and would soon grow up to be a woman. I’m so thankful for the parents that I had.

[Wholesome Side of 𝕏 @itsme_urstruly]

Still one of the best all time videos

[Sarah Ironside 💙 @SarahIronside6]

I don't know why anyone is surprised that Diddy basically got off when we have an adjudicated rapist sitting in the White House. Men with wealth and power who abuse women are celebrated in this country.

[Mrs D @Denosko1]

My feed is full of men complaining that 57 year old Pamala Anderson is unattractive.

I've come to the conclusion that many men who claim they do not like women with makeup and plastic surgery are not being honest. 🤔

[Serena @Serena_Partrick]

Men like Joey are why I don't have any time for this "Tate is just filling a vacuum" excuse making, there's plenty of male role models out there who don't encourage boys and men to be abusive fcks.

[L G B @L__G__B]

I won’t stop posting this until it becomes reality again:

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Women are being forced to face significant risk in order to be 'inclusive'. There has been a long struggle for women to have their own spaces - they deserve them, they earned them, they need them.

Men must not be allowed access into these spaces, regardless if they believe themselves to be a woman.

They are not. No amount of medical procedures can change that. Sorry, it just can't.

Biological reality matters. Facts override feelings.

Safety, privacy, fairness. That matters. And women should be entitled to it all.

Women should not be forced to get changed in front of men. If believing that in 2025 makes me some radical feminist, then so be it.

More MPs should have the courage to say it. Even if that results in some unpleasant insults. I say, so what?

We must prioritise safety over inclusivity, dignity over wokery, reality over ideology.

Women-only spaces are for women. Nobody else.

[Julie Hull @rivier]

Weirdly, the biggest disgrace becoming clear from the Peggie tribunal isn’t what I thought it would be, ie the mental deficiency of half the #NHSFife management believing a man can say he’s a woman and🪄there she is.

I think it’s actually… sorry, this is a long explanation.

So, here’s a man who possibly wasn’t even born when Sandie Peggie’s nursing career began, who had barely qualified when he joined the ER at the Vic. And he gets so outraged at the audacity of a mere lowly nurse making it clear she was uncomfortable with his illegal trespass into the women’s changing room, he promptly sets out to destroy her career. He monitors every work encounter, recording her ‘hate crimes’ of avoiding him in the changing room, unable to come up with anything better for months than ‘she wouldn’t meet my eyes’.

She, meanwhile, went by the book: raised her concerns with her manager, sought advice from HR… nothing. No help, no support, no concern for her beliefs or her feelings or her wellbeing. None.

When she was left with no choice but to ask him directly to stop, at last he had his ‘evidence’ - only a few words exchanged, both remaining civil, but that unwitnessed moment was enough for him to accuse her of bullying & harassment, to embellish the incident, invent a few more crimes when it became clear that changing room moment wasn’t meaty enough. And to immediately demand a punitive response from the hospital execs, because a socially inferior female colleague questioned his belief and hurt his feelings.

The thing that has me really appalled, is the sheer misogyny of the entire damned hospital management team. Here was an accusation of wrongdoing, clearly with very little substance, and with no third party to corroborate. There’s barely a pause: their response was to suspend the accused woman, on only the word of this man.

When her belief (in biological fact) was undermined, when she was upset and felt threatened… they did nothing.

When his belief (in transgender fantasy) was undermined, when he was upset and felt threatened… they threw her out without even attempting to ask for her side. Everyone bent over backwards to appease him, to protect him from a risk of harm so terrifying to him, he went straight back to the scene of her alleged attack on him three days later, when she was also on shift. The managers investigating her crimes let him rewrite their own formal records of the incident. They have bloody perjured themselves at the tribunal to serve him.

This is why the ‘trans’ part seems almost irrelevant. Pretending to be a woman is a great grift for Upton, turning him from just any other inexperienced young doctor into a rare, special one, who needs to be treated with exceptional care and favouritism by everyone at work. But it’s a sure bet that, if he hadn’t chosen to woman-LARP, he’s the kind of man who would have figured out some other way to tread on any woman in proximity to him who was better than him - smarter, more experienced, more professional, more self-disciplined, not intimidated by him or submissive to him.

He’s a misogynist bully: okay, not so unusual. But the eagerness of the - mostly female - senior staff at #NHSFife to unilaterally believe him, serve him, and conspire with him to destroy the career and well-being of the impeccable female colleague who many of them had known for years… WHY?

They didn’t tear Sandie apart on Upton’s direction because he says he’s a woman. They did it because they know he’s a man. His word, his needs, his demands mattered infinitely more to them than hers.

I can at least understand male misogyny, even as I detest it.

But female misogyny - a gang of educated, professional women joining forces to destroy another woman, on the whim of a man? I can’t understand that, and I can’t ever forgive.

What the fuck is wrong with them all?

[Jill Foster @JournalistJill]

I keep thinking about the Unison ‘trans women are women’ successful vote yesterday.
From the ages of 16-20 I was a part-time checkout operator at Tesco.
If I had to change into my uniform I had to strip down to my underwear in a changing room like this one, only much smaller.
Occasionally, two or three of us would be squeezed in there, but it was fine. We’d nod, smile, chat if we knew each other. We had little to fear unless someone accidentally opened the door while one of us was undressed and a bloke from the shop floor might catch a glimpse. If a bloke DID try to come in, security cameras outside would hopefully see it and he’d be hauled out and hopefully sacked. In four years I was never aware of anything like this happening.
This week, the UK’s biggest union - who represents some of our lowest paid female workers - voted to allow men into that room if they uttered the words: ‘I identify as a woman’. No surgery required. No hormones. No lipstick. (NOT that that would make any difference). Trevor from the meat aisle could walk in one day and declare that he is now Tracey and he’d be allowed into the female changing room.
I think of my 16yo self, trying to earn some money (£2.07 an hour at the time) so I could save a bit of cash.
I think how scared she would have been if a man had walked in unchallenged while I was down to my underwear. How I would have frozen in fear, tried to cover myself up. I would never have been as brave as nurse Sandie Peggie, who is in the midst of a hellish employment tribunal over this very issue.
And even if I’d quietly expressed concern, I would have been called ‘bigot’ by my HR manager. My Union would do the same.
The reason I speak up so much on this is that I now have two daughters and four young nieces who might one day find themselves in this exact situation.
Do you stand with them and all the women and girls in your life? Or do you stand with these men? And the people, the unions, the organisations who are doing everything they can to help them access these spaces?

[Robert Sterling @RobertMSterling]

The best random part about having small kids is how they mispronounce things and it’s so adorable that you not only don’t correct them, you start adopting it yourself.

During Covid, our daughter couldn’t say “hand sanitizer” correctly. Three years later and we all still call it “hanzatizer.”

When my son was two, he had a toy Elmo guitar that he called his “kintar.” My wife and I only stopped pronouncing it like that once he started real kintar lessons and we sounded dumb in front of the teacher.

Our toddler is two and she calls her backpack a “pack pack.” Now the other kids talk about getting their pack packs ready for school every day.

We’re having pasghetti for dinner tonight.

It probably sounds stupid, but it’s little things like this that make parenthood—despite all the challenges—an irreplaceable joy.

[Bethany Harris @Craw4dB]

This is disgraceful, anyone with experience of a loved one with dementia would know the horror of watching them lose everything they’ve ever known 😓

[James Dreyfus @DreyfusJames]

My god…

It’s a new level of absolute grotesquery when an elderly woman with dementia is painted as a bigot, because she doesn’t recognise her grandchild…

My. God…

[Sara @SeeRedWoman1]

I despise that Sandie Peggie had to disclose a previous sexual assault and had to discuss her period in the court.

A woman saying NO to a man in the women’s changing rooms should be more than enough.

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

If a grown man believes that he is a woman, and takes steps to live his life to reflect that? Good for him. None of my business, it has absolutely nothing to do with me.

However, when the rest of society is bullied into submission to accommodate that - we should draw the line.

We should not tolerate being forced to call them women. It's just not true.

Certainly not allowing access to women's sport, where a biological male has vast physical advantages. Trump's position on this is the right one - it should be banned. It is entirely unfair and unjust.

Women-only spaces must remain solely for women.

The policing of our language on this, particularly in a medical context, has to stop. It's dangerous, warped and does not represent actual reality.

Men cannot get pregnant, and women cannot have a penis. Sorry, but that's just a fact.

And most of all? Stop forcing the idea that we can be born in the 'wrong' bodies on impressionable children. That poison needs to be kept AWAY from schools - ban it, and sack anyone in any position of authority who forces it on young boys and girls, potentially leading to permanent life-altering medical procedures.

Grown adults are free to live their lives however they choose, but do not expect the rest of the country to change how it operates to accommodate this.

We need to be respectful of individual choices, but we must not deny reality.

[Helen Joyce @HJoyceGender]

Beautifully clear because it uses right-sex pronouns. Sandie told the tribunal: "I don't have a problem with trans people and I didn't have a problem with Beth until I found him in the female changing rooms." The problem and solution in a single sentence. https://t.co/EKMKOfFrF8

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

My husband Neil (marathon and endurance runner) just told me he's bought four T shirts. In years to come, a great question to ask self-proclaimed liberal men will be, 'which side were you on - women's rights, or men's demands?'

[Wolf of X @WolfofX]

Beautiful souls ���

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