British writer J.K. Rowling has criticised an Australian justice over the requirement to use female pronouns to refer to male sex offenders in court.
The famous children’s author responded to South Australian Chief Justice Chris Kourakis after he defended his court’s protocol of using preferred gender pronouns.
He said that it “does no more than allow lawyers and others to inform the court of … their preferred gender pronoun so that proceedings are conducted respectfully.”
According to a practice note by SA courts, legal practitioners may “consider the gender pronouns of a person and their preferred title … this includes, but is not limited to, counsel, parties, witnesses, interpreters, solicitors, and entities.”
Ms. Rowling first took to X (formerly Twitter) on Nov. 3 to criticise the protocol.
Justice Kourakis alleged that Rowling had “misunderstood” the protocol and assured that the judge “retains control over all forms of address used in court.”
“A victim of a crime would never be asked to address an accused person in a way which caused the victim distress,” he noted in a statement.
Rowling Hits Back
Ms. Rowling fired back, saying that although she welcomed the assurance, the judge addressed the matter only after it was raised publicly.“He states that ‘a victim of crime would never be asked to address an accused person in a way which caused the victim distress.’”
She argued that “no such exemption is mentioned in the Practice Note, which takes the ideological position that the ‘use of preferred gender pronouns is a matter of respect.'”
Ms. Rowling noted that the implication of the protocol is that a woman “would be considered guilty of disrespect if she, alone in the courtroom, described her male attacker as a man, while all court officials were addressing and describing him as a woman.”
“The Practice Note says that court officials should respectfully use female pronouns for the attacker if he says he identifies as a woman,” she said.
“This is not a hypothetical situation.”
The British author pointed to an example where a 60-year-old woman who was assaulted by a 26-year-old trans-identified male was “chided by the judge for displaying ‘bad grace’ by not using her attacker’s preferred pronouns.”
She described the practice note as a “clear clash of rights.”
“The woman has a right—indeed, a legal duty—to speak truthfully about the male violence or sexual violence to which she was subjected,” she said.
The famous author accused the SA courts’ practice of failing to address the trauma that a female victim endured when hearing her attacker addressed and described as a female by the court.
“Respect, it seems, goes only one way,” she said, adding that millions of women are “losing confidence in judicial systems that have adopted an ideological position with which they do not agree.”
“In the very place where they go to seek justice, a woman may now be obliged to listen to court officials asserting they were raped or beaten by a fellow woman,” Ms. Rowling argued.
“Such women are not merely ‘anxious,’ they are furious, about the apparent inability of certain men, judges or not, to understand how dystopian this situation seems to those of us who have suffered male sexual violence.”
Commenting under Ms. Rowling’s post, Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler said there had been cases in Australia of courts using female pronouns to refer to males who committed horrific offences against women and girls.
“Thank you for pointing out the obvious problem with any court promoting this practice as “a matter of respect,” let alone claiming it’s in the interests of public confidence in the legal system,” she said.
