The Women Who Wouldn’t Shut Up
A review of Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn’s ‘The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht’
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About the Author
Ben Appel has written for Newsweek, The Free Press, Quillette, UnHerd, and many other publications. His memoir, Cis White Gay, about his experience in LGBT activism and Ivy League academia, is forthcoming. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X @benappel.
wheesht – (verb) to be silent
As I read The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, I was struck by an impulse to burn it. Not because I’m a fascist or literary pyromaniac, but because the anger stirred by its accounts of radical trans activism's assault on women’s rights in Scotland made me want to set something ablaze. The book happened to be the nearest flammable object.
Thankfully, I refrained. Instead, I read it cover to cover, allowing its stories and arguments to sink in. By the time I finished, the last lingering doubts I harbored—the faint whisper wondering if I had been too dogmatic in my opposition to gender identity ideology—were gone.
No, there is no circumstance in law or public policy where gender identity does not directly conflict with sex.
No, there is no circumstance in law or public policy where gender identity should supersede sex.
As a certain very famous author once put it: “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like.” But no name, hairstyle, outfit, pharmaceutical cocktail, or surgical procedure can alter the biological reality of sex. Sex always wins. And sex always matters.
The book, now available in the U.S., includes a brand-new essay by this very famous author, J.K. Rowling. In “Wheesht for the Witch Burners,” Rowling examines how her peers in the arts have navigated—or avoided—the fraught terrain of gender ideology. Her reflections are as incisive as one would expect.
But Rowling’s contribution is only one among many compelling testimonies in the collection. The poet Jenny Lindsay recounts the firestorm she faced in 2019 after publicly condemning a Scottish magazine columnist’s open call for violence against lesbian activists at a Pride march. Retired prison governor Rhona Hotchkiss shares how, in 2018, she refused to discipline female staff members for declining to search male-bodied individuals, only to be told that her stance was “unhelpful” and “not good for you.” Five years later, Hotchkiss found herself at the center of a media frenzy when Adam Graham—self-identified as “Isla Bryson”—was convicted of raping two women and then controversially placed in a women’s prison while awaiting sentencing. The scandal ultimately marked the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister and a staunch advocate of “self-ID.”
Other notable contributors include former MP Joanna Cherry, Material Girls author Kathleen Stock, and university lecturer Shereen Benjamin. Each account is as enlightening as it is infuriating.
Adding to the book’s value is a meticulously crafted historical timeline by editors Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn, which lays bare how, two decades into the millennium, the unchecked momentum of trans activism finally collided with reality. The timeline exposes staggering lapses in judgment from once-revered leaders of influential institutions—failures that provoke both disbelief and outrage.
Here are just a few insights from the book that had me contemplating arson:
In 2009, James Rennie, the first chief executive of LGBT Youth Scotland, was convicted of raping a three-month-old baby and sentenced to life in prison for his central role in a pedophile ring. Despite this horrifying revelation, the organization continued to receive government funding. By 2021, it was helping develop national school guidance—now implemented in most Scottish secondary schools—that promotes social transition for gender-confused kids.
The strategy of the trans lobby, according to the book, has long been to aim high—shockingly high. Years ago, activists targeted the Scottish Prison Service with a seemingly outlandish demand: house trans-identified males in women’s prisons. The thinking? If this extreme demand could be normalized, every other public service would fall in line. In other words, start with the most insane idea so the rest sound almost reasonable by comparison.
Today, all Scottish government-funded organizations that provide services for female victims of male violence and sexual assault must have a “trans-inclusion plan.” In practice, this means spaces meant for female survivors must also accommodate males.
And that’s not even the half of it. The book recounts harrowing true stories of women whose lives were nearly destroyed for voicing opposition to these policies—policies that place male rapists in women’s prisons, deny disabled women the right to request female caregivers, and allow males who self-identify as women to occupy beds in female hospital wards.
One particularly disturbing NHS policy, developed in consultation with the Scottish Trans Alliance, illustrates the Kafkaesque reality these policies create. If a female patient objects to sharing a ward with a male, hospital staff are instructed to gaslight her—reassuring her that “the ward is indeed female-only and that there are no males present.” Should she persist, the policy advises staff to remove her from the ward.
How these women manage to endure such battles day after day is beyond me. I can dip into this debate and retreat whenever I’ve had enough of trying to reason with lunatics (like this guy):
But women on the front lines—like those featured in The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht—don’t have that luxury. For them, retreat isn’t an option. They have no choice but to suit up and fight on. I don’t know if I could do it.
In her essay, she quotes the early 20th-century French author Colette, who once marveled at the “absurd courage” of girls. “In a sense, of course, all courage is absurd,” writes Rowling. “Isn’t it much more sensible to keep your head down, to hope somebody else sorts it out, to serve our self-interest, to court approval?”
Perhaps. But Rowling believes, as I and so many others do, that what’s unfolding before us is not just a medical scandal of historic proportions but also a sweeping assault on women’s rights. Advertised as “life-saving” and “progressive,” this movement’s true nature is anything but. The consequences of speaking up might be dire, but the shame of staying silent is worse.
‘The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht’ is available for purchase on Amazon.
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I needed to read this today as I will speak at a hostile school board meeting about these issues tomorrow. I’m intimidated - but not deterred, thanks to women like those you speak of and men like you.
The trannie apologists, who believe that it's all about "free to be you and me", simply ignore this part of the story. Ute Heggen represents another side - the forcible conversion of women who are normal heterosexuals into lesbians. The rapes in prison are another. The forcible imposition of the male body of the volleyball player in San Jose State University upon his teammates in the female volleyball squad.
It's not "free to be you and me". It's a forcible mental rape by the trannies on the rest of us.