JK Rowling admits to 'biology' census protest against SNP's gender reforms

JK Rowling says she recorded her religion in the 2022 census as a “believer in biology” to protest against the SNP’s gender reforms.

The Harry Potter author revealed she was one of the 2,883 Scots who logged this as their religion in the census in a co-ordinated attempt to call out the Scottish Government’s policy of gender self-ID.

Rowling responded to a post on X by Professor Sarah Pederson saying it was “fascinating” so many people had identified this as their religion.

JK Rowling | Getty Images

The author replied: “I was one of those people.”

Prof Pederson said: “Just as the suffragettes did in 1911, these women used the opportunity to send a message to the government.”

Back in 2022, MSPs at the Scottish Parliament passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which aimed to make it easier for trans people to legally change their gender.

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This included removing the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, allowing trans people to self-identify as their acquired gender, and reducing the amount of time the person has to live in their acquired gender before gaining a gender recognition certificate.

However, this legislation was blocked by the UK government, which led to a legal challenge from the Scottish Government in the Supreme Court. The Scottish Government ended up losing the legal challenge.

Those critical of the reforms said biological sex needed to be recorded on the census to help protect women’s rights and to guarantee the efficacy of data collection.

They say allowing a mix of sex and gender identities to be recorded in the census would lead to a loss in vital statistics for planning services.

The rest of the UK held the census in 2021, but in Scotland it was delayed by a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Elsewhere only “male” and “female” were given as options for recording a person’s sex after a successful legal challenge by the campaign group Fair Play For Women.

A similar legal challenge by the group in Scotland failed.

The question in the census was “what religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?”, with the options given as “none”, “Church of Scotland”, “Roman Catholic” or “other”.