Last June, late one night after my kids had gone to bed, I stumbled across a Twitter Space for parents concerned about what their children are being taught at school. There were 60 or so participants, mostly from Ontario: Canadians …
Why women need to feel fear
Feminists, when I was growing up, used to encourage girls to “get loud” and rail against the social pressure to be compliant and “nice”. We were taught to push back against the idea that women need to be appealing to …
The desperate plight of trans widows
“Terrible things are happening to women and girls across my country… and the media doesn’t care. It’s only interested in the trans issue.”
Vaishnavi Sundar, an Indian feminist filmmaker, has long been furious at the way women and girls are …
Is liberal society making us ill?
As rates of Covid-19 infection started to dwindle, there came signs of a much stranger pandemic: long Covid and its host of long-term complications. You might think that, since men and older people suffer the most complications from the virus, …
Was New Atheism a mistake?
Richard Dawkins is best known for his controversial advocacy of atheism, especially in The Selfish Gene (1976) and The God Delusion (2006). But could the pugnacious evolutionary biologist have a romantic side? His new podcast, The Poetry of Reality, suggests …
‘I was hounded out of Oxfam over JK Rowling’
It’s hard to imagine a more agreeable place to work than a charity bookshop. Staffed by civic-minded volunteers, the shelves groan with musty old paperbacks, lovingly donated in the hope they’ll find a new home and also raise money for …
‘I will never call my rapist father a woman’
“I have no respect for those criminal sex offenders who want to make life easier for themselves,” says Ceri-Lee Galvin. “My father wasn’t dysphoric about his male genitals when he was abusing me.”
Ceri-Lee is a bright and confident 24-year-old …
Did City Uni censor my gender research?
“Are you not terrified? Everybody is going to hate you.” As she began the interviews for the research project she was leading, participants and colleagues asked Dr Laura Favaro if she was afraid. Now, three years later, she is haunted …
The media is spreading bad trans science
Do people with severe depression have a right to accurate information about antidepressants? I suspect most people would answer “yes”. There is a general understanding that individuals who suffer from medical conditions are in a vulnerable position, making them susceptible …
The Lesbian Project has begun
It is great being a lesbian. Without getting into the thorny debate about whether or not sexuality is innate, I consider being a lesbian a great gift and a privilege. Yes, same-sex attracted females do have to learn to live …
Hag feminism is the future
At the beginning of the year, a scandal erupted over a TikTok trend of young women in tight clothes posting videos shaming men for hitting on them at the gym. As recently as 2018, the story would have been one …
The tragedy of becoming a woman
I’m nine. I’m small for my age, but I’m strong. I climb trees. I make dens. I play out all day in the summer, and in the evening I sit in the bath and marvel at the way the scabs …
How we created a self-hating generation
I submit: the traditional concept of “building character” is out the window.
Once upon a time, a fully realised person was something one became. Entailing education, observation, experimentation, and sometimes humiliation, “coming of age” was hard work. When the project …
Blackpool’s forsaken children
In 2007, I spent time in Blackpool investigating the disappearance of Charlene Downes, a 14-year-old whose body has never been found. She was one of hundreds of girls in the town targeted by sexual predators who would groom and then …
Why do women’s spaces still need defending?
The battle to set up domestic violence refuges for vulnerable women was long and hard. After years of campaigning, feminists finally won it in the early Seventies. A few years later, rape crisis centres followed. Now, more than four decades …
