Surely all good feminists should support defunding the police. It has been two years since a serving officer abducted, raped, and murdered 33-year-old Sarah Everard in South London, and it seems there aren’t just one or two “bad apples”. Multiple …
The Labour Party has a woman problem
Domestic abuse is about control and power and silencing someone. It can take many forms. A text. A glance. A threat disguised as a promise. The idea is to manipulate you; to paralyse you.
I have lived through an abusive …
Why wasn’t PC David Carrick sacked?
Some men join the police for the wrong reasons. Senior officers know this perfectly well — and they should be on guard against predators in their ranks. So what did the Metropolitan Police do when PC David Carrick, now revealed …
What’s wrong with violent fiction?
I was last asked the question three weeks ago at a panel discussion on crime fiction. The time before that, it was in a written Q&A for a literary magazine. I no longer remember the first time I heard it; …
Why pick-up artists joined the Online Right
When did pickup artistry become criminal? Relying on online sex gurus for advice on persuading women into bed used to be seen as a fallback for introverted, physically unprepossessing “beta males”. And for this reason, in the 2000s, the discipline …
Andrew Tate is JS Mill’s monster
My bar for what constitutes “misogyny” is relatively high, by feminist standards. I don’t really care how men speak about women when we aren’t around, for example. But like most women, I know what it feels like when you meet …
Mr Deepfakes can make you a porn star
It would be naive to assume that, because you’ve never performed in a porn video, you will never appear in one. In fact, these days, anyone with access to an image of your face can, in a matter of seconds …
Domestic abusers feed off crises
This winter is going to be the hardest in living memory. The cost of living has already spiralled so far out of control that poor families are talking about having to choose between eating and heating; just imagine being a …
The curse of Miserable Older White Women
There is a corner of the internet that is obsessed with depressed middle-aged women. Or, specifically, is fixated on a four-year-old study, which suggested that 41% of Americans who use antidepressants are white, female and over 45. The obsession has …
What women coppers conceal
If a woman wanted to become a police officer in the Seventies, she joined the Women’s Police Department. Run separately from the mainstream service, its main purpose was to deal with “women’s issues” such as sexual assault and domestic violence. …
Was the sexual revolution a mistake?
One of the many clashes within the modern feminist movement is between sex-positive feminists and sex-negative feminists, otherwise known as the prudes. The former argue for the virtues of no-holds-barred sexual freedom, while the latter believe that liberal feminism’s focus …
Who wants a middle-aged Love Island?
Every year on Love Island, there is bad behaviour, misogyny, shouting matches and tears. But it seems the further we get from #MeToo, the harsher and more manipulative the male contestants have become. Unsurprisingly, there has been a backlash: the …
Middle-aged women don’t want sex
“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple,” wrote Jenny Joseph in her poem, “Warning”. “With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me”.
She describes a dream of growing old disgracefully, as a reward for …
You can’t teach good sex
Where I grew up in the Sixties, girls were expected to marry straight from home. So when I went to That London at 17 to become a famous writer, I was widely assumed in the neighbourhood to have gone there …
JK Rowling and the lunch of secrets
It may have come to your attention over the last few days that there was a lunch. The events of that afternoon have already been covered in detail, and the joyous photographic record shared widely, so I will instead focus …
