On International Women’s Day in 2022, Yvette Cooper seemed unable to define a woman: “People get themselves down rabbit holes on this,” she said. “I’m avoiding going down this rabbit hole.” Attempting to distract from this inability, she called for …
Does Billy Bragg have a woman problem?
Louise Distras was once a darling of the anti-establishment Left. An underground punk singer whose hits include “Dreams From the Factory Floor”, this working-class woman is unafraid to speak her mind. Five years ago, she was being invited onstage by …
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 corruption of French feminism
Five summers ago, in June 2018, a short clip from Arrêt Sur Images, a French talk show, went viral after a balding, bearded male reprimanded the host for calling him a man. “Je ne suis pas un homme, monsieur,” Arnaud …
The Oxford kids are alright
Life as a gender-critical feminist can be quite strange. The first time I ever entered the Oxford Union, I was a 19-year-old fresher. All I really remember is getting very drunk on peach schnapps, crashing into a trestle table, and …
Keep child abusers off the rainbow flag
“Julie Bindel takes to right wing GB News to smear the trans community with the same trope that was used against gay men in the 1980s — that they are all paedophiles. Has she forgotten that made gays a target …
Joyland is not a trans love story
Why is Joyland being promoted as a “trans love story”? Since its release, the first Pakistani movie to ever be screened at the Cannes Film Festival has been making headlines in the West, where progressives celebrate it for bringing the …
Nicola Sturgeon is rewriting history
So it’s goodbye from Nicola Sturgeon. During a relatively expansive press conference on Wednesday — the prolonged duration of which somewhat undermined her claim that she always knows when it’s time to go — she offered the official version of …
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 …
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 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 …
Mermaids’ useful idiots
It’s incredibly easy to criticise Susie Green, the influential and, as of Friday, ex-CEO of Mermaids. But I’d like to say this in her defence: she never lied about who she was.
From her early interviews in 2012, when her …
The toppling of the trans extremists
Another week, another successful legal challenge — and another dent in the armour of extreme transgender ideology. This time, the weapon was a case against Nottingham City Council (NCC), who I threatened to sue for de-platforming me from one of …
Real feminists don’t need strongmen
Last week in Hungary, I experienced two very different sides to lesbian activism in the age of Orbán. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
First, I attended the “EuroCentralAsian Lesbian* Conference (EL*C)”. It was …
Why has Starmer banished feminists?
Are feminists welcome in the Labour Party? I mean the old-fashioned kind of feminist, who knows the difference between men and women. The answer appears to be that we’re not. Delegates to this year’s party conference in Liverpool will be …