Vaishnavi Sundar, an Indian feminist filmmaker, has long been furious at the way women and girls are treated in India. Not only do many of them live in fear of rape and sexual assault, but there is still a staggering gender disparity when it comes to education and workplace equality. This, combined with honour killings; abusive menstruation huts; child marriage and the dowry system, leaves many women longing for a way out.

When Sundar set up her charity Women Making Films (WMF) in 2015, in response to widespread sexism from male film technicians, she was celebrated as a darling of the liberal Indian elite. “Years before Hollywood paid attention to this issue, I encouraged women to work with other female filmmakers and technicians,” she tells me. Yet in 2020 she became a pariah in the film world for a series of tweets questioning gender identity. One of those was: “There are no identities. There is only sex. Male and female.”

She was swiftly punished for her defiance. The film she had spent three years making, But What Was She Wearing? — which is about sexual harassment towards Indian women in the workplace — was pulled just before its screening in New York in February 2020 because the Polis Project had deemed it transphobic. “To block a screening of a film about an urgent topic that affects women across all social strata in society is obscene,” Sundar says. “And all because I say sex is real, and men in women-only spaces can pose a danger to women.”

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Since then, Sundar has been ghosted by several liberal media outlets that once asked her to write. “Friends have completely abandoned me; film friends who used to collaborate with me have all stopped responding to my messages. Screenings of my films that used to happen regularly have all been called off even when the film is not about the transgender issue.”

With the well of donors drying up, Sundar began to crowdfund her work. By January 2021, she had raised enough to write and direct a four-part documentary series called Dysphoric: Fleeing Womanhood Like a House on Fire, which interviewed women who regretted transitioning. It was then that she began to see the spread of gender ideology in India as part of a wider international context, with a universal language and terminology. “I learnt that it is just as pervasive in India as it is in the rest of the world, maybe India was just a few years behind,” she says. “I wanted to shine a light on what’s going on in Anglo-Saxon countries and consider how this might impact developing countries in about five or six years.”

It was while working on Dysphoric, that Sundar started wondering about the suffering experienced by the families of trans women. “I was starting to wonder what it feels like for a wife when their husband announces that they are going to live as a woman, and they are just expected to affirm it.” It was then the idea for her latest documentary, Behind the Looking Glass, was born. The pioneering film tells the story of 18 “trans widows” from Europe, Asia, and America whose male partners transitioned and left misery in their wake. Eight of these women have to remain anonymous because of potential danger from ex-partners. As one interviewee says: “This is the untold story no one wants to hear.”

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The story is one of humiliation and sexual abuse. What unites all these women is the sense that the person they had married had disappeared, and been replaced with a totally different individual, with a new name. Some women in the film speak of being pressurised into validating their husband’s “womanhood” and being told they were in a “lesbian relationship”. Then there are accounts of the horror of discovering a male partner dressed in female underwear, and of husbands going outside dressed in “pornified” feminine frippery. “These men often force their wives into unspeakable pornified sexual violence”, says Vaishnavi.

There are notably no Indian trans widows interviewed in the film — but this doesn’t mean they don’t exist. (Instead, the film conveys their predicament through images and voiceovers.) “The regions in India where women experience the life of a trans widow are mostly rural,” explains Sundar. “‘Kothis’ — intact males who live a double life, one with family, children and a home, and the other with a cross-dressing fetish, where they may or may not prostitute themselves — are largely prevalent in rural India.” This means it is more difficult for trans widows to speak publicly about their ordeals for fear of shame and ostracisation. It is also harder for them to get a divorce, as it is considered a mark of shame in rural communities.

Many of the women whom Sundar interviewed feel extremely isolated. Their friends don’t dare to say, “That’s horrible, you should just leave”, because the cost — in terms of social capital — is too high. Instead, they have to affirm the husband’s choice and say: “Your husband is stunning and brave — why don’t you just cooperate and become a lesbian now?”

The overwhelming majority of stories from the widows describe husbands enjoying the act of “wearing a woman”, says Sundar. In other words, they are deriving some kind of sexual pleasure from dressing up as women. But the women she has spoken to are no longer willing to keep up the facade of a happy, progressive married life; they are saying, “No, my husband is not stunning and brave.”

Sundar is also interested in the tragic fate of their children. Some are being forced to call their father “mother”; others have experienced being “breastfed” by them. One woman talks about the pleasure her husband takes in “passing” when he is out and about dressed as a woman and posing as a mother. Sundar believes that what excites these men is the idea of having a child and of “being a lesbian mother” — rather than the child itself. The child is simply an accessory to help realise their fantasy.

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Not only has the Indian legal system failed to stop violence against women, but the entire apparatus, along with much of Indian society, appears to have capitulated to trans ideology. In February this year, a man was sentenced to seven years for raping a minor in 2016. But because he had transitioned following the rape, female pronouns were used to refer to him in court, and he was subsequently placed in a women’s prison. “Men are being given even more opportunities and excuses when it comes to rape and sexual assault,” says Sundar. Meanwhile, even though many women do not even have a functioning toilet in their homes, laws and policies are being introduced that allow men to enter the few public toilets available to women.

Meanwhile, in a country where gay and lesbian marriage is still illegal, “upper-class so-called feminists have become fixated with trans and non-binary marriage rights”. “They’ve removed the words ‘same-sex’ from this entire debate.”

The trans lobby’s latest tactic, according to Sundar, is to compare the battle for trans rights to the dismantling of the caste system in India — both being about “freeing individuals from the cage into which they were born”. She says that many trans activists have “very cleverly, actually strategically” bound up the issue with that of caste. Yet it takes quite a leap of logic to compare the two: “Caste oppression is the most sinister form of human discrimination ever.”

Dalit women, previously known as “untouchables”, are among the most maltreated women in the world. Not only are they part of India’s lowest class, but they are also considered inferior for their gender, and so are often raped, beaten and abused by men across all caste groups. And yet, Sundar tells me incredulously, there is now a group named “Dalit Trans Lives Matter”, which claims to be an even more oppressed group than Dalit women.

Sundar despairs at the ideological capture of the LGBT and feminist movements in India, which she would ideally like to be working alongside to achieve women’s liberation. Instead, so-called liberal feminists are busy defending pornography, the sex trade, and trans ideology rather than oppressed women. “These women dare to claim that the campaigns to end male violence towards women and girls are a ‘Western import’,” says Sundar. “These upper-class women ignore the fact that rape and domestic abuse is a fact of life for so many women, and that pole dancing is not going to liberate them.”

In this way, India’s struggle is not dissimilar to the West’s. “Women and girls are dying, are raped, on a daily basis,” says Sundar. “We are in a state of emergency and need a united front to even begin to solve the problem of male violence.” With so much work left to do to improve the lives of Indian women, she doesn’t think this is the moment for a feminist civil war.

For Maria, the chance to work for one of Oxfam’s global outreach programmes, helping to end violence against women in the workplace, was a dream come true. And for a few years, it was — right up until the moment a fellow co-worker asked on an internal messageboard if Oxfam shops should ban the sale of J.K. Rowling’s books.

Three years ago, the Harry Potter author found herself accused of transphobia for having supported women who have “concerns around single-sex spaces”. During a discussion on Oxfam’s intranet, Maria had come to the defence of Britain’s most popular living author, asking for evidence of Rowling’s supposed transphobia. It was a decision that prompted a gruelling internal investigation, one in which Maria struggled to clear her name, led to her having a nervous breakdown and leaving both her job and the country.

Oxfam eventually offered a grovelling apology for the “procedural mistakes” that caused Maria such upset, but she is still struggling to make sense of it all. Speaking for the first time about the episode, she reveals: “My life has been torn apart. It drove me to a breakdown, I lost my confidence and, worst of all, I began to doubt myself.”

What Maria endured is part of a wider woke culture in the charitable sector, where female employees are silenced and treated like bigots for believing that sex-based rights matter. Certainly, Maria is so convinced that her career remains in danger — that any woman accused of transphobia will be blacklisted by much of the charitable sector, even when they have been exonerated — that she has agreed to speak to UnHerd under a pseudonym. “This will hang over me for the rest of my life,” she says. For decades, Oxfam — which was formed in 1942 to send food supplies to starving mothers and children in Nazi-occupied Greece — was one of the UK’s most respected charities, providing international aid to end hardship around the globe. But in recent years, its reputation has been tarnished. In 2018, evidence emerged that senior staff had paid survivors of the 2010 Haiti earthquake for sex, and that the use of prostitutes during the relief effort was covered up by the charity, allegations that Oxfam denies.

It was Maria’s concern for vulnerable women that first drew her to work for Oxfam: “I have experienced rape and domestic violence in the past, so I wanted to help others in the same situation.” Born in Spain, where she had worked as a pre-school teacher and volunteered at a sexual assault centre, she moved to the UK in 2017.

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“I loved my job,” says Maria, “being able to see how Oxfam’s work improves the lives of other women and children.” Three years after joining the charity, she was promoted to a co-ordinating role within the women’s rights team, whose remit was to ensure that female equality was reflected in Oxfam’s work.

She realised almost immediately how impossible that aim would be, given the growing dominance of a pro-trans mindset within Oxfam. Along with many other charities and institutions, it had capitulated to gender-based ideals, ones that asserts that “trans women are women” and that the categories of male and female are on a spectrum, rather than biological realities. On the advice of Stonewall — the discredited charity whose workplace diversity scheme sought to “recognise and celebrate the efforts of leading employers to advance LGBT inclusion” — Oxfam advised its employees to state their pronouns in meetings and on correspondence. “It was regularly using Stonewall materials to advise staff on LGBTQ+ inclusion in the workplace, with a heavy emphasis on transgender ideology above all else.”

Maria says that she initially toed the party line on the matter, staying silent when trans issues were discussed. “But then I began to see how women’s rights were attacked, particularly because it was obvious that single-sex spaces, such as rape crisis centres, were labelled as ‘anti-trans’.”

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Oxfam staff were invited to join company-wide online groups related to their interests, and Maria joined the LGBTQ+ group. In September 2020, a charity shop manager asked the group: “What is your opinion on selling J.K. Rowling books?” The employee, who is a transwoman, worried that the writer’s latest thriller, Troubled Blood, written under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith, might be “highly transphobic”. She wondered whether it might be covered by Oxfam’s “unsuitable for sale” policy.

Several staff engaged with the forum thread, widening the debate to include Rowling’s suitability as an Oxfam-stocked author, and added their concerns about her supposed transphobia, until Maria asked the question: “Can you explain why she is transphobic or why the book is transphobic?” When her query went unanswered, Maria went on to express concerns about banning books by “one of the most important woman writers in the UK”, before adding: “Actually, we are selling books from paedophiles and rapists. We are selling religious books. Stopping selling something we don’t like is called censorship and is the opposite of freedom of speech.”

The manager then left the conversation, and Maria thought that was the end of the matter. “She had said she was uncomfortable with the conversation and did not want to discuss it any further.” But following the exchange, Maria discovered she had been labelled in private chats as a transphobic bigot by other members of the LGBTQ+ group. Another manager sent her private messages, suggesting that Maria could lose her job after posting her comments. “They felt threatening to me,” says Maria. “She said my views were ‘incredible’, and that she would be reporting me. There is absolutely no way I am anti-trans. I am merely pro-women’s rights.”

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In the next few days, members of the LGBTQ+ group encouraged colleagues to complain about the discussion, stating that “transphobia is not tolerated here”. “They did not name me, but it was obvious who they were referring to,” says Maria. Next, a petition signed by 70 staff members was sent to all staff via the intranet, calling for Oxfam’s leadership to “take a stand” and “communicate a zero-tolerance approach to transphobia”.

Senior management replied to the petition authors, saying: “No one in our organisation should be subjected to hate speech, discrimination or other forms of harm” and “It is of great concern that members of the wider LGBTQIA+ community have felt intimidated by workplace conversations.” Oxfam’s CEO got involved, and gave a “no-debate” steer, adding: “We value the experience of our trans and non-binary colleagues, friends and partners and we do not expect their experience to be debated in our workplace.”

Three days later, Maria was invited to a meeting with her line manager and a member of Human Resources and told that she was under investigation because of her “transphobic comments”. Maria says: “They should have told me what the actual topic of the meeting was, and I could have brought a union representative with me. I apologised for upsetting anyone and tried to outline the rationale for my views and beliefs, but they refused to accept it.” Signed off sick with anxiety and depression, Maria felt alone and scared of losing her job, particularly in the middle of a pandemic. “All my family and relatives were in Spain and the borders were closed.”

Six weeks later, two days before Christmas, Maria learned that she’d been found guilty of misconduct and was issued with a final warning. Oxfam told Maria that her comments online “breached the requirement of the Code of Conduct to treat all persons with respect and dignity”, and reminded her that “transgender people are protected from discrimination under the Equality Act 2010”. The letter did not give a definition of transphobia or say how her posts were transphobic. Refusing to accept that finding, Maria appealed. “As a woman I have always had to fight for everything,” she says. “I knew that if they beat me then they were trampling on all of us.”

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Three months later, Maria was informed she had lost her appeal. The letter informing her of this decision also offered, for the first time, a definition of transphobia (not for want of asking): “Oxfam refers to Stonewall definitions to support our understanding, which states transphobia is the ‘fear or dislike of someone based on the fact they are trans’.” Feeling she was left with no choice but to resign, Maria took Oxfam to an employment tribunal. “I became determined that this should not happen to another woman,” she says.

Maria claimed constructive dismissal and belief discrimination. In July last year, during judicial mediation, both parties agreed to settle, with Oxfam issuing a public apology for its handling of the process. “We believe that each member of our community has a right to their own religious or philosophical beliefs, including the belief that ‘sex is immutable’ and ‘sex is important’. We acknowledge that in dealing with your case and during the disciplinary process we made mistakes. We acknowledged that it was not appropriate to give you a final written warning, and we would like to offer our sincere apologies for the upset that this has caused you.”

Earlier this year, Oxfam updated its language guide, which is an internal document advising staff how to speak about its work. The document includes the instruction that, rather than using the phrases “biological male” and “biological female”, “AMAB and AFAB” (assigned male/female at birth), should be used instead; and when talking about “expectant mothers”, use the phrase “people who become pregnant”.

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“I hope every single woman, especially those stronger and richer than me, fight every time this happens within the charity sector,” Maria says. “Oxfam is supposed to be protecting women and girls in the most vulnerable situations all over the world, and this ideology will ruin it.”

In response, an Oxfam spokesperson said: “We are sorry for the procedural mistakes we made in the handling of this case and we have apologised to the individual concerned. We fully support both an individual’s right to hold religious and philosophical beliefs and a person’s right to have their identity respected, regardless of their gender identity and expression, sex, or sexuality. We believe LGBTQIA+ rights are human rights.”

Now back in Spain, Maria has just finished an internship at a refugee camp in Greece, with the aim of a career in humanitarian work. “I lost so many friends,” she tells me. “I lost my job. My mental health suffered. Enforcing the views of the trans lobby, at all costs, seems more important to Oxfam than meeting their actual charitable aims.”

She says she often thinks of the author who changed the course of her life — and believes the way Rowling has been vilified for simply supporting and defending the rights of women who have suffered domestic abuse and rape is proof that misogyny has no limits. “No matter how much money or power you have achieved, if you are a woman, you will always be a target,” says Maria. “I fought my case so that all women know they can fight, and win, against this crazed ideology.”

Please, please don’t shove this in recycling and do hear me out. I apologise for disguising this letter in a NatWest envelope to make it look like one of your bank statements. I realise that appears duplicitous. But Seth (you remember, my tech guru) has confirmed that you haven’t loaded a single one of my emails since we split. So I worried you might not open a physical letter, either. Honestly, I don’t blame you for being angry with me, because I’m angry with myself. Even if we still never see each other again, I’d feel so much better if I’ve successfully proffered my contrition. I’m not a monster, though I sometimes feel like one.

Of course, this is no excuse, but it helps explain my behaviour — erratic, harsh, volatile, yes, everything you said — that it was a really crazy time. In the news, on Twitter, everywhere, every day another terrible story of men abusing their positions of power and treating women abominably. No, no, no, no, don’t stop reading, I promise I won’t natter on about that stuff again; I know you got an earful at the time. And I thought for a long while you were remarkably patient and sympathetic. We both agreed those first few revelations were totally terrible and the we’re-not-going-to-take-it-anymore posture of the whistle-blowers made women seem strong and fierce. But I can see now how after a while the nonstop whingeing and indignation might have started to wear on you, and how some of the later “scandals” might have seemed dodgy or small beer. I’m only reminding both of us that we fell out in a larger context, one in which maybe I got too wrapped up. But I didn’t concoct that context all by myself.

While I didn’t have my own big story of outright abuse to share on Facebook, all the little slights — the hands on my bum on the tube, the rude remarks on the street, the pressure I’d often felt to go ahead and shag men I didn’t especially like because it was easier to say yes and get it over with than to hold my ground (an abdication I now attribute not just to male brutishness but to my own timidity and even a funny kind of laziness) — well, they all seemed to bundle into a story of a sort. That said, I wonder if, had I never been pestered, catcalled, or pursued by any men trying to get a leg over, I’d be bitter too, just in a different way.

And I guess I wanted to feel part of something. I liked the sensation of solidarity. Also, I’ve tried to be honest with myself during the unwanted solitude of the past few years: with all the social justice stuff swirling around, I was tired of being shunted onto the naughty step as “privileged”, when I was up to my eyeballs in credit-card debt and struggled with eating disorders — which you also had to put up with, since I ruined so many of the dinners you paid for by only eating the lettuce or something. So I think it was a relief to say, like, “Know what? I have problems, too. My life hasn’t been a picnic, either.”

Although I got something out of bearing a collective grudge, the problem with a grudge is it doesn’t work in the abstract. Inevitably, I bore it against the nearest palpable object I could get my hands on, and that object was you. I know I got too touchy. I suppose I was on the lookout. That time you asked me to pick up your dry cleaning because you were running late, and I exploded about how I “wasn’t your sherpa”? Maybe it was nothing to do with gender after all. Maybe you were just asking an ordinary favour. Yeah, I know: that’s what you said, back then. That it was a totally normal request of a girlfriend, or of anybody really. The dry cleaner was only five streets away.

Obviously, the sherpa thing wasn’t what did us in. I have a hard time thinking about that night, about which I was angry for a long time, as I’m sure you were. But the main reason I wanted to write this letter is that once the MeToo frenzy started to subside I sort of woke up, and calmed down, and thought differently about what happened. I’ve rerun the sequence of events, which got a bit jumbled during all that rehearsal, I’m afraid. But the bones of the story are pretty clear from a distance. You were really into it on the sofa, which maybe I should have taken as a compliment, and then tried to get into it, too.

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The bottom line was I wasn’t in the mood. I should have just said so. Like, out loud. Instead, I got super bothered that you couldn’t tell I wasn’t in the mood. After two solid years (happy ones, or they were for me), why didn’t you know me better? I thought, maybe you didn’t even care if I was into it. You just wanted what you wanted and what I wanted didn’t seem to matter. So I guess I got weirdly resentful. Then this old habit kicked in where instead of saying, no, I’d really rather go back to watching The Night Manager, I went along with it, out of that laziness I mentioned, or cowardice, or maybe me thinking that what I wanted didn’t especially matter. And then I got the hump even more, because it had never been like that with you before, sort of lying back and thinking of England, and that made me feel hurt and disappointed and perversely left out. I’m not justifying my reaction, only explaining what went on in my mind.

Also, something about the whole sex thing had gone a bit funny by then. I’d been reading all this stuff, and texting with friends and following Rose McGowan on Twitter, and the entire protocol of sex had started to seem like an imposition, or an act of domination, or an invasion. Physically I guess invasion is the whole deal, and when it works it’s like you can’t tell where one person stops and the other begins; not having “boundaries” or “protecting your space” is the point. But that’s not where my head was. It was almost as if we’d all gone back to our great-grandmothers’ time, when sex was something you just put up with so your husband would pay the bills. And now we could pay our own bills, so why put up with it? Honestly, during that whole period I don’t remember a single female saying anything nice about sex at all.

Most of all, I wanted to apologise for using the R-word. I didn’t think about how a man must feel when a woman throws that accusation at him; it’s not just a charged word for women but for everybody. And it must be even more awful when it’s hurled by someone (if I may presume) you love. Still, the word was so much in the air then that it seemed to have lost some of its punch — you know, we supposedly had “rape culture” everywhere, which didn’t necessarily involve anyone doing anything materially horrid to anyone else. So it seemed like an ordinary thing to say. But it wasn’t ordinary. I don’t blame you for being shocked and even frightened. I may not have had a great time that night, but I was still out of order.

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So I get it. After all, you were plenty clear at the time. If I was going to throw around that kind of language, you couldn’t afford, even legally afford, to be with me. And if going forward we had to conduct a contractual negotiation every time — setting our terms, deciding on a safe word, agreeing that every couple of minutes you would “check in” and make sure I wanted to carry on — you said you wouldn’t even be able to get it up. I’d made myself dangerous to you and made shagging too much trouble and too risky and no fun. In fact, maybe you’d sympathise with Aiden McMahon (you remember, the jobbing guitarist? Slight paunch?  Big hair?), who announced to me a few weeks after you left that he’d concluded most women were — let me see if I can get this right — “petty, vengeful, hysterical, self-pitying, thin-skinned, weak and mean at the same time, completely confused about what they want and impossible to please”. He was swearing them off altogether in favour of “taking himself in hand”. At least getting the business over solo was efficient, economical, and uncomplicated, he said, and so long as he never did it in a park in front of three-year-olds a good wank would never land him in jail.

If you haven’t said good riddance to the lot of us as well, I assume you’ve moved on, and you probably have a wonderful new girlfriend or even wife who eats all her dinner. But I wanted you to know that I haven’t found a wonderful new boyfriend. Working from home has been a disaster for me; I hardly leave the flat. I miss you. I know it’s been four years and I should have got over you ages ago, but I haven’t. I have all these pictures on my phone — of us celebrating your admission to med school at The Ivy, or making that tofu dish that turned into such a scrambled-eggs disaster — and I alternate between feasting on them and not being able to bear a glance. It’s almost impossible to meet anyone anymore, and I think you were my chance. I messed it up. I’d beg you for another go even at the sacrifice of my dignity, but when I remember the hardness in your face when you walked out of here with your shaving gear and tennis rackets, I have a sinking feeling that some damage can’t be undone and some words can’t be unsaid. We were a good fit at a bad time.

Yours — still yours,

Y.

On related issues, our Penny also seems to be a proud member of Team Female. She told Sky News “It makes no sense for government to be prescribing bathroom policies”. She told Twitter that she supported a “science-based approach” to the issue of transwomen in women’s sport, and claimed “It was me that changed maternity legislation that was drafted in gender neutral language … to use female terms”. Infamously, Mordaunt is the MP that once mentioned the word “cock” six times in a parliamentary speech, as a forfeit. Is it possible she now believes a woman doesn’t have one?

Yet when as Minister she introduced the highly divisive Gender Recognition Act consultation about moving to self-ID in July 2018, she told parliament: “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. And that is the starting point for the GRA consultation, and it will be its finishing point too.” Even as late as March last year, she was still intoning the Stonewall-approved mantra. Much of the rest of her narrative has also been contradicted in the last few days by Tory insiders, from former No 10 director of legislative affairs Nikki da Costa, to MP Sir John Hayes, to Attorney General Suella Braverman. This weekend, The Sunday Times revealed leaked documents which suggested that Mordaunt had indeed expressed a wish to remove the dysphoria diagnosis requirement from the GRA — though apparently she had also wished to introduce a medical requirement that the applicant for a legal sex change be shown to be of “sound mind”.

Even treating the matter ultra charitably, and assuming that, in her own mind, she was never in favour of self-ID strictly conceived as including the total absence of medical requirements, it’s still obvious that Mordaunt’s revised proposal, requiring only proof of sanity for legal sex change, would have caused almost exactly the same worries as self-ID — mere proof of sanity not exactly being a high bar in safeguarding terms (ask the victims of Chris Pincher). Equally, on her Ministerial watch a huge number of institutions, influenced by Stonewall, were at that point happily dismantling genuinely single-sex services for women anyway, regardless of whether the male who wanted access to them had a gender recognition certificate or not. This all happened without any interference from government.

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The real interest here is the fact that Mordaunt has felt forced to commit herself to such an easily disproved and desperate lie. I take this to be a fitting tribute to the effectiveness of the grassroots women’s resistance that first formed around 2015 — the year Stonewall first revealed its ambitions to change both the Gender Recognition Act and Equality Act in favour of inner gender identity. The fact that the issue has arisen so prominently during the Conservative party leadership contest is the latest indication of this movement’s success. In its infancy, though it’s not quite true to say that women who raised concerns about self-ID couldn’t get arrested — they certainly could, or at least, could be interviewed under police caution – they were treated as pariahs, cranks, or bigoted obsessives. Not so much now.

Today, Conservatives who champion policies based on gender identity are thin on the ground. The focus of public anger rather tends to be upon the embarrassed mutterings of Labour MPs about cervixes. But it’s worth remembering – and especially when commentators talk these days blandly about “toxicity on both sides” of the gender debate – that it’s the Tories who were entirely responsible for setting up the issue to guarantee hot gibbering fury from women from the start. From 2015 on, a succession of Tory Ministers, given jobs in Equalities because they were female, promptly denied that being female was a limiting condition on being a woman. They then sought to dismantle single-sex provision for women without a backward glance at those screaming in frustration in their wake.

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Culprits include Nicky Morgan, Justine Greening, and, of course, Mordaunt herself. The trend was set right from the start, with the outrageously biased Trans Equality Inquiry launched in 2015 under Morgan by the Women and Equalities Select Committee, with Tory Maria Millar as its Chair. This Inquiry might have saved itself a lot of trouble by explicitly outsourcing the whole project to Stonewall and Mermaids. Apparently blind to potential clashes with sex-based rights, and on the basis of evidence from some extremely partisan and inexpert witnesses, it recommended both moving to full self-ID — including lowering the permitted age of a recipient of a legal sex change to 16 — and that those males who possessed them should have full access to women’s services, and be able to work in women’s rape crisis services and domestic violence shelters if so wished. The Committee also recommended that the Equality Act should protect the characteristic of “gender identity” rather than “gender reassignment”. Each of these was among Stonewall’s main campaigning objectives at the time.

Other recommendations of this Inquiry have also aged terribly: for instance, that there are only a very few occasions where transwomen can be justifiably excluded from women’s sport; that dysphoric children’s access to puberty blocking drugs should be speeded up; and that all university staff should receive “gender identity awareness training”. Overall, it’s hard to imagine a more divisive bomb to drop on women, parents of dysphoric children, or academics who wished to criticise the problems involved in the proposals.

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Most of these recommendations were received positively by the Government in their response, and a year later prime minister Theresa May herself was announcing plans to move ahead with self-ID at the PinkNews awards. I remember my incredulity as I watched these events unfold from the sidelines, each one smoothly presented as sensible and compassionate by whatever Tory woman was championing it, and with all dissenting voices positioned as bigoted or stupidly misinformed. The Tories were in power, but the Opposition offered no hope of relief either – for Labour and the Liberal Democrats enthusiastically agreed with the reforms too. The mainstream media, peppered with Stonewall Champions, was largely complicit or indifferent. It felt like a total stitch-up. I felt like I was going mad.

It takes a special kind of indifference to half the population to be like this. On the modern Left, we can explain the enthusiasm for self-ID partly as an attraction to sexily complicated-sounding ideology, and partly as an attraction to reforming existing cultural traditions generally. But neither of these explanations are readily available to Tories. They are supposed to be both commonsensical and conserving of tradition. One would think that at the very least, they would be prepared to conserve the internationally ubiquitous tradition of naming biological sex in humans.

Perhaps then, it’s a different and more hidden ideological commitment of Conservatism, individualism, that explains the attraction to self-ID and associated lunacies: explains how both the party generally and some women MPs in particular could have got so thoroughly behind such a radical and damaging set of reforms without blinking at the consequences. For, bar a bit of urine on National Trust toilet seats, most of the worries about self-ID won’t make any negative difference to them personally. They won’t ever have to share a prison wing with a male rapist. Their private hospital ward won’t be impacted by the presence of a chaotic male in the bay next to them. If their daughter starts saying she is a boy, they can fast-track her into whatever kind of therapy they want, rather than rely on the mad ministrations of a captured NHS gender identity service. If their cancer screening information talks about “cervix-havers”, their first language and education will give them the ready capacity to work out what this means. Their heterosexual dating life won’t be impacted by males pretending to be lesbians either.

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In other words: in order to care about the multiple impacts of saying that men can become women by declaring they are, you have to be able to care about (actual) women who aren’t just you, or your friends. The Left, and particularly the old Left, has the habit of this. Despite a massive propaganda campaign to deny it, it was largely women on the Left who organised the grassroots fightback to self-ID in the UK. Organisations such as A Woman’s Place UK, Fair Play for Women, and We Need to Talk, were started by (then) Labour members and voters, who were practised in thinking in terms of social structures rather than individuals, and knew how to feel solidarity with the most dispossessed. They also knew how to organise in order to reach a wide range of women, including voices that are often ignored.

A related question concerns why most Conservatives MPs are on board with rejecting self-ID, whereas previously they were indifferent. Do they actually care about women now, or are they mostly interested in the issue only because they have accurately identified it as a wedge, damaging to a Left currently tying itself into knots on womanhood to the derision of potential voters? One promising sign would be if they also prioritised women’s welfare and interests in other less febrile areas: the disproportionate impact of the cost-of-living crisis on women, say, or scandalously low rape conviction rates. But here they seem much less convincing. One is left overall with an impression of opportunism and culture warmongering, not principle.

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There are of course exceptions within Tory ranks. In the Lords, Baronesses Emma Nicolson and Anne Jenkin have been committed and courageous in getting the word out to others that gender law reform isn’t the rainbow-bedecked path to universal happiness often presented. More recently, both Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch appear to have grasped this point thoroughly too.

But it should not be presumed that the party is wholly cleansed of the temptation to throw women under a bus. Under Tory Chair Carolyn Nokes, last year the Women and Equalities Committee launched another Inquiry into Reform of the Gender Recognition Act, eventually finding in favour of self-ID yet again. I was called as a witness to this Inquiry, and it was clear to me from observing the process that most of the Committee still had no real understanding of the potential impacts of gender law reform on the interests of women and girls.

Throughout my session, Nokes was dismissive, looked bored, and left early, later predictably painting criticism of the Committee’s position as “bile and abuse”. She is also on record as having no idea why you might want to know someone’s birth sex. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the current leadership battle, Nokes has come out strongly for Mordaunt.

I’m sure that both these women think of themselves as enthusiastically pro-women. Arguably, though, a pro-women politician who doesn’t know what a woman is, is worse than none at all.

An investment of $391 million would address root causes of incarceration by funding mental health services, housing and rehabilitation, along with a programme named “Community Based Violence Reduction”. So far, so good. But the reforms would also redefine how victims and offenders should be dealt with, with increased funding to “restorative justice” in “serious felony level cases that would otherwise result in detention and incarceration”.

Restorative justice (RJ) is described as an alternative to prison; it is a non-punitive response to criminal behaviour. The idea is to bring together the person who inflicted the harm (the “responsible person”, in RJ terminology) and the victim, often in the presence of community representatives. The perpetrator is supposed to accept responsibility for the harm inflicted and reach an agreement with the victim about how to make amends.

De Blasio’s reforms were welcomed by prison reform campaigners, as well as pretty much every liberal in the State. Alissa Ackerman, a sex crimes policy researcher at California State University and one of the few facilitators of restorative justice sessions for rape victims, has said that RJ, “allows survivors to have their pain heard and stories acknowledged, and is an opportunity for the person who caused the harm to be accountable for their actions”.

I spoke to one proponent of RJ, who asked not to be named “in case I am seen as colluding with carceral white women”. White himself, he is a newly trained lawyer in Washington DC, specialising in “replacing the racist system with a true healing process for both parties”. “Anti-rape feminists are probably responsible for more black men being incarcerated than anyone else in modern-day America”, he says. “Locking up African Americans is a product of slavery.” Ben went on to suggest “community resolution” and “non-violent strategies” to address sexual assault.

But for feminist activists campaigning against male violence, who have seen the consequences of the reforms up-close over the last three years, RJ constitutes the very opposite of justice.

Sarah, whose name I’ve changed, runs a support service for victims of male violence in NYC and is “appalled” that RJ is becoming a substitute for criminal justice sanctions. “What we are seeing is what we have seen forever”, she tells me, “which is the under-policing and under-protection for women, including women of colour. But some BLM activists are claiming that feminists calling for CJS sanctions for rape and domestic abuse is flat-out racist, because black men are overrepresented in the prison population.” As a result, she told me that “black and brown women, indigenous women … are the ones who are bearing the consequences of us not holding men accountable for their violence. They are the ones who are being murdered and raped and their abusers are walking free.”

According to the ideals of RJ, after a crime is committed the offender and the victim should meet face-to-face. The victim is not to blame or judge the perpetrator, but rather describe the impact of the offence, in order to “heal” and become “empowered”. RJ sees victim and perpetrator as equal, both in need of support and understanding. Supposedly modelled on the conflict resolution practices of certain indigenous cultures, there is much talk of circles. Healing circles are held for the perpetrator, before a sentencing circle takes place; later, there are follow up circles. The outcomes may include an apology or financial compensation. Some participants, including the victim, sign a confidentiality agreement.

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RJ is considered a suitable remedy for domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse and sex trafficking, among other violent crimes predominantly committed by men. Most of these crimes are committed against women by men known to them: male family members, partners and colleagues. “The perpetrators have worked very hard, often for years, to condition the person they are abusing to not disclose, to minimise, to protect his emotions: to protect his character publicly”, says Sarah. “They’ve been using manipulative tactics to inspire self-doubt, blame and fear, in the person they are abusing.”

And victims of this kind of abuse may feel coerced by RJ practices, which are conducted, as Sarah said, “without any understanding of the dynamics of power and control, the impact of a trauma-coerced bond, and also the amount of time and commitment that it actually takes to elicit genuine behaviour change in abusers”.

I meet with Diane, whose name I’ve changed, at a café in Harlem, NYC. She was introduced to me by her rape counsellor. Diane was seriously sexually assaulted by a senior member of her church, having been targeted and sexually harassed by him for months. “I decided to report him to the police, despite the fact that my community is rarely well served by the cops.” Diane and the perpetrator are African American. “There are too many vulnerable young people in the church, and I didn’t see why he should poison the congregation.”

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The perpetrator, considered to be a man of “good character”, with no criminal convictions, admitted to the lesser charge of inappropriate sexual touching, denied committing serious sexual assault, and agreed to partake in RJ.

“I was contacted by the local service that runs these things,” says Diane. “They told me it was important that we reach an agreement and rebuild trust. I was told nothing could be gained from taking him on a route where he could end up in jail. It felt like I had no choice.”

But having read up on RJ, Diane decided not to participate in it. “I was judged and blamed by the service”, says Diane, “as though I should have accepted the scraps from the table and have him say ‘sorry’ or whatever. He got away with what he did to me, and a man like that pretending to regret what he did would just be lies.”

One report, published in 2016, is often used to justify replacing criminal sanctions with RJ. It is entitled “Restorative Practices in cases of Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Assault and Dating Violence: A Roundtable Discussion”. While it claims that RJ focuses on victims of violence and their needs, the report also ironically reveals who is actually centred in the process. One attendee is quoted as saying about perpetrators of male violence: “Do we actually blame them as a perpetrator when they were violated at a young age?”

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To be taken out of the criminal justice system and put in a situation where everybody is required to empathise with him — including his victim, who is forbidden from blaming or shaming him — is a violent man’s dream come true.

Like most on the Left, I believe that only the most dangerous criminals should be locked up. I have criticised the fact that the most vulnerable and disenfranchised are most likely to be in jail. But the campaign to end male violence is my life’s work. Victims have to come first. One service provider working with sexual assault victims describes reports from young survivors in California that they are “sick of going to rape circles”. She has also heard from women and girls of colour being pressured to engage in RJ instead of making police reports.

While RJ is not yet widely practiced throughout the US, it is growing in popularity in several states — and threatens to become federal policy. In its 2022 budget, the Office on Violence against Women requested $25 million, “to support restorative justice responses to domestic/dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking, and research, evaluation, and technical assistance related to such responses”.

The media consistently reports that research shows RJ is very successful. One paper, by Mary P Koss, is often cited. Koss asked victims to complete a survey about their PTSD symptoms before and after they engaged in RJ, and concluded that victims who complete an RJ process exhibit a marked decrease in those symptoms. But PTSD symptoms almost inevitably decrease as time passes after the traumatic event. Asking the victims and perpetrators of serious crimes to “hug it out and move on”, as Sarah describes it, was simply not shown by the research to be effective.

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I asked several experts on violence towards women if there is any reliable data about the efficacy of RJ and was met with a resounding “no”. When I spoke to Marcia, a veteran advocate for victims of male violence, she pointed out that in cases of domestic violence, putting the perpetrator and the victim in a room together is “outright dangerous”. Perpetrators of domestic abuse, and of sexual assault, are more likely than any other offenders to repeat their crimes — often against the same victim. But the well-publicised evaluations of RJ don’t include follow-ups that measure the recurrence of violence within domestic abuse scenarios.

Marcia asked for anonymity because “right now there is so much intolerance on the Left that even those of us who are part of the Left fear retaliation if we don’t conform.” She emphasised that rape victims want their rapists prosecuted, but with the Left advocating for RJ, victims “feel that there is no movement standing behind them. They feel utterly alone.”

The idea that serious, sexual and violent crimes should be dealt with by “community leaders”, outside the criminal justice system, is shockingly naïve at best. At worst, it is re-victimising women, and giving perpetrators a free pass. Liberal cities like New York are conducting an experiment with women’s safety and lives — and ignoring whatever they have to say about it.

Pornhub has a new category: “Ukrainian girls and war rape videos”; it is dominated by Russian soldiers documenting disgustingly brutal crimes. Domestic violence and street harassment have already spiked. Female refugees are falling victim to pimps and traffickers; official channels — the police, hospitals, legal systems — won’t help them.

Where women are concerned, “the foreign coverage of the war is concentrated mostly on women fleeing with children”, Maria Dmytrieva tells me. The Ukrainian feminist activist — a key member of the Global Network of Women Peacekeepers — believes this coverage misrepresents the reality of war for women, and the ways in which women specifically become targets for attack.

We speak via Zoom, and as night falls, she sits in darkness, so as not to be spotted by saboteurs. Although the Russians had not yet arrived in her small town, a few miles outside Kyiv, like everybody else in Ukraine she is in a perilous position.

Maria has been involved in the campaign to end male violence in Ukraine for more than two decades. I have visited her in Ukraine on several occasions and have seen her make powerful men in senior government positions quake when she rails against injustices towards women and girls.

One study from 2019 found that 75% of women in Ukraine reported experiencing some form of violence since the age of 15, and one in three reported experiencing physical or sexual violence. According to a recent statement by the United Nations, crisis and displacement has recently put women in Ukraine at increased risk of sexual and physical violence and abuse. There are no figures as of yet to show the levels of violence experienced by women and girls since the Russian invasion, but plenty of evidence is being amassed by women’s NGOs.

In many ways, the experiences of women in Ukraine echo the plight of women in wars throughout history: we face reduced protections from violence and often an increase of domestic abuse. The situation is exacerbated, though, by the fact that Ukraine is being invaded by a country which effectively decriminalised domestic violence in 2017. It is well-documented that, post-conflict, when traumatised men return home, levels of violence against women increase. But if Russia wins, the right of Ukrainian men to beat their wives will be enshrined in the law of the land.

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“So far we have felt as a nation, united around this common threat”, Dmytrieva told me. “But we are pretty much bound to have the growth of cases of domestic violence, of male violence against women, both during and after the war is over”.

Domestic violence is not the only threat to women in war. There is a “new wave of sexual violence”, with 11 reports from different women that they were raped by Russian soldiers in Kershon, confirmed by a local gynaecologist. Of those 11, only five survived. Other reports of sexual violation by troops are being picked up by the UK media, but, according to Dmytrieva, little is being done to help.

Rape victims will suffer consequences long after the conflict has ended — especially those whose violation is circulated on the internet. The existence of this sick revenge porn ensures that the women brutalised in it will never be able to return to a normal life. Even if they escape the conflict, it then ends, and they make it home, they are likely to be shunned by their families.

The videos are perfect ammunition for pimps and traffickers to use to control women and force them into prostitution. Displaced women and girls are often without any food, shelter or income, with many caring for children. Traffickers seize the opportunity to coerce women into selling sex, and soon they are trapped and held captive. “It is really terrifying how capitalism and imperialism are going hand in hand to exploit those who cannot defend themselves right now”, Dmytrieva tells me. “And it is truly terrifying to see that amongst all this surge in humanity in caring for other people, there are those who want to exploit this weakness and make money out of it. It is very disheartening”.

“Organised gangs [are] trying to abduct young women on the Ukrainian Polish border and we already have several cases in Germany where the girls have been abducted by pimps in the refugee camps”, Dmytrieva explains. Punters in Germany are delighted; feminist colleagues have seen screenshots of them “talking online with each other about how happy they are to have young fresh Ukrainian women crossing the German border”. With no home, no money, no job, no resources, and a very limited legal framework protecting them, these displaced women are among the most vulnerable in the world.

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Women are vulnerable to pimps within Ukraine as well. In the East, even before tensions with Russia escalated into a full-scale invasion, the local economy was on its knees. Previously high-tech industries had been stripped; machines and other valuable assets were carted, wholesale, back to Russia. Few options for employment were left. As a result, the number of women in prostitution in Ukraine before the war was around 80,000. That figure does not include children.

For now, the police have their hands too full “going around looking for saboteurs” to investigate or prosecute crimes against women. Dmytrieva understands the urgency. Terrorists are “placing bombs, explosive devices and shells in the basements … they are turning our country into a minefield”. But she is hopeful that the Russian invasion will be repelled, making space for better policy to protect women.

While authorities are too busy to consider the impacts of the conflict on women, those who do an international trade in children are taking full advantage of the situation. “Ukrainian surrogacy clinics are now advertising women through Facebook, even during the occupation”, Dmytrieva told me. The press in Ireland and elsewhere have reported on babies “rescued” from war-torn Ukraine by their surrogate parents, and on surrogate parents “in limbo”, because “their” children are stuck in the now inaccessible country. No word of the plight of the women who carried those children, postpartum and vulnerable in a war-torn country, sometimes literally “holding the baby” that they had made no plans to care for, as the Russians invade.

Ukrainian women are under siege, with profound threats on every front, whether they flee or stay. Of course, men are in danger too. Ukraine does not allow men between 18 and 60 to leave the country. This rule is, Dmytrieva told me, “reasonable”. But the women suffer a different and ongoing kind of violence.

Nevertheless, it is not only the ways in which women are victimised that is newsworthy. “There are a lot of women who have stayed, who picked up arms, who secure the logistics for our army. There have hundreds and thousands of women doing this work that makes it possible for the army to fully function”.

Nearly 17% of the Ukrainian army is female, one of the highest percentages in Europe. Dmytrieva is a pacifist, but I could hear the admiration in her voice talking about the women who have taken up arms. In the face of a foreign invasion, she is aware that “we cannot afford a weak army, because that is what brought us into this situation … with having Russia for a neighbour, we need a very strong army.”

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She is furious with the British feminists who campaigned to stop Johnson sending weapons to Ukraine to avoid “escalating” the conflict. “Maybe they are not aware that if Russia takes us over, there will be no women’s rights whatsoever”. She does understand these women’s desire for peace but thinks that it is “heavily misplaced”. When I asked her what feminists in Britain can do to support Ukraine, she replied, without missing a beat, “send aircrafts, lots of them!”

I can’t send Dmytrieva the fighter jets that Ukraine so desperately needs, to repel Russian air raids and artillery. But she speaks for me when she says: “As a feminist, I cannot turn a blind eye to the peril that women are facing in Ukraine, both on the front lines of armed conflict and when they come back home”. Local, national and international women’s organisations must confront the horrors faced by Ukrainian women; only then can they work out how best to respond to the Russian invasion.

In the meantime, Dmytrieva points out, there are no women at the negotiation table. Maybe because compromise is not what is being sought. “There is not much space for negotiation. We want them gone and they want us dead”.

But don’t panic! I am here to tell you that you can make it to the other side. It’s been a little over a year since I decided to enter into the heated debate around currently fashionable gender ideology and the same activists who smeared the former tennis player Martina Navratilova and the singer Marc Almond as transphobic have thrown everything they could at me too. And yet I have not changed my position one iota from what it was when I began.

I can summarise my position thus: women exist. They are not just an idea or a feeling. They have the right to assembly, the right to organise, the right to demand private and safe spaces free of men and the right to assert these rights without being tormented online by the first generations who didn’t go outside to play. 

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This is what I was able to hang onto in the worst moments: gender ideology is so incoherent that almost everything is now transphobic, including the National Health Service, dictionaries, the Venus symbol on Always sanitary products, The Vagina Monologues and Lou Reed. If they can take a transwoman to court on a charge of transphobia, if they can bully a transwoman, Debbie Hayton, for refusing to adhere to current orthodoxy, they can certainly give you a hard time for whatever transphobic thing it is you’re doing at the moment. 

So here are some things to bear in mind while enjoying your turn in the stocks.

First of all, remember that the Equality Act states that you must not be discriminated against on the basis of your sex, not your gender. The singer Sam Smith may ask you to use ‘they’ and ‘them’ when speaking of him, but you are under no legal obligation to do so. 

No two people seem to be able to agree on what the word ‘gender’ means, but many, myself included, feel it is the name for the stereotypes associated with either of the sex roles, male and female. Someone feeling an affinity with sex-role stereotypes is not the same as literally being that sex, and many brave transwomen are being forced to confront their dysphoria daily by fighting publicly against this concept, a concept that they feel is cruelly misleading fellow sufferers.

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You will be told there is NO DEBATE. Just talk around anyone who lays that one on you. There is quite clearly a debate needed on the subject of how these ideas impact women’s rights, sports, dignity and safety.

Even Hillary Clinton, perhaps speaking with the freedom that comes after a failed presidential run, said: “I do think there is a legitimate concern about women’s lived experience and the importance of recognising that.” Direct your correspondent to the first point on the SNP’s Women’s Pledge, which states that women have “the right to discuss policies which affect them … without being abused or silenced”.  No reasonable person could object to this principle, and their attitude to your asserting it will tell you how seriously to take their concerns. 

Many of those writing to you will think they are behaving honourably, even as they direct the most appalling abuse at you. Don’t be intimidated. Be polite if you can, and remember that there are bad-faith actors working the controls and ensuring the temperature of the conversation is kept extremely high. Accusations of bigotry are the first stop on this journey, not the last, so get used to them. 

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Don’t be fooled into thinking your principles are somehow outdated. Women are just as vulnerable to male power and coercion as they were during #MeToo or, indeed, a hundred years ago. Pretending that men have suddenly decided to reform overnight — worse yet, designing policies around that pretence — could result in dreadful things, as when “Karen White”, a male sex offender, successfully identified himself into a position where he was able to sexually assault several female prisoners.

You will see some very frightening and upsetting stats about trans people and suicide, and how you are contributing to those statistics by your continued association with the writer/academic/doctor who has somehow transgressed some arbitrary rules. These statistics have very flimsy underpinnings. The “fact” that 48% of transgender teenagers have attempted suicide is based on a study involving just 27 young people, 13 of whom self-reported having attempted suicide in the past. Of course, any suicide attempt is a tragedy, but these are not the figures of a meaningful and robust study.

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You will be accused of causing violence against transwomen. Murder rates will be quoted. This is deceitful hyperbole. Trans people are one of the safest demographics in the UK. The statistics quoted usually relate to poor transwomen of colour in the USA / South America, many of them driven by poverty into drugs and dangerous sex work. In a like-for-like comparison with statistics on the prospects of poor female sex workers of colour in the same geographic regions, this argument falls apart. Ask your correspondent, finally, if they have any suggestions for actually addressing how poverty and male violence impacts all sex workers, and remind them politely that male violence should never, ever be blamed on women.

There’s more, there’s so much more, and every case is unique. I can’t pretend it’s enjoyable, what you’re about to go through, but at least you will be remembered as one of first who didn’t capitulate to bullies and stood your ground, knowing you will make it easier for the next victim.

Let your principles be your compass, and you will always do the right thing.

But get some Valium.

I felt the full force of this sad and difficult news story. Three years ago, while heavily and painfully pregnant with my second child, I emerged from Westminster tube to find an array of 10 feet high posters of dismembered foetuses. The tiny hands and feet I’d been looking at on a scan the previous day were displayed in agonising detail, post-abortion. I arrived at our nearby office soon after, white-faced and in tears. I promptly vomited. The image on the ad recently taken down was less graphic, but I can imagine Stella may still have been having similar days.

I host a podcast about dealing with difference and having difficult conversations, and this topic is excruciatingly hard to deal with. It is a deeply personal one. And for millions of women and couples, their choices either way are inescapable parts of their life stories. The issue also forms one of our deepest moral divides, and one of the hardest to find common ground on.

Two intensely serious moral goods are at stake. First is the freedom of a woman to control her own destiny in a world which is stacked against her; the freedom to choose the things she is prepared to ask her body to endure, and not be forced into the fundamentally self-sacrificial role of motherhood.

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The second is the right of a vulnerable, voiceless and at least potentially tiny human to exist. Both these arguments have serious moral force, but they seem mutually exclusive. Each side picks the one they feel carries the most moral weight. If they — we — are honest, we admit that this choice is inevitably at the expense of the other. When dishonest, each seeks to erase the cost to the other and with this comes the utter erosion of trust.

This week, I’ve also been reading a new Rowan Williams lecture on political tribalism. He is typically brilliant at spearing our ludicrous tendency to see everyone as tribal except ourselves and says: “Political tribalism is above all a shrinkage of the scope of mutual recognition: I resolve not to think of the other’s view as sharing any of the moral anxieties or emotional tensions I experience.”

Mutual recognition in the abortion “debate” has broken down to such an extent that, as we’ve seen, individual pregnant woman are targeted with distressing images, and those who want to raise qualms about even late-stage, gender-specific or disability-focused abortions are written off as misogynists and bigots. Sally Phillips, the comic actor and mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome, has received torrents of abuse for suggesting that new tests and NHS procedures might be influencing women to terminate pregnancies unnecessarily. She is pro-choice herself.

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The way this space is currently framed and the tactics being used are entrenching these divides, deeper and deeper, and the solution Williams offers is absurdly simple and fiendishly difficult. Listening.

“[we need to nourish] those practices…that allow space for hearing the memory of discovery and conviction that lies behind an opponent’s view and seeking to recognise comparable kinds of moral energy…   [we need to give] patient attention to stories and priorities not native to us; and this requires the construction of environments in which there is enough trust for such things to be articulated.”

I doubt we will ever resolve conflicts around abortion, because the starting points of moral reasoning and the underlying sacred values are so different. Many of those reading this will feel that to listen would be a distraction from the most important thing, which is winning – either ‘saving lives’ or ‘protecting women from ideological oppression’. The trouble is that the kind of tactics that we would use if winning were our only aim would actually do more harm than good.

I would guess, for instance, that Stella Creasy now feels more committed to her pro-choice position than she did before that billboard went up. The same goes for those who have called disability activists misogynists for wanting to think about the way legal late-stage abortions for minor disabilities frames the way we see disabled people.

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Our instinctive psychological defence of our identity means that when we are presented with evidence or arguments which contest a deeply held belief, we are likely to harden our original position. Unless, of course, that evidence and those arguments are presented kindly, carefully, warmly — and by messengers we trust.

Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks, in their new book Messengers, which examines why we listen to some messengers and not others, argue there is one trait which trumps all others in efforts to persuade. Trustworthiness.

So while we doubtless can’t do anything to resolve this deep rift, we can at least change the terms of the debate so that is kinder to all those concerned, not least the many women for whom this is a live issue. Personally targeted billboards are not helpful. They don’t build trust — quite the opposite. And the same goes for any attempts to close down expressions of pro-life positions more generally. For the sake of women everywhere, not only the pregnant ones, we should do better.

Last month, it was Yearwood’s turn to take second place, this time in the 55-metre sprint at the state open track championships. First place went to Terry Miller, another transgender student, who in the process set a new girls’ state indoor record. Last year, the two students had sparked controversy when they took first and second place in the 100-meter race at the State Open Finals.

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It was back in 1972 that the United States enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments, to ensure that high schools and universities had to offer equal academic and athletic opportunities to both men and women. Prior to this, women’s and girls’ sports were not taken seriously, not supported, and not funded.

The impact of this legislation was revolutionary: in 1974, 300,000 girls played high school sports in the US. Today, it is well over three million. But, like so many other hard-fought women’s rights, today’s generation seems to have forgotten the history and importance of the laws and policies that ensured females were no longer treated as second class citizens.

Today, we are at risk of losing women’s sports entirely. All in the name of ‘trans inclusivity’.

That women’s sports had to be specifically and explicitly supported should signal to people that, without sex segregated athletics, females will be out of the game. We simply cannot compete on equal ground against men. And this has nothing to do with lack of talent — there are basic physical differences between male and female bodies that are unchangeable.

To start, men, in general, are bigger than women. They have larger bones and organs than women. They have longer limbs, bigger hands, and larger lungs. They have more muscle mass, which means they are stronger than women. As females, our ability to reproduce has meant that our bodies have evolved for different purposes than men’s, which affects how our bodies develop and function. There is no self-identifying out of biological reality.

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Why the transbullies are a threat to us all

By Julie Bindel

Fair Play For Women (FPFW), a grassroots campaign group fighting for women’s and girls’ sex-based rights, explains that peak male bone mass is around 50% more than women’s, and that women are around 30-35% muscle by weight, while men are 40-50% muscle. While of course muscle mass can vary based on factors like age and fitness, FPFW point out that “women can’t match the bulk or strength of men’s skeletal muscles.” In measuring hand grip, a widely-used marker for strength, FPFW found data that showed the strongest 10% of females can still only beat the bottom 10% of men.

There is a mistaken view that feminists see men and women as exactly the same. That, in other words, they take the word ‘equality’ literally. This is not the case. Feminists are well aware that male and female bodies are different, and that our lot in life has been determined in many ways (though of course not in all ways) by reproductive capacity.

Indeed, women’s oppression has been historically rooted in men’s desire to control their so-called bloodline and, therefore, the means of reproduction. What feminists have fought against is the notion that women should not be allowed to participate in public life — to live full and independent lives, outside the home, and have access to things like education, political power, and a full range of career options – because of their ability to bear children.

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What does gender have to do with genitals?

By Julie Bindel

Feminists are rejecting gender stereotypes, not biology. We don’t agree that simply because one is born female, we must dress a certain way, act a certain way, think a certain way, or be treated as second class. We do know women are physically weaker, and that this makes women vulnerable to male violence.

There is little women can do, no matter how many push ups they perform, to fight off a male attacker. Men are, simply, stronger. This reality — tied to social and cultural norms that put men in positions of power — is why feminists have fought hard for legislative and social changes to deter male violence against women, protect females from being assaulted, and hold men who do perpetrate violence against women accountable.

Because men are most commonly the perpetrators of violence against women, women and girls have had access to separate spaces, where they might otherwise be particularly vulnerable: changing rooms, washrooms, shelters, and transition houses for women escaping male violence for example. These physical and social realities have also meant female and male prisoners are housed separately.

And, of course, the reality of physical differences between men and women have meant that almost all elite sports are sex-segregated. If women were forced to compete against men, they wouldn’t just lose, they would cease to exist in sport at all.

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When did women's rights stop being human rights?

By Jo Bartosch

So forgive our “feverish hysteria” – as The Independent’s chief sports writer Jonathan Liew recently put it – over the new policies being adopted by athletic bodies around the world which allow males who identify as transwomen to compete in female sports.

Liew’s patronising call for us women to “chill out a bit” is based on his view that “hordes of male athletes” will not “suddenly declare themselves female simply to game the system”. But why not? Why wouldn’t mediocre male athletes declare themselves female in order to win at competitions they couldn’t otherwise win? There is, after all, power, glory, and financial gain in being a top athlete.

And while Liew may see a transphobic “straw man”, women are already seeing it happen. That males would compete against women and win is not, it turns out, a figment of our imaginations.

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Can academia be saved from the mob?

By Debra Soh

It was Canadian cyclist Rachel McKinnon’s world championship win last year that led tennis legend Martina Navratilova to tweet: “Clearly that can’t be right. You can’t just proclaim yourself female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as women would not fit that standard.” Other elite female athletes, including Olympic swimmer Sharon Davies and Women’s World Marathon Record holder Paula Radcliffe, have since expressed their concern.

In January, powerlifter JayCee Cooper set a new state record in Bench, becoming state champion, and winning best overall lifter. This was in the women’s division at the USPA Minnesota State Championships. Cooper, who was born male, but now identifies as a woman, lifted 57.5kg more than the closest female competitor.

After this happened, USA Powerlifting (a different organisation) instituted a ban on males competing as women, meaning Cooper’s application to compete was denied. The USAPL explains that “Transgender male to female individuals having gone through male puberty confer an unfair competitive advantage over non-transgender females due to increased bone density and muscle mass from pubertal exposure to testosterone.”

This comes after Laurel Hubbard, representing New Zealand in women’s weightlifting, won gold after beating fellow competitors by 19kg in Melbourne in 2017. Hubbard, who transitioned to female in her mid-30s, went on to compete in the Commonwealth Games last year.

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The media could make a serious difference to trans lives – why won't it?

By Owl Fisher

The very real results are being felt by girls already. Last week, Selina Soule, one of the female students who lost to Miller and Yearwood in Connecticut, told Fox News that, when applying for track college scholarships, it is not specified if an athlete is transgender — students are either in the boys’ category or the girls’ category.

“So if a college coach looks at the results in the [championships], they will see the wide margin between first and/or second place, and the rest of the places … and they’ll say, ‘Hey, why aren’t the rest of these girls running as fast as these two’.

“It’s very frustrating because I know I have put in, and some of my friends and fellow competitors have put in, so much time and effort to take down our times and compete ourselves better, but we are not physically able to be competitive against someone who is biologically a male.”

Liew calls the scenario being painted by critics of this ‘trans inclusive’ approach to women’s sport “fantastical”, in part because he doesn’t believe there will suddenly be an influx on male athletes undertaking “the protracted and often traumatic transition process, securing the necessary medical and psychological documentation”.

But this fails to recognise that under new gender identity policy, males are not required to go through lengthy “transition processes” in order to declare themselves female. This is precisely why such heated debate has erupted around gender identity, as self-declaration is fast on its way to becoming the sole determiner of sex. Fill out a form, and you can now legally become the opposite sex in many countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, and Norway, where there are no judicial or medical requirements at all to change your sex.

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By Meghan Murphy

In the UK, this is what changes to the Gender Recognition Act propose. In Canada, you need only a note from an accredited physician or psychologist stating that an individual identifies as a different sex; there are no medical requirements.

Many states, including Washington, Oregon, New York, California, and Connecticut also only require a note from a doctor or nurse practitioner (or a note from someone even less qualified, including, in Washington, a naturopath or social service worker). Nevada requires an affidavit from the individual, stating they are the opposite sex, and an affidavit from a second person confirming this.

Naturally, this new normal has impacted sport. Until 2016, the International Olympic Committee required male athletes who wished to compete among females to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. Under the new rules, they need only declare themselves women and demonstrate that their testosterone level has been below a certain point for a year before their first competition.

But lowering testosterone levels for a year does not change the physical body to such an extent that it negates the inherent advantages of being biologically male. It does not alter bones, limbs, or organs. It does not decrease muscle mass to an extent that renders the body equal to a woman’s. These men will still be much bigger and stronger.

Women’s sport is the just the latest example of the fundamental problem at the heart of trans activism: if we dissolve the definition of ‘woman’ to mean nothing more than a declared ‘identity,’ women – along with our hard-won rights – cease to exist.

Such a scenario would provoke an outcry from the international community and human rights organisations would launch an immediate inquiry. Yet this is exactly what is happening now in the UK, and leading human rights organisations, like Liberty who claim to “hold the powerful to account”, are suspiciously silent.

The threat to the rights of women comes from a proposed amendment to the Gender Recognition Act (2004).  Championed by Conservative MP Maria Miller, the suggestion is to ‘streamline’ the process by which someone changes their legal gender by removing the need for a medical diagnosis and reducing the length of time an applicant needs to live in their “acquired gender”.  On the surface this sounds reasonable, but the implications for women and girls are grave. In effect, a declaration of feelings of “feminine gender identity” would be all that is required for male-bodied people to access women-only services.

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Questioning the misogynistic veil isn't racist

By Josephine Bartosch

At present, unprecedented numbers of male-bodied prisoners are identifying as transwomen and demanding access to the female estate. Making the process of changing legal gender easier will exacerbate this problem, the burden of which is already falling on some of the most vulnerable women, those in prison. Human rights organisations such as Liberty refuse to see transgender people as anything other than vulnerable and marginalised, “forced to grow up in a society that discriminates against them, treats their identity as an illness, and fails to recognise their true selves”. We are living at a time when the use of stickers bearing the words ‘women do not have penises’ is being investigated as a hate crime. The reticence of groups to speak out is understandable, but ultimately unforgivable.

Since the proposal to amend the Gender Recognition Act was announced, grassroots feminist discussion groups have sprung-up across the UK, with talks organised by We Need to Talk, Woman’s Place UK and Let a Woman Speak. Earlier this year I spoke at one of these talks – after sustained pressure from transgender activists the original venue had to cancel the booking at less than 24-hours notice, and the organisers were left scrambling to find a new venue. In June, the same group were the subject of a bomb threat. Just last week, in Plymouth, a listed building that had hosted a similar discussion was covered in graffiti and posters by those opposed to women’s free speech. The event organisers are now trying to raise money to cover the cost of the clean-up. These are not isolated incidents, they are part of a concerted campaign of intimidation designed to stop women from meeting to discuss their rights.

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Who let the thought police invade our universities?

By Julie Bindel

Women who persist, those who deviate from the mantra ‘transwomen are women’, are smeared as TERFs (an acronym for ‘trans exclusionary radical feminists’) and frequently reported to their employers, political parties and even religious leaders. Self-appointed social justice warriors online lurk in discussion groups to report women for ‘transphobia’. Hashtags such as #punchaterf and #fuckterfs are used to incite hatred and violence against those who question the validity of gender identity.

Freedom of assembly is fundamental to a functioning democracy. And yet, from the heart of the establishment to the lunatic fringe of masked extremists, there is no question that women are being intimidated by constant efforts to stop discussion of the Gender Recognition Act. Whether one agrees or not, demands to shut down debate and the dehumanisation of those with unpopular beliefs should ring alarm bells.

Given the violence, actual and threatened, and the sustained harassment of women who persist in thinking biological sex is important in a sexist society, it is not unreasonable to ask what human rights organisations are doing to protect the freedom of assembly here in the UK. Liberty boasts a laudable aim “to protect basic rights and freedoms through the courts, in Parliament and in the wider community” so one wonders: where is their statement in defence of women meeting to discuss their rights?

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The media could make a serious difference to trans lives – why won't it?

By Owl Fisher

In a joint statement, Liberty, the British Institute of Human Rights and Amnesty International announced their support for Maria Miller’s proposals, arguing the “announcement is long overdue as transphobia, disinformation and prejudice have been spread by a small number of people opposing equality for trans people”. Human rights organisations have stopped listening to those they ought to represent and have instead become lumbering corporate beasts chasing an ever narrowing definition of ‘inclusive’ – one that excludes feminist women. 

It should be a source of shame that this battle has been left to largely unfunded groups of women. Elected officials and esteemed human rights organisations charged with defending our freedoms have either ignored the controversy or actively colluded in the silencing and shaming of feminists. Today’s smug declarations about the ‘right side of history’ will do nothing to protect the next generation of women and girls whose rights are at risk of being virtue-signalled away. I wonder, in five years time if I’m on trial for hate speech for having written this article, whose side will Liberty be on?