I regularly ask these people a few questions. What is gender identity? When was it invented? At what age does it come into being? How is it different from stereotyped gender roles? How much money is to be made through surgery and lifelong hormones? What is the need for men who identify as women to make women feel uncomfortable? What happens when you want to have a child if you have been made infertile or in fact don’t have a womb? Do you just hire one? Is surrogacy the next phase of dehumanising women? I have yet to receive answers.
The sheer anger of certain trans activists puts me in mind of men’s rights activists; they want what women have and that means access to us all. In response, there is still huge cowardice. The fear of being called transphobic means silence. Silence = Death, as we used to say when we were campaigning around Aids.

The emails then came pouring in from people who wished they could say what I had said. I wished people would stop calling me brave. Columnists are meant to be made of titanium; I felt more like papier-mâché. But the orthodoxy which demands that Mary Beard must refer to an ancient statue with a little penis as "assigned male at birth" is powerful. The no-platforming of feminist warriors like Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel is abhorrent. I like freaks. I like fluidity. I just don’t like one set of rules being replaced by another. I was hurt that so many of my 'colleagues' denounced me, but I suppose everyone needs a hobby.

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Or take comfort from Gideon's [George Osborne] "We are all in this together"? The last election was the most regressive for women I can remember. Women appeared as trophy wives, or not at all. The consequences of that are that this government – this new way of doing politics – is hitting women and children the hardest. Women are suffering most from the cuts that men are making. Just look at the figures.
This makes me very angry indeed. Which I know may increase "visible signs of ageing", but it's way too late now. Feminism has been dumbed down into politeness and party-political promises for far too long.

[On Russell Brand a year later] [T]he Jesus Clown is pilloried for being a dreadful influence on young people. If the youth don't vote, then policies that continue to punish them will be waved through by our decrepit politicians. Actually, the Jesus Clown is not what I call a young person, Lydon isn't, and I am certainly not, but the Clown has a reach, that's for sure. My 13-year-old adores him, and the part of me that is for ever 13 gets why. A lot of what he says is sub-Chomskyian woo, but these frustrations with existing political structures – they exist. Somehow it is always assumed that young people are naive idealists who, when they grow up and understand how things really work or don’t work at all, will buckle down and do the right thing. The right thing here means voting Labour.

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Reasonably sitting around waiting for equality while empowering oneself with some silicone implants does not really seem to have worked wonders, does it ladeez? Postfeminism – as personified by the Sex and the City generation – basically confused sexual liberation with shopping: a mistaken strategy even within its own market-driven terms. So we live on a permanent diet of crumbs from the table. A woman over 50 gets to be on TV! Whoopdiwhoop! It's a victory, sure, but is that all there is? It's time to wake up and smell the skinny latte.
A woman is murdered in Bristol and the response is to tell women to stay at home?! For their own safety. Though no one thinks it's a woman doing the murdering. A curfew on men would be considered a monstrous idea, even though most women live with internalised curfews anyway.

When I raised the question of the competing rights between biological women and trans women in the paper I then worked for, The Guardian, my world went bonkers for a while. A trans person who worked at the paper (I never went into the office) who had already resigned earlier, resigned again and 338 staff signed an anonymous letter about transphobia in that organisation. I was not named except the person that the letter was leaked to indicated it was clearly about me.
It all ended up with me choosing to leave a good job because I could no longer say what I wanted to say there. This is not a sob story. I was welcomed at the Daily Telegraph, who have honoured their promise that I would not be censored.

Her writing is unafraid to challenge groupthink or ridicule tribes. It can often be infuriating, partly because she's so damn good at it. I have disagreed with many of her opinions over the years. Suzanne, 62, even once had the audacity to make a minor criticism of a book I'd written.

The Greens have suspended senior members who were writing a Green women’s declaration which understands that women's rights are based on biological sex. The rejection of biology or indeed reality by those who want to slow down climate change is frankly barmy.
But then so is the promotion of fetishistic men in wigs who only recently were in fact Tory candidates. I am talking about Melissa Poulton, Bromsgrove Green Party candidate, formerly Matthew Viner, now declaring "herself" to be a proud lesbian and a purveyor of sissy porn (don't ask). Is Ms Poulton a true trans woman? I cannot possibly say as I don't have the forensic skills necessary. But I can make the comment that what I see is a blatant opportunist.

If the idea of women organising autonomously is transphobic you are walking into a cul-de-sac, which absolutely traps people in boxes that benefit the patriarchy. Because there is nothing the patriarchy fears more than women who no longer rely on male authority.

Stonewall had successfully captured every organisation and rewarded it for being "trans inclusive." What did this mean? Believing that womanhood was a feeling in a man’s head? Rewriting equality law so that people with male genitalia could now be in female prisons and rape crisis centres? Bad statistics were bandied about concerning suicide - all wrong and based on one tiny study. What has been censored on the Left is actual information, not opinions: information about puberty blockers, information about the number of sex offenders who claim to be women in prison, information about what JK Rowling actually said, information about trans athletes who have gone through male puberty, information about public attitudes. Most people are liberal and sympathetic to trans people, as we should be. When told most trans women retain male genitalia, they become more uncomfortable about females sharing intimate spaces with them.