So when is it OK to punch a woman? When she won’t do what you want; when you don’t like what she says. Some things never change. - Janice Turner

This is not a piffling problem. The BBC reality check team confirmed that 60 (48 per cent) of the 125 trans prisoners in jails are sex offenders. That compares with 19 per cent in the prison population overall. Yet, since women commit only 2 per cent of sex crimes, out of 8,000 women prisoners there are only 125 sex offenders. So if the 60 trans sex offenders were housed according to gender identity, it would create a sea change in women’s prisons. There would be 50 per cent more sex offenders; they’d be male bodied, physically stronger and have committed far more serious crimes, including 27 rapes, 13 sexual assaults and seven charges of sex with a child.

In her book Material Girls, Stock asserts that although a person’s professed "gender identity" should be respected, biological sex is immutable and, in some circumstances — prisons, rape counselling, sports — must take precedence to protect women’s rights. This mainstream opinion is protected under the 2010 Equality Act. Yet her persecutors believe trans people literally change sex. They believe that in granting her academic freedom, the university fails to be trans inclusive. "We are not up for debate," they say.
That such unscientific, magical thinking has become sacrosanct is calamitous for academics, especially feminist scholars who study how women are historically oppressed via their reproductive role. An Edinburgh lecturer in gender and education tells me she offered students both LGBTQ and feminist reading materials. "As with any subject, I tell them to examine all sides, to think, talk, then form a considered view." For this she was reported to the staff Pride network, which solicits student complaints, and then quietly dropped from lecturing on gender.
Across British campuses women academics — and it is always women — face threats, witch-hunts and lost livelihoods for holding gender critical views.

Clearly the GRR has far-reaching implications for women. But what happens when they point this out? First, the bombastic know-alls who've ignored every female writer, lawyer and policymaker for five years pull out their manly opinions. Like Alastair Campbell, who chided Laura Kuenssberg for an interview with Sir Keir Starmer in which she dwelt on the GRR, which affects half the population — but not the important half. Or Lord Falconer, who pompously wafts away concerns, tweeting that "the vast majority" of new male GRC holders "are likely to be genuine". So what's a few women facing sexual assault or indecent exposure, an intimidated lesbian or two, or a class of girls unhappily undressing with a teenage boy? These “It might never happen, love" guys don't think women deserve legislation that protects us in principle. We're expected to pray that careless laws, framed for others' benefit, don't hurt us in practice. And if they do, it’s just an "isolated incident". Suck it up. And the next one. There’s no pattern. Let’s ignore the inconvenient truth that males commit 98 per cent of sex crime and 90 per cent of violence, whatever their gender identity.