When you write about really difficult and toxic subjects it really helps to have your newspaper behind you and I just want to thank the Times ... who… - Janice Turner

On election eve, the Guardian journalist and Momentum activist Owen Jones posted a photograph of himself in a grinning thumbs-up with a young woman whose T-shirt slogan read: "Will suck d*** for socialism."
I apologise for the crudeness. But reading this filled me (and many others) with disgust and despair. Not just because it took the old Stokely Carmichael notion that a woman’s place in the revolution is "prone" and rebranded it as woke feminism. But because it encapsulated the worst of Corbyn Labour: believing a crass, narcissistic social media clique, which it allowed to act as party proxies on radio or TV, was a useful electoral tool. Here was Jones, a Labour insider with a million Twitter followers and a national newspaper column, writing about women giving sexual favours for votes as Britain went to the polls. I thought of the words on a magnificent Dockers Union banner: "We shall not cease until all destitution, prostitution and exploitation is swept away" and wondered how Labour fell so low.

So at Speakers’ Corner trans activists and feminists were chanting and taunting each other. Maria was taking photographs when an opponent grappled with her, snatched her camera and smashed it on the ground. Then a tall, male-bodied, hooded figure wearing make-up rushed over, hit her several times and as police arrived, ran away. I asked a young activist if she was OK with men smacking women: "It’s not a guy, you’re a piece of s*** and I’m happy they hit her", came the reply.

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.