I'd never thought about my gender identity before. It hadn't occurred to me that not being a "girly" girl meant I wasn't 100 per cent woman. The poin… - Janice Turner

TERF stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. But lately the definition has expanded to include any woman worried that permitting men who "self-identify" as female to enter women’s changing rooms or refuges unchallenged makes her less safe.

True, different views on the surge in female-to-male transition were reported brilliantly last week by the Timess Janice Turner, one of the strikingly few women willing, in the face of concerted abuse, publicly to examine complex social and medical changes the authorities seem disinclined to explore. That such women are frequently and correctly described as "brave", for all the world as if they were war correspondents, only underlines the extent to which conventionally abhorrent exhibitions of bullying and hate-speech have been allowed to flourish here – with some of our most trusted adults leading by example.

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 have been completely behind me in dealing with something that is complicated.
I have a privilege in being able to write about this difficult subject, which is not something women in universities have at the moment, and I urge that we debate this more thoroughly and freely.