When I became an adult, I suddenly couldn't stop thinking of them. Moments I had barely noticed at the time, yet they made enough of an impact to lea… - Hadley Freeman

I had a couple of reactions to hearing that my views about gender might be too controversial for Sting. The first was: "I reckon Sting, Mr Tantric Sex God himself, is pretty clear on what a woman is." The second was: "So Sting once played a concert for the daughter of the former Uzbek president Islam Karimov, who was accused of boiling his political opponents alive. But apparently he can't bear to be interviewed by me because of my 'controversial views'?" Incidentally, these controversial views are — and buckle up, folks, because they might shock you — that trans people deserve compassion as much as anyone else, and a man has a penis and a woman has a vagina. Sting, send me your mate's number because I deserve to be boiled alive!

Here's an alternative: maybe adults could be actual adults for a minute. Instead of teaching children non-existent safe ways to strangle themselves and others, they could teach them not to do it, just as we teach them not to play with matches. Despite being frequently mentioned alongside "light spanking" and similar, choking causes brain damage and kills. It’s not like pulling someone's hair; it's like playing Russian roulette. And, of course, it is overwhelmingly women who are being strangled: the same study that found 58 per cent of female students had been choked said only 26 per cent of male ones had.

I can take that – what I don’t understand is why upper management is scared to deal with that. It’s not just The Guardian. This has happened at a lot of progressive places, this feeling of fear that we can’t stand up against some of the claims that gender activists make.