Mick Hartley

Nicole Lampert in the Spectator on the transgender wars:

It has been more than 100 years since women got the vote. We’ve had two female prime ministers. The #MeToo movement has been and gone. And yet people are still suspicious of what women say. Has the battle for equality been won? I'm not convinced.

In the last few weeks we have seen: a best-selling author's books set on fire after she was branded a ‘Terf’; a Ted talks series for females change the word women to 'womxn'; the Irish health service remove references to 'women' on its information page on cervical smears; the Lib Dems devising a definition of ‘transphobia’ that effectively silences women who have the wrong opinions about ‘gender identity'; and a writer told that the word ‘female’ – which she had used in her book reviews – has ‘pejorative connotations’.

Does this happen to men? As far as I can tell, man hasn’t been changed to mxn; ‘people with a penis’ has not been used on posters about prostrate cancer; and no one says the word male might be 'pejorative'. Yet when a female dares says anything against these erasures of our womanhood, they are labelled by some as hateful transphobes.

Well yes. As anyone who's been paying attention can confirm, what we're seeing now is a new attack on women – a misogyny revival – dressed up in progressive clothes.

The saddest thing is that this emerging trend – sometimes driven by people who are neither trans nor female – divides women from transwomen and transmen when they often want the same thing; safety and respect. Dr Debbie Hayton, who is a transgender writer for The Spectator, has written movingly about how trans people like her just want to get on with their lives without usurping women’s rights. Buck Angel, who transitioned to become a man 25 years ago, tells me:

‘This new language situation is hurting more than helping. There is a lot of anger that is coming from all of this; it is not a good thing. The majority of us can see that we can make this work by co-existing, but there are some people who have been socialised as males and are refusing to listen to women. I find it hurtful because they don’t seem to want to understand that women have been fighting for their rights for centuries. If they had more compassion, they would understand why women are saying what they are saying.’

The erasure of words which depict and describe femaleness – particularly from so-called woke organisations who say they are on our side – undermines everything women have ever fought for. Those who insist on erasing 'women' need to start listening and stop calling us bigots.

Yes, but these people who've been "socialised as males" were socialised as males because they are males. Males who've decided they'd like to live now as females: transwomen who continue to expect real women to make way for them as they act out their exciting new lives.