Mick Hartley

Raquel Rosario Sánchez is a gender-critical feminist now suing the University of Bristol for allegedly failing to protect her from bullying and harassment from trans activists: clearly a woman not afraid to speak her mind. She writes here about How gender studies took over the world, and acknowledges that early feminism deserves some of the blame:

The idea was that if a patriarchal system treats women as inherently inferior to men then it made sense to ferociously advocate that both sexes are, in fact, equal in almost every respect. So biology became an enemy that would naturally come back to haunt us. In this pursuit for equality, what we all surely know to be true – that humans are differentiated by sex on a chromosomal level – was left out of the picture.

Yet while progressive politicians – and gender studies theorists – might like to imagine there is no downside to this approach, they are wrong. After all, pretending that male and female bodies are no different from each other risks causing no end of problems: women suffering from a heart attack might be dismissed as having anxiety and stress. Why? Because the medical establishment has long been dominated by men. It seems natural that male doctors are more likely to educate students on male bodies and 'male symptoms' for many ailments. If women and men are viewed as one and the same, these differences can get ignored.

More broadly, feminists have rightly raised concerns that blending the two sexes could represent a green light for a man to access women’s prisons, refuges and sport competitions. There is also a risk that statistical data needed to understand the scale of male violence against women is muddled up.

As for women's studies, this gender confusion also poses an important conundrum: if there is no material difference between men and women, why do feminists need an academic field devoted solely to one sex? This argument, along with the parasitic emergence of postmodernism, saw women’s studies shape shift into the more encompassing gender studies, and lately into a cooler incarnation in the form of queer studies. The revolutionary project was torpedoed from within.

Now as these departments churn out 'gender specialists' and 'gender consultants' into the world, intent on erasing biological differences from policy and legislation, we are all paying the price. Mediocre male athletes take gold in women’s sports competitions; women feel uneasy about whether their locker rooms and safe spaces are indeed safe.

Although I was never a true believer of 'gender identity' theories, I realised I needed to change my mind about some of the most strident arguments I had accepted as received wisdom. Will Labour do the same and ever come back from this brink? Under Keir Starmer's leadership, it seems unlikely.e encompassing gender studies, and lately into a cooler incarnation in the form of queer studies. The revolutionary project was torpedoed from within.

If so, they are making a grave mistake. While blurring the lines between the sexes has a certain appeal to both the academic and the political fringes, there are life and death conversations to be had about women’s health, safety and privacy. None of us need a dictionary to define half the planet’s population. We just need common sense and a backbone.