Mick Hartley

Hadley Freeman in the Sunday Times:

Not long ago I was commissioned to interview Sting for a freelance job. But then I was told I was being replaced by another writer — not because of a problem with my work, but because of my “controversial views about gender”. Never mind that it hadn’t even occurred to me to talk about gender theory with Sting (music, I thought, seemed a more obvious topic for conversation). I was out….

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!

In Sting’s defence, I have no idea if this decision was made by him. It may have been decided by the phalanx of PRs around him, or perhaps by the person who commissioned me, who belatedly realised they’d hired someone worse than a murderous despot. If so, it would not be the first time I’ve lost work because I believe in material reality or, as the current terminology has it, am “gender-critical”. There was the PR who wouldn’t work with me on a project because, she explained, “What if my baby grows up to be trans and finds out I helped you?” There was the allegedly mouthy and fearless pop star who refused to be interviewed because I am too “controversial”. They always say they don’t want to be “dragged into the controversy”, apparently unaware that they are dragging themselves into it by tacitly endorsing censorship of those who disagree with gender ideology.

Only two years ago Keir Starmer reprimanded Rosie Duffield MP for making the factually correct yet somehow morally wrong statement that “only women have a cervix”. But two weeks ago he made the stunning and brave reversal in stating the blindingly obvious fact that, actually, a woman is “an adult female”. In other words, a trans woman is not literally a woman. Welcome to the gender-critical gang, Starmer. Took you long enough, but glad you made it.

But if Starmer is loosening gender theory’s grip on the Labour Party — which has caused its MPs to drop pearls of insanity such as “A child is born without sex” (Dawn Butler) — will other organisations follow suit? Will Arts Council England fund projects by gender-critical artists, even though people who work there have called views like mine “a cancer” and defended withdrawing funding from gender-critical organisations? Will academics now be free to question gender theories, even to express gender-critical views, without losing their funding or tenure? Will media organisations and schools no longer accept training from Mermaids, the charity for “gender-diverse young people” that believes children can be born in the wrong body? Will women no longer lose their jobs — as has happened to Kathleen Stock, Maya Forstater, Allison Bailey, Rosie Kay and countless others — for saying what Starmer is now saying? Or is it palatable only when it comes from a man?

In short, will we see an end to the ideological capture that has made so many women fearful of speaking out against this appallingly misogynistic movement, which defends putting rapists in female prisons because they claim to identify as a woman? Politicians, as Starmer demonstrates, change their views like the wind changes direction. But the inherent anti-feminism of gender ideology has become so baked in to so many institutions that the American trans writer Andrea Long Chu can write that the “barest essentials [of] femaleness” are “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes”, and be feted to the point of winning a Pulitzer prize this year.

JK Rowling, on the other hand, writes: “I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe,” and she is derided as a hateful bigot, her books removed from schools and libraries.

But I’ve learnt that it’s actually quite useful when someone says they can’t be associated with me, because life is too short to waste on cowards. And when those cowards U-turn like Starmer, women like me will welcome them. But we won’t forget.”

Ah well…I always thought Sting was a grade A prat.