As feminists fall out, it’s not just the patriarchy that’s under fire

UK grassroots feminism is flourishing at the moment, with the journalist Julie Bindel leading from the front as troublemaker-in-chief. In a long history of activism that began in the 1980s, campaigning against male violence in Leeds while Peter Sutcliffe stalked the streets, Bindel has always been straight to the point, full of heart and un-interested in placating middle-class sensibilities. Her new book is no different. Feminism for Women is an impassioned manifesto for the kind of feminism she favours — indeed, the only kind she’s willing to acknowledge as worthy of the name.

Bindel’s feminism is unashamedly focused on women and girls of the old-fashioned female kind, and what tends to happen to the most vulnerable of them — poor, working-class, black, young, old, lesbian or trafficked — at the hands of males. She is scathing about the way other feminists (she would use inverted commas) have twisted the original Second Wave project out of recognition.