Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

What do Munroe Bergdorf and Andrew Tate have in common?

Munroe Bergdorf and Andrew Tate (Getty Images)

For inadequate men scared by self-willed women, by the start of the 21st century, things were getting dangerously out of hand. The old right-wing ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche’ method of corralling and controlling us had been woefully discredited with the second world war. (Like the old brand of anti-Semitism, coincidentally, which was also looking for a new angle – and found it in the fresh’n’funky Islamist kind.)

A ‘caring’ and ‘progressive’ way to thwart uppity women was needed, but repeated and risible attempts at ‘men’s rights’ movements were rightfully mocked. So how could men abuse women while not being accused of sexism? Simple, say: ‘We’re women too. How can we be misogynists?’ And so the shock-frock-troops of transvestism formed a pincer movement with the aggressive masculinists embodied by Andrew Tate to assault the gains made by women in the 20th century.

‘Transwomen’ are doing so well because they really do have the best of both worlds

Gains which took decades to achieve were wiped away in a few strokes of a pen: separate public toilets to uphold privacy and safety; sports to celebrate female bodies in a rare way that isn’t sexual (Sebastian Coe verified this

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