Why did lawyers try to cancel me over trans rights?

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been writing regularly on the seething controversies around biological sex and gender identity. I’m a barrister, specialising in discrimination and employment law and chair of the new human rights organisation Sex Matters, so I take a professional as well as a personal interest in the subject. My stance is broadly ‘gender critical’. I believe that biological sex is real, and that sometimes has consequences that matter; that there are exactly two sexes; and that although human beings are free to embrace the gendered behaviour associated with the opposite sex, and even to modify their bodies so that they look more like a member of the opposite sex, they cannot literally change sex.

These facts are obviously true, and the vast majority of people believe them. And yet they are now also bitterly contested. Many of those writing and campaigning in this area have suffered bullying, no-platforming, threats to their livelihoods, and even threats of death or rape.