The most insulting International Women’s Day campaign

Happy International Women’s Day! A few years ago, this jaunty greeting would have left me snorting with derision. I pooh-poohed the very notion of International Women’s Day. Back then, it seemed that women were smashing glass ceilings, narrowing the gender pay gap and overtaking men when it came to education and entering the professions. Set against all these successes, a day to celebrate women seemed like either an excuse to wallow in long-lost victimhood or a naff marketing campaign.

That was then. This year you can send me all the flowers and chocolates you like. I am celebrating. Now, thanks to the dominance of transgender ideology, just being a woman – an adult, human female – feels like an act of defiance. There are constant efforts to erase the word ‘woman’ from public life, to redefine womanhood as nothing more than a feeling and to abolish female-only spaces: prisons, hospital wards and changing rooms.