Julie Bindel

While I was writing about the latest scandalous revelation involving the children's charity Mermaids and the Tavistock Gender identity development service (GIDS) it occurred to me that readers of these pages will already be familiar with the key planks of this terrible tale. You will doubtless have seen countless articles critiquing gender ideology and the medical treatments on vulnerable children over the years that have become normalised, and will be aware that gender ideology has seeped into pretty much every key institution in the land.

Emma Pattison and her seven-year-old daughter Lettie were almost certainly killed by her husband George Pattison. As so often happens with cases of family annihilation, George Pattison escaped any criminal sanctions by shooting himself. Emma, who was 45, called a close relative last Saturday, hours before she and her daughter died, sounding ‘distressed’. We also know that a firearm, licenced to Pattison, was recovered at the scene. Police say they are treating the killings as a 'homicide investigation' and are not looking for anyone else in connection. Emma had been working as a head teacher at Epsom College, in Surrey, for only five months when she died. She was the first female head of the college. Emma was, by all accounts, a brilliant teacher.

The news that serving Met Police officer David Carrick has pleaded guilty to 49 sexual offences against women spanning more than two decades took me back to Leeds, 1981. My feminist group was aghast at the news that a young woman we knew had been raped in the back of a police van, but had been kicked out of the police station when she tried to report the crime – rather than being treated as a victim. What has changed in the four decades since then? As a feminist campaigner who has worked alongside police officers to share knowledge and expertise regarding sexual assault and domestic abuse, I can’t help but wonder if we have gone backwards in recent years. Carrick was on the same elite squad in the Met as Wayne Couzens and had access to a firearm.

I hate the fact that I felt a major sense of relief when I saw the news that the World Boxing Council (WBC) has rejected calls from trans-activists to allow male bodied people to compete against females. Rather, they are recommending that a special transgender category is set up, and further, that only male born people can compete with other men.   In other words, men that identify as women cannot get in the ring with actual women and beat them half to death, all in the name of sport.   The announcement is a welcome departure from the usual trans activists calls for male transwomen to compete directly against women. But what if a female boxer weighs as much as her male (transwoman) competitor and has massive muscles, trans activists whinge?

It's been a pretty bad week for the women of Scotland. As Nicola Sturgeon doubles down on the pending legislation that would permit men to self-identify as women ­– legislation that around two thirds of voters are opposed to – the feminist NGO, For Women Scotland, lost a legal case against the Scottish government over its definition of ‘woman’, which includes, well, men.  It is little wonder that, in this world of madness, somebody decided to make a film exploring the issue, aptly entitled, Adult Human Female, which explores the silencing of those that speak out against misogynistic transgender ideology.

Farewell Susie Green, the CEO of Mermaids, a charity that describes itself as supporting ‘trans, non-binary and gender-variant children, young people and their families’.  Green resigned rather abruptly on Friday, and the statement from its chair was short and to the point. An interim CEO will be appointed in due course.   Mermaids has found itself under scrutiny after deciding to bring a case against the LGB Alliance, the only UK-based organisation that focuses exclusively on same-sex attracted people. Mermaids claims it was not, in fact, established to support lesbians, gay men and bisexuals — but rather to discredit and disband trans charities like itself.

The most important job of any union is to support its members against bullies. So why has the Society of Authors, a sort of posh union for writers, illustrators and translators, failed to support members who are receiving death threats? In August, J.K. Rowling tweeted her sympathy for Sir Salman Rushdie after his attempted murder. Imagine how she felt when she received this response: ‘Don’t worry, you are next.’ Rowling is a member of the Society of Authors and expected the union to put pressure on the authorities by condemning the threats against her. Right? Wrong. Not only did the Society fail to defend Rowling, but the chair of the management committee, Joanne Harris, appeared to mock her.

When the Australian actor Rebel Wilson announced the birth of her daughter Royce Lillian, she added the small detail that she had been born by a 'gorgeous' surrogate. Wilson expressed her gratitude to the woman who had carried the child for nine months before giving birth to her: 'Thank you for helping me start my own family, it’s an amazing gift. The BEST gift!!' A child is a human being, and obviously not a ‘present’ – although Big Fertility would have us think differently. Wilson, who had tried IVF three times without success, said that her desire to have her own baby was ‘overwhelming‘. So overwhelming that she thought borrowing another woman’s womb was perfectly acceptable.

Feminists tend to be fascinated with the story of Joan of Arc. She was irreverent, impertinent, way more intelligent than her enemies, and was true to herself and her beliefs right to the end. War hero and religious martyr, Joan has been described as ‘Jesus with a sword’. A 16-year-old peasant girl who decided to take on an entire army is a female to admire and hold up as a role model. But it would seem that we have to make allowances for an ‘intersectional’ and ‘inclusive’ approach and consider whether Joan was female after all. A tweet from Shakespeare’s Globe theatre explained: ‘Our new play I, Joan shows Joan as a legendary leader who uses the pronouns ‘they/them’.