Julie Bindel

As the cost-of-living crisis bites and a recession looms, women are once again being fed a dangerous message: that the sex trade might be a great place to make money. In an article on the BBC website, OnlyFans has been cited as a lucrative way for attractive youngsters to top up their income.  Soaring prices have, we are told by the BBC, 'led to a rise in young people posting sexual content for money'. The report cites as an example Alexia, a 20-year-old, who posts pictures and videos of herself on the internet. The BBC says her '9-5 salary is now dwarfed by the earnings she makes from her online presence.' It goes on: 'Since she started, she has managed to gain thousands of followers and says posting on the site earns her more than £3,000 a month.

Stella Creasy thinks that trans-women are women and should be treated as such. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the Labour MP said: 'Do I think some women were born with penises? Yes, but they are now women and I respect that.' Yet what was left unspoken is the fear among those of us who were born female about what this means for women's rights. Creasy supports self-identification because she thinks it’s 'bonkers' that a man who wishes to be legally recognised as a woman has to have the backing of two doctors. But what is 'bonkers' is the risk that single-sex spaces, such as prisons, changing rooms, hospital wards, and domestic violence refuges, could at some stage in the future be opened up to those who were born male.

We're closing 2021 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here's No. 10: Julie Bindel's piece from March on the Green party's muddle over trans rights: At the Green party spring conference this weekend, a motion which sought to introduce a party policy on women’s sex-based rights was defeated. A whopping 289 delegates (out of 521) voted to not include biological females in the party’s list of oppressed groups. All the motion aimed to do was simply add a paragraph to the Green party’s ‘Our Rights and Responsibilities Policy’.

A ruling by the Court of Appeal last week has further enshrined the notion that women can consent to their own death if the man responsible puts forward a defence that she died during ‘rough sex gone wrong’. In February this year, Sophie Moss, an extremely vulnerable woman suffering from a range of mental and physical health problems, was choked to death during sex by Sam Pybus. Although some press reports described the pair as ‘lovers’ there was nothing romantic about the relationship between the two. Pybus would occasionally visit Moss for sex, leaving his wife Louise Howitt asleep. There were no illicit candlelit dinners, no walks in the park, just sex with a woman often so drunk when Pybus turned up at her door that she would have been incapable of speech.

I know what it feels like to be bullied and vilified for expressing views with which, eventually, many right-minded people end up agreeing. I am talking, of course, about transgender ideology and the case of Professor Kathleen Stock which this week was belatedly picked up by the mainstream press. In short, a group of University of Sussex students started a campaign for Stock to be sacked on the spot, claiming she was ‘espousing a bastardised version of radical feminism that excludes and endangers trans people’. The group – a collection of poundshop Antifas – said Stock was a danger to transgender people, arguing: ‘We're not up for debate. We cannot be reasoned out of existence.

‘We are sickened, angered and devastated by this man’s crimes which betray everything we stand for,’ said the Metropolitan Police in response to the sentencing of Wayne Couzens. He is the former police officer who, when in service, kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard, later setting fire to her body. The case in March sparked national outrage about the levels of male violence towards women and girls. Not only do significant numbers of police officers spectacularly fail women when it comes to sexual and domestic violence, but they commit these crimes themselves. The two things are connected. If male police officers see women as worthless, and if there is little accountability when it comes to violence against women, they will feel double impunity.

The headline reads, ‘UK Equalities Minister Goes on Anti-LGBTQ Rant in Leaked Audio'. Oh dear, I thought. As a lesbian and a harsh critic of the Tory government, I wondered what had been said. I scoured the piece in Vice, expecting something along the lines of ‘pervert’ and ‘unnatural’ and something about how we will be marrying our vacuum cleaners next. But it was all rather tame and boring. Badenoch said: It’s now, you know like, it’s not even about sexuality now, it’s now like the whole transgender movement, where, OK well we’ve got gay marriage and civil partnerships, so what are transsexuals looking for?