Julie Bindel is a feminist campaigner against sexual violence. She is the host of The Lesbian Project podcast, with Kathleen Stock.
Peter Sutcliffe, the ‘Yorkshire ripper’, is dead. What is his legacy? He of course leaves behind the countless relatives and loved ones of his victims, whose lives have been torn apart and exist in a fog of pain and torment. The women Sutcliffe killed had no dignity except in the minds of those that knew
Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, should be seen as a feminist hero. When she stood up in the House of Commons last year during a debate on the domestic abuse bill, Duffield moved several colleagues to tears as she recounted the hell she had endured at the hands of a violent male partner.
A ground-breaking case in the High Court will decide this week whether the UK’s only gender identity development service (GIDS) for under-18s will be allowed to continue to prescribe puberty blockers for children as young as 10-years-old. The case against the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, which runs GIDs, is currently conducting its own internal
You have probably never heard of MindGeek, the huge tech company that owns Pornhub: the world’s most popular porn site. Pornhub, which has 42 billion visits per year, is currently under fire for its apparent lack of safeguarding checks. Six million videos a year are posted on the site; some, according to anti-porn campaigners, depicting
So Ruth Bader Ginsburg is gone. What do I hope is her legacy? That younger feminists take a leaf out of her book and fight for real, material change instead of targeting older feminists as ‘bigots’ and ‘irrelevant’. An old-school, early second wave feminist, Ginsburg was nevertheless loved and admired by legions of young women.
Watching the BBC drama Mrs America about the 1970s fight for the Equal Rights Amendment is a reminder that progress is rarely permanent and that feminist battles for women’s liberation always attract backlash, as well as open hatred and disdain. In the show, the right-wing Republican and anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly does battle with second-wave feminists such as Gloria Steinem, Shirley
Imagine this: you are a victim of domestic violence, and your partner regularly strangles you to the point of unconsciousness. During each attack you think you are about to die. You lose control of your bladder during these attacks, and afterwards find it hard to speak, feeling like you have swallowed broken glass. You suffer
OnlyFans.com (OF) is the latest kid on the block to be billed as a safe, consequence-free way of selling sex and home-grown porn that empowers women. The social media site is similar to Instagram, but users pay to subscribe to creators’ feeds. The top earners on OF are women whose subscribers are male. These men
Reading the back cover of the soon to be released Me Not You: The trouble with mainstream feminism, I assumed Titania McGrath had churned out a new book. But on further inspection I realised it is in fact the latest from Alison Phipps, Professor of Gender Studies at Sussex University – a disciple of the
Scotland is planning to change the way in which people can legally change sex, and is currently holding a consultation (which closes next week) on whether trans people should be able to ‘self identify’ as their preferred sex. But some trans people fear that the move toward ‘self-ID’ might be a mistake. Claudia is a
In today’s episode of ‘You Couldn’t Make It up’, I bring you Leila Le Fey, also known as Layla Le Fey, Adam Hodgson and Marcus Smith. Le Fey had pleaded guilty to common assault and possession of an offensive weapon after trying to steal wine from a Budgens in Brighton. When confronted by the shopkeeper,
In my 40 years as a feminist activist campaigning to end male violence, I have never felt so engulfed in a culture of woman hating. I first met feminists in Leeds, West Yorkshire, in 1979, shortly before Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, was finally arrested, weeks after he murdered and mutilated his 13th victim,
In my 40 years as a feminist activist campaigning to end male violence, I have never felt so engulfed in a culture of woman hating. I first met feminists in Leeds, West Yorkshire, in 1979, shortly before Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, was finally arrested, weeks after he murdered and mutilated his 13th victim,
Imagine you are regularly invited to visit universities to speak with students (unpaid) on your specialist subject, but in order to be allowed to enter the campus, you are required to fill out a form to confirm that you are neither a bigot nor likely to cause offence or distress to the students. Unfortunately, I
Are women inherently dishonest? We must be, particularly when accusing men of rape. This is one of the most pervasive of all rape myths: that women love nothing better than maliciously and falsely accusing decent, law-abiding men of sexual violation. Some of the coverage of the poor young woman in Cyprus would lead you to
I decided to go booze free this Christmas. I had a lot of people staying, which means work, stress, and potential vicious, drink-fuelled arguments. With a post-Christmas holiday planned in Cuba, an island drowning in rum, I wanted to give my liver a break in preparation. I prepared well: I got the latest alcohol free
I was pleasantly surprised when I read Labour’s manifesto. Not only did the party promise to end ‘mixed-sex wards’ in hospitals but they also vowed to “ensure that the single-sex-based exemptions contained in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision.” Soon after the manifesto was published yesterday, a number of
When the sex trade survivor Rachel Moran published her memoir, Paid For: My Journey through Prostitution, she knew not everybody would be happy that she’d laid bare the realities of sexual exploitation. Pimps, brothel owners and punters would hardly be pleased that she’d lifted the lid on the world’s oldest oppression. What she could never
I am at a conference on domestic violence today, entitled Stand up to Domestic Abuse, listening to story after story of violent men murdering women they had professed to love. Men who slayed their victims because they had the audacity to attempt to leave them. I hear the dreadful tale told by Luke Hart, whose mother
Change, for some people, is difficult. Hearing voices on the BBC that differ from the Etonian baritone of old must rankle for some. Lauren Laverne, who took over Desert Island Discs (DID) is about as different from a stuffed shirt as one can imagine. Bright, lively, and witty, her fabulous north-east accent makes Laverne a
