Julie Bindel is a feminist campaigner against sexual violence. She is the host of The Lesbian Project podcast, with Kathleen Stock.
It’s interesting, the way that laws and policy can change seemingly out of the blue. In April last year, following a massive outcry from feminists and others concerned about trivial matters such as the safety and wellbeing of incarcerated women, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) released a press statement about changes to the policy on transgender prisoners,
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
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
Last time I visited Toronto, Canada, I stayed in Greektown, home to one of the largest Greek communities in North America. Several scenes from My Big Fat Greek Wedding were filmed here, and street signs are in Greek as well as English. On the day I arrived, jetlagged and disorientated, I happened upon a restaurant that was
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
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
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On this week’s podcast: Could China be the key to peace in Ukraine? In his cover piece for the magazine this week Owen Matthews reveals the covert but decisive role China is playing in the Ukraine war. He is joined by The Spectator’s Cindy Yu, to discuss what Xi’s motivations are (00:53). Also this week: Harriet Sergeant
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.
I could not have been more delighted when the group Women’s Place UK (WPUK) asked me to chair an online event to mark the publication of the book Defending Women’s Spaces, written by my friend and feminist comrade Karen Ingala Smith. Let me tell you a little about Karen. For the past 30 years she has
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
The gastropub, an invention of the early 1990s, is a terrible idea. They burst on to the scene when breweries were made to sell off many of their pubs for a song to make way for competition, encouraging Marco Pierre White wannabes to snap them up and replace cheese sandwiches and pork scratchings with kidneys
A report published today by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services for England and Wales should come as no shock to those of us that campaign to end male violence, such as rape and domestic abuse. The report was commissioned following the case of Sarah Everard who was kidnapped, raped and murdered
At last, Mermaids, the UK charity for, in their own words, ‘gender variant and transgender children’ is under the spotlight. Following investigations by the Telegraph and Mail newspapers, as well as demands from critics concerned about child safeguarding, the Charity Commission has launched a regulatory compliance case and have said that they have written to
The lesbian group Get The L Out UK, founded to protest gender ideology and the pressure on same-sex attracted women to date trans women, joined Pride Cymru yesterday to make their voices heard amidst a sea of hostility. Ever since the trans movement decided that lesbians who reject sleeping with trans women are somehow morally
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
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,
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Julie Bindel is a radical feminist, journalist and activist. Growing up in Darlington, she left school aged 15, and at 16 moved to Leeds in search of – in her own words – ‘scary-sounding feminists’. In the 90s, she founded Justice For Women, a feminist campaigning organisation that supports, and advocates on behalf of, women who
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
In 2010, Mark Kennedy, a tattooed social justice warrior, was exposed as an undercover police officer. In this guise he infiltrated climate change activist groups and in the meantime formed a number of sexual relationships with fellow activists. Kennedy manipulated and deceived several women, including ‘Lisa’, with whom he formed a particularly close bond, while
Over the past weeks, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I have witnessed individuals expressing shock and disbelief at the blatant sexual violation of women and girls fleeing their homeland. Feminist colleagues in Ukraine and Russia tell me that there are thousands of displaced women and girls without any income, food or shelter. The war
