JULIE BINDEL: Shame on the liberals who jumped aboard trans bandwagon (2025)

Heading to court, I couldn’t help but think back to January 2004, when my first column on the trans issue was published. I railed against the idea that men can decide to be women because of some internal ‘feeling’.

At the time, the trans rights movement was gathering pace, and although this pre-dated social media, online groups were already facilitating the men lurking on lesbian community groups demanding to be validated as lesbians.

Increasing numbers of reasonable people are now recognising what we’ve been through.

For me, these 20+ years have been both life-changing and career-changing and I could never pretend that it has not had the most profound effect.Shunned from liberal society, mysteriously ‘disappeared’ from shortlists for journalism prizes, having invitations to events such as theSydney Literary Festival rescinded, being offered weekly columns only to then be told the decision had been put on hold.

The list goes on and on.

Turning up to events at which I was billed to speak (pro bono) as an activist about issues such as child sexual abuse, domestic violence, rape, and all aspects of male violence against women – only to find a 200-strong, screaming, angry demonstration against me.

Being shouted at as I sat on a panel, having things thrown at me. The death and rape threats came thick and fast, and in 2019, I was attacked by a 6- foot-tall, bearded man in a dress outside Edinburgh University, where I had been speaking, alongside other feminists, about the importance of single-sex spaces.

I recount this not to elicit sympathy but to outline the reality of a feminist like me who speaks out against the abuse of women. But the problem with this terrible war (I can’t call it a debate, because the other side refused to engage) is that the liberals have been on the wrong side of history, claiming it was like “another Section 28” (even though they weren’t there, unlike me) and remaining woefully ignorant of what trans activists were demanding.

They already had their own rights, but they wanted to take our rights from us, demanding to invade the physical spaces we had carved out for ourselves precisely because a significant minority of men pose a danger and a threat to women and girls.

At the time we set up rape crisis centres, domestic violence shelters and single-sex hospital wards and prison wings, barely a peep was heard from men’s rights activists; they knew they had no credible argument against such facilities. Women’s lives literally depended on those spaces, and this remains the case today. Those men didn’t make a fuss because they knew they had the rest of the world as their own playground. Trans activists, however, have posed as progressive, demanding that we lose all those spaces, including those earmarked for lesbians.

As a young woman, being able to hang out in lesbian only spaces was a lifesaver. The open hostility that resulted from being recognised as such by mainstream society meant that it was difficult for us to ever be ourselves. We couldn’t relax, enjoy each other’s company, have a drink and get to know each other, date and have fun. But those spaces gave us all of that, and then the transactivists came along, demanding that men be allowed not just to be included in those spaces – but to dominate them.

Sadly, many liberals jumped on board the transactivist train, and betrayed us by failing to apply any critical thinking.

Led along like a load of sheep, they acted stupidly. But we were the lambs that were slaughtered. They’re still sitting round at dinner parties, their reputations intact. And maybe the non-binary-identified girl child in their life hasn’t yet experienced the horrors of testosterone – unlike some of those I’ve spoken to.

Some incredibly good things have also happened – such as the amazing new friendships I’ve made across a number of divides, which will be lifelong. I co-founded The Lesbian Project with Kathleen Stock, the former philosophy professor at Sussex University who was hounded out of her job for holding perfectly reasonable (and factually correct) views on sex and gender.

The “What is a woman?” question has now been put to the highest court in the land, after the feminist group For Women Scotland challenged the Scottish government’s interpretation of the 2010 Equality Act as meaning that anyone with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) was entitled to the sex-based protections of their “acquired gender”.

The Supreme Court gave us the opportunity to intervene, to tell the judges exactly why it is both obscene and absurd to hand a man a certificate that allows him to pretend he’s a woman (and in many cases that he’s also a lesbian).

Our intervention was simple. We said: lesbians are women who are attracted to other women, lesbians are never men, lesbians don’t have a penis, lesbians are not attracted to men just because they’ve got a certificate, and lesbians must be allowed to gather together in places where men are not present.

As Kate Barker of LGB Alliance posted on X: “Men aren’t lesbians. Even if they really want to be. Even if it makes them sad when we say no. Even if they have cosmetic surgery and take hormones. Even if they have paid £5 for a certificate. Men aren’t lesbians. Not now. Not ever”.

The Supreme Court has ruled that in the Equality Act, “sex” means biological sex – NOT legal sex as modified by a GRC. And “sexual orientation” refers to who people are attracted to: same sex, opposite sex, or both.

For example, a lesbian is defined as a biological female who is attracted to other biological females. If the law counted trans women (who are biological males) as female, a trans woman attracted to women would be considered a lesbian.

Lesbian clubs and associations are allowed by law to restrict membership to women, but if we had lost, they would have to admit biological males who are legally female and attracted to women (that is, heterosexual). The lesbian interveners submitted to the court that this is having a chilling effect on lesbians, discouraging them from using these spaces.

So where do we go from here? Which institutions can we save, and which should be metaphorically burned to the ground? First on my list would be universities – with Edinburgh University at the very top.

We must now ensure that newspapers report the sex of perpetrators of crime accurately, because many such men have been described as “women” after committing acts of violence and abuse – including downloading child abuse images.

Police and prosecutors must also stop recording the preferred “gender identity” of those arrested and charged – for every crime, not just crimes against females.

Employers must undergo proper training on the Equality Act and today’s clarification of it, including on the law as it relates to biological sex and gender identity.

Venues hosting feminists for public events must stop caving into transactivist complaints about women daring to assemble without including men claiming to be women. They need to hold firm and defend free speech, not capitulate to bullies who, having smelt blood, come after us.

There must be recognition and apologies for all of us who have lost jobs, been forced to endure expensive, painful court cases, been gaslit or publicly cancelled from events, told we are bigots and on the wrong side of history.

The suffering has been horrendous – yet, in the spirit of feminist pride, we have soldiered on. It has taken its toll, but we have always known we are on the right side of history.

Julie Bindel is the UK’s leading feminist campaigner who has written a new book Lesbians:Where Are We Now?