If someone had told me that in 2020, women would be fighting desperately to hang on to the definition of woman I’d have thought they were crazy.

This matters to me because when I was a student in the mid-1980s, I was a feminist (of course!) but I was confident that most of the major battles had been won, and that we were on a trajectory towards genuine equality. If someone had told me that in 2020, women would be fighting desperately to hang on to the definition of woman, in order to protect our hard-won rights, I’d have thought they were crazy.

I have written to my MP, written in support of gender-critical women who raise their voices publicly, written private letters of support to those women; made FOI requests on sex/gender topics; spent several Saturdays leafleting with other women involved in the Fair Play For Women campaign to draw attention to the proposed GRA reforms; completed the govt’s GRA reform consultation questionnaire; completed Edward Lord’s (shocking) consultation on making all City of London visitor attraction toilets mixed-sex; been active on social media; written a (far too occasional) blog; taken every opportunity to talk to family and friends (and selected colleagues) about these issues; attended WPUK and Let A Woman Speak and other events; spoken at Women Say in Hyde Park on IWD 2020; with others, set up a women’s group in our city which meets regularly (before lockdown); am active in a private Slack group for GC professionals in my sector.

As a consequence I have been frozen out of the friendship group I made when my son was a baby, because one of the mothers has a “trans child”. My son has been asked by other students at school (he attends a school which is obsessively proud about its Stonewall status) if his mother is “still a TERF”.

Rachel Bosenterfer, Adult human female. Mother. Loudmouth