You don’t need to say anything more than ‘transwomen are not literally the same as women’ to be considered guilty

I a woman and a mother of girls. I thought feminism was making progress, that their life would be better than mine and mine better than my mother and grandmothers.

I see that my right to define myself and my right to say why I feel kinship with other women can be shouted down as hate speech, and so I have therefore no right to define myself. So feminism is as likely to go backwards as forward.

I’ve written to my MP and complained to IPSO. I have spoken to friends. I have spoken to my girls. I have written a couple of blog posts and was going to give a paper.

I have set up a module that will deal with feminism. That has, weirdly enough, reconfirmed my commitment to feminism and made me more active.

But I am worried about my job, and the negative consequences. I know from colleagues that this is very real and you don’t need to say anything more than ‘transwomen are not literally the same as women’ to be considered guilty. And it is targeted: some colleagues who are not considered ‘terfs’ get to joke about it; others have every word monitored (by students, by the way).

I am relatively new to this debate and am expecting a complaint to happen, as my students are now aware of my views.

M