The Social World

Tag: Trans issues

  • Why do white men’s feelings matter more than black lesbians’?

    Why do white men’s feelings matter more than black lesbians’?

    So there you have it: the feelings of white men matter more than the rights of black lesbians. That’s the takeaway from the mad fracas at a Gold’s Gym in Los Angeles this week, where a female gym-goer by the name of Tish Hyman says her membership was unceremoniously revoked. Her offense? She dared to complain about the presence of a person with a penis – what we used to call a bloke – in the women’s changing room.

    Ms. Hyman is a lesbian and a singer originally from the Bronx in New York. She says she encountered a man who identifies as a woman in the changing area of the gym she uses in LA. She was shaken.

    “I was naked in the locker room,” she said. “I turn around and there’s a man there in boy clothes, lip gloss, standing there looking at me. I’m butt naked.” Understandably unsettled by this experience, she made a fuss. And yet it was reportedly her who was kicked out.

    Clips of the showdown between Ms. Hyman and the gym staff have gone viral. They make for extraordinary viewing. In one, Hyman makes an impromptu and thundering speech in the gym’s reception area.

    “Men, grown men, with big dicks, in the women’s locker room!” she says. “Everyone saw that man in the women’s locker room but no one’s saying shit.” She is, though. “I’m fucking done with it,” she says. Many people – me included – will have cheered while watching this forceful, moving plea for a woman’s right to privacy and dignity.

    The response of her fellow gym-goers was somewhat more muted. As she holds forth on how scandalous it is that a member of the opposite sex was allowed to see her naked – “without my permission” – they just mill around, nonplussed. I guess that’s LA for you, a city so sozzled on “social justice” nonsense that it shrugs its shoulders at the thought of males in a female changing room.

    In another clip, Ms. Hyman can be seen confronting the male in question. There seems to be some historic beef here. It would appear that she has filed complaints about him before but nothing was done. He is quite clearly a man. I know you’re not supposed to say that. I know it’s “transphobic.” But, like Ms. Hyman, I’m done with surrendering the truth of my own eyes to appease ideologues who dream of erasing the reality of sex. Truth matters. As do women’s rights.

    Isn’t it crazy where “progressive” politics has ended up? A woman booted out after she objected to the presence of a male in a women-only zone. A black lesbian reprimanded for daring to challenge a white male. A black woman in 2020s America reportedly banished from a building for standing up for her right to undress in peace.

    Imagine going back to 2005 and trying to explain this to people – that in the future a black lady would be punished for not wanting male eyes on her naked body. People would have thought you mad. There’s no way that will happen, they’d have said. Yet here we are. Tish Hyman in LA. Sandie Peggie in Fife, the nurse who’s suing her hospital trust for making her share an intimate space with a trans-identifying male. The Darlington nurses who are also suing their trust for compelling them to disrobe among biological males. The lunacy is transatlantic.

    Women’s rights have been broken on the wheel of the trans ideology. It’s so clear now that what passes for “progressive” activism is really an assault on the properly progressive gains of the 20th century. It feels like misogyny in drag: the unwinding of the hard-won rights of womankind dressed up in the language of progress. Such is the social delirium unleashed by identity politics and the cult of DEI – we end up in a situation where a black lesbian is shamed for wanting the most basic of rights.

    It’s not trans-identifying males who are part of a new civil-rights movement. It’s women like Tish Hyman, who are speaking out for the re-establishment of women’s dignity. There was a Rosa Parks vibe to her angry gym speech. Where Mrs. Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus, Ms. Hyman refuses to get undressed in front of male strangers. Two cries for liberty I can get behind.

  • Why is mocking Brigitte Macron a crime?

    Why is mocking Brigitte Macron a crime?

    Ten people have gone on trial in Paris accused of harassing France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron, online. The defendants, eight men and two women aged between 41 and 60, are charged with “moral harassment by electronic means” and making a false claim that she was born a man by the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux. Prosecutors say their posts, many of which mocked her marriage to the President and repeated the rumor about her gender, amounted to targeted abuse. In closing, prosecutors requested suspended sentences. The defendants deny wrongdoing.

    The case stems from a complaint filed by Brigitte Macron in 2024, after a theory claiming she was transgender spread widely across French social media. Some of those now on trial shared or commented on videos repeating the rumor. Others posted memes or insults targeting her appearance and marriage. Under France’s criminal code, “moral harassment by electronic means” can lead to up to two years in prison and fines of €30,000. The court is expected to deliver its verdict later this year.

    The defendants include a small business owner, an elected local official, a computer technician and a teacher. Their alleged crime was to repost memes or post comments mocking the First Lady to modest online audiences, although some gathered considerable views. None have the resources of the presidential couple. Yet they face criminal conviction and possible prison sentences. In another country, such behavior might earn a temporary suspension from social media, or, more likely, the behavior would simply be ignored. In France, it’s a matter for the tribunal correctionnel.

    The rumor about Brigitte Macron first appeared in 2021 in Faits et Documents, a niche newsletter with a tiny circulation edited at the time by Xavier Poussard, a researcher. Its “investigation” claimed, in meticulous detail, that Brigitte Macron was born a man and was in fact the biological father, not the mother, of her three children. The theory goes that Jean-Michel transitioned prior to becoming Macron’s drama teacher when he was 15 and Brigitte was 40. The claim is false as birth records show Brigitte Macron was born female in 1953. Criminalization of the allegations is the real story.

    Whatever one thinks of the law, the scale of the vitriol directed at Brigitte Macron has been ugly. Mocking her age and appearance has long been a national sport. Adding fabricated claims about her identity turned it into something darker. Online pile-ons can become a form of mob harassment. Prosecutors portrayed the posts as part of a sustained campaign of humiliation. Brigitte Macron did not attend, but her daughter Tiphaine Auzière told the court that the conspiracy had “devastated” her mother’s health, describing anxiety, insomnia and withdrawal from public life. The judge noted evidence of a “deterioration” in her well-being.

    The theory circulated on fringe French websites before migrating into mainstream social media. Poussard later expanded his claims into a book, Becoming Brigitte, which Candace Owens then promoted to a global audience. Owens said she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron… is in fact a man.” When the Macrons filed their defamation suit in Delaware in July 2025, they accused Owens of “disregard[ing] all credible evidence” that Mrs Macron was born female, and of using the claim to monetize outrage. Owens replied that the lawsuit itself was proof that the allegations are true: “If you need any more evidence that Brigitte Macron is definitely a man, it is just what is happening right now.”

    It’s an unpleasant episode, but hardly an exceptional one in the age of social media. Public figures are mocked, insulted and caricatured daily, often far worse than this. Yet in France, ridicule of public figures has a curious way of turning into a matter for the courts. From injure publique to outrage à fonctionnaire, the French state has long confused personal dignity with public order. The Macron presidency, with its high-profile lawsuits, has continued that confusion.

    France has always been conflicted about free speech. It celebrates Charlie Hebdo as a national symbol of defiance, yet prosecutes ordinary citizens for lesser acts of mockery. Even in Britain, with its infamous policing of speech, a case like this about a politician would never reach a courtroom. Britain has its own pitfalls, strict libel laws and “defamation tourism” among them. But the British expect their public figures to endure ridicule, whereas the French state tends to police it. Insulting those in power has long been treated as a kind of lèse-majesté, even in the Republic that prides itself on having guillotined its kings. 

    There’s also a deeper absurdity here. The very premise of the online attacks is that Brigitte Macron was born a man, and is therefore “trans.” The prosecution’s case rests on factual falsehood, not hostility to trans people, yet the optics are hard to ignore. The state insists on tolerance in principle but reacts with outrage when that same vocabulary brushes too close to power. Either France believes gender identity deserves respect, or it believes that being called trans is defamatory. It cannot have it both ways.

    That irony is even sharper given the couple’s record. In 2018, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron turned the Élysée courtyard into a public dance floor for the Fête de la Musique, inviting queer and transgender performers, including DJ and activist Kiddy Smile, whose troupe vogued on the palace steps in front of the presidential couple. The event, widely promoted by the Élysée itself, was hailed as a symbol of inclusivity. The event has been attacked by the right as a sign of moral decay. Yet seven years later, the same presidency would now appear to treat being called transgender as an insult. The President and First Lady who once posed for photographs with queer dancers are effectively asking the courts to criminalize anyone who implies the First Lady is trans.

    For a couple who insist the facts are on their side, the Macrons’ response has been strangely theatrical. Each new lawsuit amplifies the story they want buried. A calm, factual rebuttal would have ended the matter long ago, as would perhaps simply ignoring the rumor entirely, or even a DNA swab test. Instead, the Macrons have turned the allegations into a global courtroom saga that guarantees the rumor endless life.

    What makes this case remarkable is not the vulgarity of the posts, the internet is full of that, but the reaction from the Élysée. Brigitte Macron has launched a defamation lawsuit against Candace Owens, while prosecutors pursue these ten individuals in France. For a presidential couple that prides itself on intellect and poise, it’s a surprisingly brittle response.

    Does it not occur to the President that the more he and his wife fight the rumor, the more oxygen they give it? Each legal action guarantees another round of headlines and another surge of online curiosity about the very claim they want buried. It’s a textbook case of the Streisand effect, when the attempt to suppress a rumor amplifies it.

    None of this is intended to defend the trolls. Their posts are crude, and few deserve sympathy. But public life comes with a price, and the price is mockery. Sometimes politicians are better advised simply to put up with it. The Macrons may win in court. They will not win in silence.

  • ‘Gender-affirming care’ is never justified

    ‘Gender-affirming care’ is never justified

    Even now, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans just assume that there is a vast and vulnerable cohort of kids who are born “trans” and need so-called “gender-affirming care.” They look at the protests and listen to progressive politicians and assume that there must be at least some evidence that pediatric medical transition helps children in distress.

    It would be unthinkable to have put children through all this for nothing, and for American medics to have gone along with it all. But the awful truth is that there is no evidence that allowing children to transition actually works in any meaningful sense. An analysis recently published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy has finally cut through the noise with a simple but devastating tool: a calculator.

    And as you read the evidence and absorb its implications, consider also that the European Commission is about to propose new legislation that would allow any European citizen, of any age, to legally change gender without consulting a physician or getting their parents’ permission and support. And under the proposed legislation, any nation that objects would be subject to having all its EU funding cut off.

    The paper, by my colleague, Lauren Schwartz, a senior fellow at the non-profit Do No Harm, and M. Lal, uses the medical establishment’s own numbers to check its work. The conclusion is disturbing, suggesting that a medical scandal is unfolding on a scale that has been dangerously underappreciated.

    In short, the article shows that, even according to the standards of those who would help children to transition, there is simply no justification for the mass medicalization of healthy children under the guise of “gender-affirming care.”

    The harms are significant, including diminished bone density, cardiovascular disease and infertility

    The authors’ method is simple. First, they establish a clear baseline for the number of adolescents who meet gender activists’ own “clinical” criteria for gender dysphoria. They do this by synthesizing three major reviews co-authored by ten of the key figures behind the most recent World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) standards of care – the very guidelines cited by proponents of medical transition. These WPATH-aligned professionals estimate the prevalence of the clinical population to be around 4.6 to 7.5 per 100,000 individuals.

    Next, the authors compare these numbers with recent data on how many adolescents are actually being diagnosed and treated. They cite a study from this year in the journal JAMA Pediatrics which found that approximately 100 out of every 100,000 American adolescents received puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones between 2018 and 2022.

    The discrepancy between the clinical population and those receiving treatment is staggering – a gap greater than one order of magnitude. According to the field’s own standards, more than 92 percent of kids receiving these interventions fall outside the clinical threshold for severe gender-related distress. Yet these are also vulnerable, confused kids, often struggling with a multitude of behavioral health challenges.

    Lisa Littman was among the first researchers to observe such a troubling trend beyond baseline prevalence: a surge of adolescent girls suddenly identifying as transgender despite no earlier signs of gender-related distress.

    In 2018, she published a study based on parent reports, introducing the term “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” Rather than sparking thoughtful inquiry within the field, her work was met with intense backlash.

    But Littman was on to something. Her early observations pointed to a powerful influence: the role of social contagion and online communities. These platforms often amplify certain narratives, contributing to a surge in self-identification that far exceeds the true clinical population.

    Moreover, this troubling trend isn’t just confined to the United States. Britain has seen a similar phenomenon with a rapid rise in diagnoses beyond any prior prediction. Another study from this year found a 50-fold increase in gender dysphoria diagnoses in UK primary care for children and young people between 2011 and 2021.

    The Schwartz and Lal analysis provides the chilling answer to what this really means: a profound shift from treating a small, well-defined clinical group to medicalizing a much larger, overwhelmingly non-clinical population. It’s no longer a vague feeling that “too many kids are being medicalized.” It is a specific, quantifiable crisis.

    Yet even among the minority of children who do fall within the clinical population, puberty blockers and hormones aren’t the answer. Multiple systematic reviews reveal no reliable evidence of benefit. The harms, however, are significant, including diminished bone density, cardiovascular disease and infertility – to name just a few.

    What these struggling kids need is psychosocial support and psychotherapy. In that regard, countries such as England, Finland and Sweden are now leading the way in restricting medicalization and focusing on psychological and psychiatric care, while around them many in the EU double down.

    Simply put, subjecting children to dangerous medical interventions in the name of “gender-affirming care” is never justified.

    The scale of the problem is no longer a matter of opinion; it’s a number. We now have the data to demand accountability and we must do just that. We must use this new evidence to ensure that we protect vulnerable children by returning to a standard of care that is cautious, ethical and, above all, evidence-based.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.

  • The fad for transgenderism is unbelievable – and should stay that way

    The fad for transgenderism is unbelievable – and should stay that way

    For years, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has wrapped itself in a guise of medical expertise, advising doctors, schools and corporations in America about how best to treat the hundreds of thousands of people who have mysteriously become confused about which sex they are (personally, I’d recommend a quick dart to the loo to pull down their pants). In truth, WPATH is an advocacy organization whose storm troops comprise manic men in dresses who hate women but also think they are women. Get your head around that.

    In 2024, a trove of intra-organizational emails exposed the recklessness of WPATH’s indiscriminate promotion of “gender-affirming care” (neither affirmative nor care) for ostensibly transgender minors. These susceptible children suffer disproportionately from other mental health problems and do not, as WPATH members freely admitted among themselves, possess the competence to give informed consent to life-altering medical treatments. The ignominious emails were published and analyzed in a report entitled The WPATH Files, written by Mia Hughes and widely publicized by the American journalist Michael Shellenberger.

    WPATH stages big, rowdy annual conferences celebrating self-poisoning and genital mutilation all around the world. In recent years, a doughty counter-organization called Genspect has staged conferences in the same city as WPATH’s, to call attention to the copious harms that the past 15 years of cultural intoxication with transgenderism have wrought among families, children and adults who’ve fallen under the sway of gender ideology, and “detransitioners” who’ve woken to the reality that changing sex is neither possible nor desirable but who are often left permanently mangled and emotionally scarred. Last weekend in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was one of Genspect’s speakers. Of necessity, security precautions were ferocious.

    After two days of presentations by young people brutalized by this generational fetish, physicians horrified by its medical consequences, therapists appalled by the complicity of their colleagues and journalists decrying the purposeful bewilderment of schoolchildren, it’s a tough call whether the cumulative effect was depressing or encouraging. Obviously, this ludicrous fashion for pretending to change sex ever having taken such hold is depressing; as fads go, this one is far more destructive than the crazes for pet rocks or razor scooters. Yet the hundreds of determinedly dissenting attendees, including many desolate parents who had lost children to the trans cult, and the dozens of professionals who are risking their reputations to resist the capitulation to gender ideology in their fields, were collectively encouraging.

    The audience and presenters concurred that, slowly and agonizingly, the tide is turning on this vast medical scandal

    The audience and presenters both roughly concurred that, slowly and agonizingly, the tide is turning on this vast medical scandal. Especially thanks to a handful of courageous women such as the Brits Maya Forstater and J.K. Rowling and American investigative reporter Abigail Shrier, it’s now possible to speak aloud what five years ago would have been career-ending heresies. As I’m neither a medical expert nor a parent of a trans child, my utility was primarily hortatory. Set in a fictional near past in which the notion has seized the western world that people are all equally intelligent and that discrimination against dumb people is “the last great civil rights fight,” my most recent novel, Mania,aims to illustrate human vulnerability to ideological contagion. Of the social hysterias that have swept the West since about 2012 – #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Covid lockdowns, climate catastrophism, rabid vituperation against Israel – my “Mental Parity Movement” most resembles the West’s abrupt infatuation with transgenderism.

    Such as there is one, the lesson the novel imparts is the disheartening truism that people will believe anything. Specifically, most people will believe whatever everyone else appears to believe, if only because everyone else appears to believe it. Fortunately, exceptions abound. Mania’s disgusted protagonist represents the minority: skeptics almost genetically immune to psychic pandemics. Yet in a crowd, our species naturally manifests a hive mind whose irrational or even deranged conceits now buzz through the globe’s fiber-optic cables in seconds.

    Thus the thrust of my recent event ran: never relinquish your incredulity. While we skeptics may be constitutionally resistant to deranged popular dogma, we’re still adaptive. We may not believe just anything, but we can get used to anything. So it’s vital to refresh our astonishment at the widespread adoption of a practice that 20 years ago would have been exclusively pursued by a few lost, misguided mental patients.

    The fad for transgenderism is unbelievable and should stay that way. This movement gleefully defies biological reality. Sex is not in the mind but is written in our every cell. “Some people are born in the wrong body” is an absurd, medieval fiction. Because it’s impossible to change sex, transgenderism is merely a psychically, socially and financially expensive form of play-acting. Cynical, fanatical or criminally naive, its doctors impede and corrupt adolescents’ natural development into adulthood, butcher and amputate healthy body parts, destroy erotic function and sterilize young people. Yet for at least a solid decade anyone objecting to this modern-day voodoo has courted infamy, ostracism and unemployment.

    A Genspect montage: one mother asked me to write about her son, who detransitioned, was shunned by the trans “community” and took his own life. Self-described as effeminate from childhood, another detransitioner testified onstage to having been duped by doctors who convinced him he’d have an easier time as a gay man if he lived as a woman. His trans medication halted his growth in adolescence. After emerging from this nightmare, the 22-year-old, originally informed that without pharmaceutical intervention he’d likely grow to between 6ft and 6ft 2in, is now permanently stunted at 5ft 8in. All this tragedy is both utterly unnecessary and deliberate. Never relinquish your incredulity.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 13, 2025 World edition.

  • Emma Watson is utterly unoriginal

    Emma Watson is utterly unoriginal

    For a long time it was handy dinner party fact that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One (2010) briefly filmed at my late grandparents’ house, and appeared as Hermione Granger’s house in the film. Even this required extensive exposure of my grandparents to Warner Brothers’ lawyers, the film crew and, of course, to young Emma Watson herself.

    Neither of my grandparents had heard of Harry Potter before they were approached, and throughout filming, they failed entirely to notice her, though there was some vague recollection of “that rather mousy girl” from my grandpa, who was far more taken with Susan, the 60-something woman in charge of props.

    This description stayed with me as Watson’s star rose and rose, plateaued, and turned gender political. Watson, most people over 40 agree, is a key example of how far the British thespian national treasure has declined: where once we had Shakespearean queens like Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Emma Thompson, now we have little more than a poor woman’s Keira Knightley (and Keira Knightley).

    Watson is certainly a sign of artistically thinner times: she may be good enough for a generation whose childhood literary imagination extended no further than wizards, but seeing her as Belle in 2017’s Beauty and the Beast was a cheapening, sobering experience for those of us who cried and swooned over the Disney cartoon classic in 1991. Feminist point-scoring to the last, Watson refused to wear a corset. “In Emma’s reinterpretation, Belle is an active princess. She did not want a dress that was corseted or that would impede her in any way,” said the film’s costume designer Jacqueline Durran. How radical.

    Watson’s last role as an actress was in Greta Gerwig’s 2019 film Little Women. Since then she has kept herself rather weakly in the limelight by becoming a trans rights cheerleader, and, like her other Potter stars Eddie Redmayne and Daniel Radcliffe, turning on her fairy godmother J.K. Rowling for her “transphobia.” Rowling has posted on X that Watson and her fellow Potter actors were busy “pouring petrol on the flames” when she was getting death threats over trans rights and that unlike them, she “wasn’t a multimillionaire at 14.” Watson is now enrolled on a DPhil at Oxford on the philosophy of creative writing and, rather than jump on the rosé wine brigade, Watson has launched a gin distillery with her brother called Renais. The booze business gets them all in the end.

    Watson wants people to love her. Of her public disavowal of J.K. Rowling, she mewled last week on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast that “It’s my deepest wish that people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.” Hm.

    She also discussed her recent driving ban for speeding, saying “my shame is everywhere” and launching into a mea culpa about how she had some missing basic life skills. Now we learn that for all her lofty political ideas, those years being ferried in luxury to Hollywood sets (and my grandparents’ house in north London) were fatal for her road sense.

    “They literally won’t insure you to drive yourself to work,” she said. “I did not have the experience or skills, clearly, which I now will and do.” Good to know. Watson didn’t attend the court hearing but was gracious about the fine of £1,044 ($1410). She “fully understands her position and will accept her punishment,” her lawyer said, adding: “I ask you to give her credit for the plea of guilty. She is a lady in a position to pay an appropriate fine.”

    On the podcast with Shetty, Watson, worth about £59 million ($79.7 million), leaned into the learning experience of being done for speeding. “It’s been a discovery and a journey that’s been humbling because on a movie set I’m able to do all these extremely complex things: stunts, sing, dance… and then I get home and I’m like: ‘OK, Emma, you seem to be unable to remember keys, you seem unable to keep yourself at 30mph in a 30mph speed limit. You don’t seem able to do some pretty basic life things.’”

    I would wager that her problem with “some pretty basic life things” is more connected to her absorption in naff, damaging politicking. If you live in a world where J.K. Rowling is the enemy, and men who say they are women deserve the full scope of feminist passion because “trans women are women,” then perhaps it’s no surprise that the banal facts of speed limits might seem alien or mundane.

    Of course, tens of millions of pounds, global celebrity, and being the world’s most famous childhood witch, might also make the rules of ordinary life feel remote. Overall, her conviction seems unlikely to cause her too much grief; she’s already taken up cycling, and any opportunity for a spot of soul-searching is no doubt welcome for a woman who is now a humble philosophy doctoral student, albeit with millions in the bank.

  • I was arrested for insulting the trans mob

    I was arrested for insulting the trans mob

    Something odd happened before I even boarded the flight in Arizona. When I handed over my passport at the gate, the official told me I didn’t have a seat and had to be re-ticketed. At the time, I thought it was just the sort of innocent snafu that makes air travel such a joy. But in hindsight, it was clear I’d been flagged. Someone, somewhere, probably wearing unconvincing make-up and his sister/wife’s/mum’s underwear, had made a phone call.

    The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two – five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets. In a country where pedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilized five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for these tweets (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up):

    …and then, a follow up to that one:

    When I first saw the cops, I actually laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t tell me! You’ve been sent by trans activists.”

    The officers gave no reaction and this was the theme throughout most of the day. Among the rank-and-file, there was a sort of polite bafflement. Entirely professional and even kind, but most had absolutely no idea what any of this was about.

    “Kind” because the officers saw how upset I was – when they began reading me my rights, the red mist descended and I came close to becoming one of those police body-cam videos where you can’t believe the perp isn’t just doing what he’s told – and they treated me gently after that. They even arranged for a van to meet me on the tarmac so I didn’t have to be perp-walked through the airport like a terrorist. Small mercies.

    At Heathrow police station, my belt, bag, and devices were confiscated. Then I was shown into a small green-tiled cell with a bunk, a silver toilet in the corner and a message from Crimestoppers on the ceiling next to a concave mirror that was presumably there to make you reflect on your life choices.

    By some miracle – probably because I hadn’t slept on the flight – I managed to doze off. After the premier economy seat in which I’d just spent ten hours, it was actually a relief to stretch out. That passed the time, though I kept waking up wondering if it was all actually happening.

    Later, during the interview itself, the tone shifted. The officer conducting it asked about each of the terrible tweets in turn, with the sort of earnest intensity usually reserved for discussing something serious like… oh, I dunno – crime? I explained that the “punch” tweet was a serious point made with a joke. Men who enter women’s spaces are abusers and they need to be challenged every time. The “punch in the bollocks” bit was about the height difference between men and women, the bollocks being closer to punch level for a woman defending her rights and certainly not a call to violence. (Not one of my best as one of the female officers said, “We’re not that small”).

    He mentioned “trans people.” I asked him what he meant by the phrase. “People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth.” I said: “Assigned at birth? Our sex isn’t assigned.” He called it semantics, I told him he was using activist language. The damage Stonewall has done to the UK police force will take years to mend.

    Eventually, a nurse came to check on me and found my blood pressure was over 200 – stroke territory. The stress of being arrested for jokes was literally threatening my life. So I was escorted to A&E, where I write this now after spending about eight hours under observation.

    The doctors suggested the high blood pressure was stress-related, combined with long-haul travel and lack of movement. I feel it may also have been a contributing factor that I have now spent eight years being targeted by trans activists working in tandem with police in a dedicated, persistent harassment campaign because I refuse to believe that lesbians have cocks.

    The police themselves, for the most part, were consistently decent throughout this farce. Some were even Father Ted fans. Thank God the Catholic Church never had with the police the special relationship granted to trans activists. The male officers were mostly polite but clearly nonplussed by the politics of it all – just doing their jobs, however insane those jobs had become. The female officers seemed more tuned in to what was actually happening. One mentioned the Sandie Peggie case in a certain way, and I realized I was among friends, even if they couldn’t admit it.

    I looked at the single bail condition: I am not to go on Twitter. That’s it. No threats, no speeches about the seriousness of my crimes – just a legal gag order designed to shut me up while I’m the UK, and a demand I face a further interview in October.

    The civility of individual officers doesn’t alter the fundamental reality of what happened. I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online – all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers.

    To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad.