Political Bravery Award: The women who stood up for Gender Critical beliefs
2021 may well go down as the year that it became impossible to ignore the clash between the ongoing campaign for transgender people to be able to self-identify themselves as the opposite sex, and the women’s and children’s rights on which this campaign impinges.
It was also the year when the BBC finally realised Stonewall, at the centre of this campaign in the UK, was a political lobbyist rather than a neutral service provider. And so, it finally left its Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme only after a piece of brilliant radio journalisism by the BBC’s very own Stephen Nolan and David Thompson. It was the two Ulstermen’s ten-part series which methodically exposed the sharp practice that Stonewall had been pulling off for years, with hundreds of companies: assess them for “diversity”, and then sell their services to those same companies to fill the gaps identified. Conflict of interests? Us?
But perhaps most importantly, the “cancellation” of figures who challenge the Stonewall-driven conventional wisdom – that men should be able to get access to women’s spaces by dint of simply saying that they identify as one – continues apace. It continues even to the point of apparently being official Labour policy, much to the dismay of many of its members and voters. Partly for this reason – with a few noble exceptions – it has mostly fallen to non-politicians to take a political stand on this.
Now this year, as for the last several years, J K Rowling – in the face of a furious backlash from the entertainment and literary industries – has been in the news for periodic, uncompromising tweets and articles on women’s rights. To a large extent, she has acted as not just a British but a global figurehead for the many, many women who refuse to be told to pipe down on this issue.
