For over a century, International Women’s Day (IWD) has been celebrated across the globe to highlight the extraordinary achievements of ordinary women. Held annually on March 8, I used to think it was a positive day. This year, however, I just feel angry.
Although proud of the progress we’ve made, we find ourselves fighting on a new front — and in the unimaginable position of seeing hard-won rights being rolled back.
Incredibly, we’re at a point when even the word ‘woman’ is controversial. We’ve become ‘cervix-havers’, ‘uterus-owners’ and in extreme cases ‘non-men’. Politicians, meanwhile, flounder when asked: ‘What is a woman?’ As an MP as well as a mother, it makes me despair.
The reluctance to defend women and girls is due to a small but very vocal group of trans activists, determined to let men self-identify as women, under the guise of ‘gender ideology’.
What started as an attempt to ensure that a very small minority of people with ‘gender dysphoria’ (those who feel there’s a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity) were not discriminated against has morphed into a powerful global movement which allows men to claim to be women.
ROSIE DUFFIELD explains why she feels angry on this year’s International Women’s Day
By uttering the magic words ‘I am a woman’ or ‘I identify as a woman’, suddenly men can enter female-only spaces such as refuges for the victims of rape or domestic abuse. This is without any commitment to have gender reassignment surgery or take hormones — not that that would make them women anyway.
It was inevitable that predatory men would take advantage of this. It is why we are seeing male abusers, rapists and murderers being called ‘she’ and ‘her’ in court and in many countries gaining access to women’s prisons.
I am proud to stand with a group of courageous women who are fighting back. We have taken part in this Mail photoshoot to raise awareness on the eve of International Women’s Day. Known as ‘gender criticals’ or ‘sex realists’, we believe in some — not all — circumstances, the sex of a person really matters.
This might sound like common sense, but we have all faced a backlash for saying as much. Labelled ‘Nazis’ and ‘bigots’, many of us have received rape and death threats. Some have been victims of doxxing (where names and addresses are published online), stalked and, in the worst cases, suffered physical abuse.
I’ve had death threats and each week some man or other emails saying he would like to ‘re-educate’ me. Although MPs are used to hostility in Westminster, sometimes I feel not a soul is on my side. Even some Labour MP colleagues are hostile towards me in the chamber.
It’s also obvious I’ve been ‘softly cancelled’ from television and radio debates. I used to be invited onto political TV panel shows every few weeks with colleagues such as Jess Phillips. Jess is still asked, but it is years since I was.
Sometimes I feel utterly exhausted by it all. What gives me hope and strength is this army of women who stubbornly refuse to ‘budge up and make way’ for men who claim to represent us. We will not hand over our rights easily. We’ve had enough.
We are fighting to preserve the right to female-only spaces — from refuges to prisons — and wish to protect the safety, dignity and privacy of women too vulnerable to speak up themselves.
MP ROSIE DUFFIELD unites a battle-hardened group of campaigners: the women who refuse to be silence. L to R: Karen Ingala Smith, Helen Joyce, Fiona Mcanena, Emma Bateman, Cathy Larkman, Heather Binning
Every day my inbox is filled with messages from UK women who are frightened, furious, or both. They are unsure if they can ask for a female carer for their elderly mother’s intimate care. They despair that single-sex changing rooms are vanishing. Their daughters tell them that a boy who is identifying as a girl has joined the girls’ sports team at school and they’re scared to speak out.
Happily, we are gaining ground in this battle, albeit slowly.
Maya Forstater lost her job at a think tank for expressing ‘gender-critical’ views — but won a landmark employment case. Now we can no longer be discriminated against over our views on sex and gender in a democratic society.
The Civil Service, once wholly captured by ‘gender ideology’, was the first to set up a Sex Equality and Equity Network (SEEN) to ensure that discrimination against women could not prevail.
These networks are now cropping up in the police, HR organisations and the City.
It is a different matter in the NHS, however. Women who work in it tell me they’re scared to speak up when terms describing women’s bodies are being changed and corrupted. Yet social politics should be nowhere near public health. The NHS is there to cure people, and if women need a female doctor for an intimate examination, they should be allowed to ask for one without being labelled a bigot.
As for schools, I’ve had emails from headteachers begging for help in handling more and more children identifying out of their own sex. Recent guidance was of help but didn’t go far enough.
Children struggling with their identities need mental health support, compassionate care and to be treated on a case-by-case basis.
Rosie (pictured centre, with Maya Forstater, left, and Sonya Douglas, right) has had death threats, been ‘cancelled’ on TV and shunned by fellow MPs
In sport, boys and men worldwide are entering female categories as they ‘identify’ as girls and women — surprise, surprise, they go on to smash female records. Some are even insisting on dressing in female changing rooms, which can be incredibly distressing for many women and girls.
And it’s not limited to high-profile sporting events. Just this week, Kenwood Ladies’ Pond members voted to continue to allow male bathers in if they identified as women. This was despite opposition from many women who feel uncomfortable or threatened by ‘women’ with male genitalia in their space.
Yet thanks to women such as Fiona McAnena, who until recently headed up Fair Play for Women, there are now rules to protect female categories in sports such as swimming and cycling, which are now banning males.
I applaud sporting legends such as tennis ace Martina Navratilova and Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies who have spoken about the dangers and injustice to women.
Hockey, tennis, basketball and squash, however, are still allowing men to be women. We might even see male players in the female categories in archery, weightlifting, rowing and skateboarding at this summer’s Paris Olympics. It’s not fair on the women losing out at elite level but it’s also not fair on the young girls who may be deterred from competing at all.
In politics, speaking up for women is becoming harder. I’ve been labelled a ‘transphobe’ for simply liking a tweet that says only a woman can have a cervix.
In 2019 I gave an account of my experience of domestic abuse to the House of Commons, detailing the months of verbal abuse, humiliation and financial control I’d kept secret from friends and family. Although it brought some members of the Commons to tears, I was still vilified in other quarters.
I’ve also been lied about, betrayed and abused with numerous complaints about my ‘behaviour’. Even my ‘liking’ of certain tweets has been utilised by those who want to see me ousted from politics.
Artist Sonya Douglas, on the advisory board of Freedom in the Arts and Sex Matters, says: ‘We’ve seen the chilling effect of a politicised diversity drive in the arts, which has played out in the cancellation of various women’
Some colleagues have supported my views privately, then gone on television and criticised me. They’re cowards, but it still makes me feel very isolated.
I can’t pretend the criticism and abuse does not take its toll both emotionally and psychologically. I sometimes wonder how much more I can take. But again, I find strength and solace in knowing I am not alone.
I’m lucky to have author J. K. Rowling as a friend. Famously, she has received a barrage of vile abuse and death threats for speaking out, and yet every time she does she helps more of us be braver. Kind and funny, she has often leapt to my defence on social media.
Another group under attack are same-sex-attracted women. There was much derision when I spoke out about how lesbians are being ‘pressurised into dating so-called lesbians with a penis’, but it’s true.
A barrister friend who is currently dating will send me screenshots of the people on her dating apps, many of them heterosexual men who are simply calling themselves ‘lesbian’. This is grossly offensive to her and other lesbians. But if women complain, they are called all sorts of names and are thrown off the dating app themselves.
Violence against women is another issue I feel passionately about, due to my own experiences.
Every year around the time of International Women’s Day, in the House of Commons, my colleague Jess Phillips reads out the names of women murdered by men.
Last week her list included the names of 98 women, at least half of whom, she said, could have been saved.
It makes grim listening but is necessary to highlight that men’s violence against women is not abating.
Today, we are asking women everywhere to help us stand up for the most vulnerable women and girls.
Trans extremism might not affect you personally but it does affect those in prison, those in care, those who are too scared to speak out about their experiences.
Sex Matters executive director Maya Forstater’s landmark employment tribunal ruled she was discriminated against when she lost her job over sex-based beliefs
Being ‘gender-critical’ does not mean you are ‘anti-trans’, whatever the activists may tell you. I’ve always fully supported the rights of all trans people to live freely as they choose. But women’s rights are sacred, too, and sometimes the sex of a person really matters.
Write to your local politicians in support of female-only rape refuges or domestic abuse shelters.
If your child is at school or plays sports, ask about single-sex changing facilities. And if you find out that a brand or retailer is helping to erode women’s rights, take your money elsewhere.
Join our irrepressible army of women and let’s stand together with a common goal. They can threaten us, ghost us, cancel us. But we will march on.