JL

Men shouldn't be in women's and girls' changing rooms, period. There is no test in existence to determine whether a man is or is not a threat to women before he's committed an assault. Innumerable men who claim to be women have sexually assaulted women. A simple Google search will give you the names and histories. Men as a group pose a threat to women, as a group. The statistics don't change when the men identify as women. On the contrary, there are currently more trans-identified men in jail in the UK for sexual offences than there are among the general male prison population. The reason this man was able to access unclothed women is that Planet Fitness thought it was progressive to let men into women's single-sex spaces. Women have been warning for years that women and girls would be harmed if corporations and institutions decided to placate the trans lobby and admit men to changing rooms and public bathrooms. These sexual assaults were entirely preventable. I repeat: I hope the women who've been assaulted sue.

Trans women are men. All of them. It is impossible for a woman to be a trans woman. What you propose means women losing their sex-based rights. Those are the rights under discussion. If you want to campaign for trans-identified men to have their own spaces away from other men, have at it. But you don’t want that, which proves that your priority isn’t those men’s safety. What you want is for women to sacrifice their safety, privacy and dignity to validate men’s identities. You are, in short, a men’s rights activist who berates women for saying no to your fellow men.

Bravo, @Keir_Starmer, for getting in an Adviser on Women and Girls who thinks the definition of women and girls includes men and boys. That'll definitely win back people who believe Labour's a party for smug, lanyard-wearing, luxury-belief-espousing cultural elitists. 1/2

As another man who once worked with me declares himself saddened by my beliefs on gender and sex, I thought it might be useful to compile a list for handy reference. Which of the following do you imagine makes actors and directors who aren’t involved with the HBO reboot of Harry Potter so miserable? Is it my belief that women and girls should have their own public changing rooms and bathrooms? That women should retain female-only rape crisis centres? That men don’t belong in women’s sport? That female prisoners shouldn’t be incarcerated with violent men and male sex offenders? That women should remain a protected class in law, because they have sex-specific needs and issues? That language should reflect reality rather than ideological jargon, especially in a medical context? That women shouldn’t be harassed, persecuted or fired for refusing to pretend humans can change sex? That women should not be threatened with violence and rape when they assert their rights? That freedom of speech and belief are essential to a pluralistic democratic society? That troubled minors, especially those who are gay, autistic and trauma-experienced, should be given mental health support instead of irreversible surgeries and drug treatments on non-existent evidence of benefit? That gay people shouldn’t be pressured to include the opposite sex in their dating pools, nor should they be smeared as ‘genital fetishists’ when they don’t? That cross-dressing heterosexual male fetishists aren’t actually oppressed, but having the time of their lives piggybacking off gender identity ideology? That said ideology, and the privileged, blinkered fools pushing it because they suffer zero consequences themselves, have done more damage to the political left’s credibility than Trump and Farage could have achieved in a century? Let me have your thoughts.

They said I couldn’t do it. They said it would’ve happened by now. They told me to give up, to move on, to admit defeat. I’m here today to tell you: never give up on your dreams.