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What It Costs: Women Speak Out

Women writers and artists speak out about loss to their creative, personal and professional lives due to trans activism

On reflection: a woman’s place is anywhere but home?

It’s the time of year to draw breath, reflect, and clarify intentions for the new year ahead. This morning was exceptionally quiet in my noisy house, so I looked back through my long list of half-finished, unpublished blog posts. I may publish some of them, as they are a first draft of history. My preoccupations […]

5 best new books of 2021

This was not a year for devouring high volumes of newly-published books. I’m ultra-picky about what I spend my time reading, so here are five books that moved me, and that I would wholeheartedly recommend as worth buying, or making sure your library has a copy. Widowland – CJ Carey This page-turning dystopian thriller perfectly […]

RACHEL ROONEY’S EXIT INTERVIEW FROM PUBLISHING

In December 2019, I received an invitation to a Christmas publishing party. Though in no fit state to attend, I wanted to meet with my illustrator, so I made the extra effort. After experiencing a panic on the underground, and after several false attempts to reach my destination, I exited at the nearest station and […]

On literary fraud: men lying to appropriate women’s resources

As I’ve mostly given up on the only newspaper I used to read regularly, thanks to how it has treated women opposing gender identity ideology (read: the patriarchal Emperor in New Clothes), I nearly missed this story about some Spanish men who scooped a women’s book prize. I’m loathe to give them any further publicity, […]

Review: dreamtime by venetia welby

paperback, £12, Salt This remarkable, disturbing work of literary fiction is like Heart of Darkness meets The Tempest. Revisiting the Animal Groom fairytale, it is set in the not-too-distant future, when humans are clinging onto existence by their fingernails thanks to environmental devastation. The human and environmental costs of violent, dominating masculinity are inescapable. At […]

In conversation with Joan Smith

I was privileged to speak with novelist, essayist, columnist and human rights campaigner Joan Smith about her fiction and non-fiction writing, long walks, and combating men’s violence against women. It was the non-fiction bestseller Misogynies(1989) that brought me to Joan’s work after she spoke up for women’s free expression in the summer of 2019, when a […]

What rights should ‘trans people’ have?

This morning is a very special one for those who cherish women’s rights, because one very impressive woman–supported by many other impressive women–has won a landmark stage of a vital test case. While it was never credible or defensible to compare the terven to racist war criminals, it worked for a while to maintain No […]

Review: Material Girls by Kathleen Stock

Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism by Kathleen Stock, Fleet, hardcover, £16.99 I’ve been eagerly anticipating the publication of this book for over a year, and hoping that it would make it through the clashing rocks of the cancel crew in the book industry. The women who brought it to market have shown real […]

On “transphobia in the book industry”

An anonymous writer sent a three-page screed to the Bookseller which it duly published. While the letter drips with insinuation, it seems to be a response to David Shelley and Clare Alexander’s statements to a Lords committee on free expression. It also seems to be about some children’s authors’ objections to Onjali Rauf’s appointment as […]

Who’s the bully, again?

Here are the things that happened since we published our open letter to the Women’s Prize on 6th April 2021. Have a read and make up your mind who was attempting to “malign or bully” whom. — while we expected the silent treatment, the opposite happened: — 30,000 views of the letter in 24 hours […]