14 years

14 Years

So today, the Supreme Court in Scotland ruled that biological sex is a thing.

I’m sure they said it in a fancier way — I’m not too good with legal jargon — but let’s just say: the patriarchy has officially acknowledged the legal existence of women.
Isn’t that great? Are we supposed to be grateful, ladies?

I, for one, am grateful to all the women who fought this fight and to For Women scotland for leading it. thank you.

But I mean, the patriarchy has taken the time to listen to us, to consider, to think — and has judged: women exist. That men can’t be us. That biology is real.
And by extension, that our single-sex spaces must be respected. we have a right to them.
That we also have the right to call ourselves lesbians, which means the right to exclude men from our lives, our spaces, and our bedrooms.
I mean, we already knew all this, right?

And yet — we needed a legal judgment.
Because patriarchy is one fucked-up system where whatever men say becomes law.
Turns out some of these men like their women without penises.

So yes, it’s a victory.
So why am I being so sarky?

Why?
Because it’s been fourteen years.

I started this fight in 2011. Became vocal in 2012.
Sometimes extremely vocal — alongside my lesbian sisters — putting ourselves in danger, physically on the barricades for years.
We lost friends. We lost family. We lost job opportunities.
We lived in fear — fear of joining any group, fear of going to uni, fear of applying for jobs — terrified of being found out as a TERF. (All of that still persists, by the way, even after 14 years out and with a legal judgment in our favour.) We watched women who called themselves feminists turn their backs on us — for years — before finally admitting maybe we weren’t complete paranoid wackos back in 2011.
That yeah, maybe there is something going on with these men who pretend to be us.

I remember when I and a few other feminists (we weren’t “gender critical” yet—that term didn’t even exist) submitted evidence to the Transgender Equality Inquiry in 2015 and again in 2018 for the Gender Recognition Act reform.
The Government Equalities Office didn’t even read our submissions.

There were a few years when lesbians couldn’t be ignored — we were too loud, too visible.
And then that was it.
Then GC corporates and the far right took over the movement, wiping out our radical politics and women-centredness.

Am I grateful that we were heard this time?
Relieved is probably more accurate.
But I’m also furious.

Fourteen years of derailment.
Because that’s what transgenderism is.

Fourteen years of dishonest men — some with fetishes, some just enjoying playing with legal loopholes to wreck our rights — while waves and waves of women had to mobilise just to say:
No, you can’t be us.
No, you can’t have our rights.

Fourteen years dedicated to proving that women exist — and that men aren’t us.
What an absolutely abusive strategy created by abusive men!

So what’s the net result today?

We have a feminist movement that I experience as totally scattered.
A GC movement that has no radical edge.
A lesbian movement that’s been decimated.

No social media spaces where we can gather
And a handful of male heroes.

Remember when so-called feminists bowed to Tommy Robinson, to Matt Walsh — for their “knowledge” of biology?
When some (I can’t even remember who anymore) called to vote for Trump to protect women?

Now the left-wing patriarchy and the right-wing patriarchy are working together to ensure women are divided — again.
Some fell off the edge completely.
Some went full racist.

Our radical feminism is tainted by association with the Heritage Foundation, MAGA, and far-right movements.
That’s what patriarchal history will remember.
And yes — they will use it against us.
They already are.

Feminists — branded white supremacists.
Yeah, we’ve been framed.

Those of us who trusted men who called themselves women, and those of us who trusted men who were white supremacists.
Can you see how it works?

None of these men were ever our allies.
And depending on where you sit on the right/left divide, it might be easier to see one or the other as the enemy.

Sis — they’re all the enemy.
It’s divide and rule.

Put your trust in men — any men — and you lose women.
Because they will always, always, work to keep us divided.

Put your trust in “friendly GC transwomen™”?
You lose trans widows — women who’ve suffered directly at the hands of those men and know there is no such thing as a trans ally.

You lose lesbians — the ones who’ve had to accommodate those men for decades or lose their communities entirely.

Put your trust in far-right conservatives?
You lose Black women, who know damn well that far-right politics will always work to destroy them.
You lose working-class women, who will have to drop out of your movement because right-wing policies leave them in bare-minimum survival mode. There’s no time, no space for activism when you’re trying to eat.

I can go on.

As a rule of thumb:
Men in feminism = Trojan horse.
Please remember that next time. There will be next time.

That’s why a radical feminist analysis of intersectionality is essential — to prevent these divides from happening over and over again.

If we are one — if we see all our sisters as part of us, even when our oppressions are different (thank you, Audre Lorde — you rock) — then we cannot be divided so easily.

So I write this in grief.
But also in defiance.

Women — we must rebuild our feminist movement.
Make it strong.
Make it uncompromising.
Make it unapologetic.
Make it scary.

Reject every patriarchal movement left or right that has tried to invade it, distort it, use it against us.
We must keep working. Keep analysing. Keep writing.
And above all, we must keep building.

Our feminist movements.
Our lesbian communities.
Our conferences. Our marches. Our venues.

Remember all the fights we left behind when transgenderism swept in?
They’re still there.
They’re getting worse.

Porn is rampant in schools.
Women and girls are being raped and murdered at higher rates than ever.
The economic situation for women continues to decline.

Our abortion rights are threatened.

Women’s rights, lesbian rights and black people’s rights in the US are severely compromised.
And we’re expected to be grateful for crumbs from the same systems that tried to erase us?

So, where is my hope?

You’ve heard me say this before:
My hope is in us.

We must regroup.
We must relearn how to trust each other.
And — for the love of the Goddess — we must learn to leave men behind.

In our personal lives.
In our political movements.
The way forward is us.
We must leave men.

This is and has always been the only way for an actual feminist movement to exist