Swimming’s seen sense, but the war on women is still raging

The news that swimming’s governing body has voted to ban anyone who has undergone male puberty from competing in elite women’s events is a huge breakthrough.

It comes after years of growing frustration and humiliation for female athletes who could never hope to match the sheer physical prowess of the increasing numbers of male-bodied opponents competing alongside them.

Since the announcement, several other sports governing bodies have intimated that they will follow suit. But this is more than just a victory for women’s sport, it’s a victory for women everywhere.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it’s almost on a par with women finally winning the vote in 1928. Back then, women had to fight to be heard, to have our basic rights taken seriously. We never imagined we’d have to do it all over again — yet that’s exactly what has happened.

Women who feel uncomfortable with allowing male-bodied trans women into every intimate aspect of their lives are branded bigots. Women who want to celebrate the achievements of their sex are classed as transphobes.

The irony of groups such as Stonewall and others pursuing what in my view amounts to the bullying of an entire gender into submission while claiming to be fighting discrimination would be laughable, were it not so scary. But it’s deadly serious.

Because while things may be looking up in women’s sport, on the streets and on social media, the mood against women who dare to assert their identities has never been uglier.

Last weekend in Bristol, a group of feminists attending a talk on Father’s Day were abused and attacked by masked men wearing black and screaming insults.

The derogatory term often fired at such women is TeRF — which stands for trans- exclusionary radical feminist — and the Bristol protest was no exception.

One demonstrator carried a sign saying: ‘TeRFs can suck my d***.’ another wrote a chilling message on the ground: ‘after colston, TeRFs are next.’ In other words, if you don’t do as we say, we will throw you in the river — just as a mob in Bristol did with the statue of the slave trader edward colston two years ago.

hang on — isn’t that what they used to do with women accused of witchcraft in the Middle ages?

The police, meanwhile, were strangely restrained. Perhaps that’s what they teach them on all those diversity courses. One thing’s for sure: if that had been a group from a minority ethnic or religious background, those protesters would have been — rightly — rounded up and prosecuted for hate speech.

and it’s not the only recent incident: last month in Manchester, a woman was allegedly assaulted while attending a free speech gathering next to a statue of the feminist emmeline Pankhurst, by a group of similarly dressed trans activists.

This time, the victim claimed the police threatened to arrest her. J. K. Rowling later came out in support of her, tweeting with her usual delicious sarcasm: ‘I never expected the right side of history to include so many people in masks intimidating and assaulting women, did you?’

The real question here is how much of this is to do with trans activism, and how much is just misogyny? how much of the trans cause — fundamentally a noble one — has been hijacked by vile opportunists who see it as just another way of expressing hatred for women?

and if that is the case, you have to ask yourself why. To my mind, the answer is simple: in a world where the leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer, can’t even answer the question ‘what is a woman?’, is it any wonder these sinister people feel so emboldened?

So yes, a victory for women in sport. But until more people in authority speak up, women will always live in fear of cowards in balaclavas who threaten to do them harm.