I feel utterly powerless — and furious

IT CAME as no surprise that so many people applauded my article last Saturday in which, drawing on a new book, Hags, by the journalist Victoria Smith, I tore into those foolish younger women who have made themselves handmaidens to the cause of men, willing to sacrifice hard-won women’s rights for the sake of utterly meaningless slogans like ‘Trans women are women’.

It is fine to be tolerant and proclaim ‘Trans women are trans women’, but not to fly in the face of all logic and insult those who disagree.

That’s not an issue for this column today although the subject has cropped up in past letters. But what is an issue is the sense of utter helplessness I feel all around.

Those who wrote about that article called me ‘brave’ for ‘speaking up’ and ‘giving us a voice’ and went on to ask why the world seems to be so mad and/or deluded.

I had a similar response when I wrote recently about the ‘woke’ rewriting of the author Roald Dahl.

The issue is different, yet when I read some of the leaked WhatsApp exchanges during the pandemic, between Matt Hancock, former health secretary, and other ministers and civil servants, I was conscious of deep disillusionment, too.

Many times in this paper I have written tough pieces challenging rules which seemed to me to be arbitrary and cruel, but what matters is that I, and so many of you, feel powerless.

We know in our hearts that we are poorly governed and that both Keir Starmer cosying up to Sue Gray and Boris Johnson putting his dad up for a knighthood are insulting to us.

Likewise we know that a tulip cannot become your actual daffodil and the word ‘black’ is not racist.

And that young children should not be taught about sex fetishes in school.

Realising you can do nothing, you feel alienated in your own beloved country. And it makes me, for one, absolutely furious.

Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, london W8 5HY, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.