Whose backlash?

We are clearly having a moment.

This week, I have spent much of my time thinking about a stranger. The British journalist Hadley Freeman – whose celebrity interviews are a joy to behold – recently moved from the Guardian to the Sunday Times (her resignation letter made its way into Private Eye). On Monday, she went on Woman's Hour (on BBC Radio 4, for anyone not familiar with UK media) to talk about why.

This media event was a strange milestone in the toxic so-called trans rights debate, which has become so extreme and intractable in the UK. Freeman, who is a vocal participant, made some astonishing claims in the interview about what she was and wasn't allowed to write about while at the paper. A lowlight for the Guardian was her charge that she was told that, given that this issue was so divisive, women shouldn't write about it at all. Apparently, Freeman claimed in the interview, she was told by management that it was preferable for specialist male health writers to do so. 

Since leaving the Guardian, Freeman has let loose with pieces expounding her allegedly long-censored views on transgender people and women. Her first outing for the Times is headlined "When did feminism become a dirty word?". Writing about the backlash to the fourth wave of the women's movement, Freeman locates the sorry state of discourse – if we can call it that – on gender and sex within the (negative) reaction to progress in women's rights: "Social movements that have followed feminism’s fourth wave have often come with a strong strand of misogyny," she writes, later adding that, "The misogyny has been even more blatant in the gender rights movement, which argues that everyone has a gender identity, which may differ from their biological sex."

That we are seeing a backlash to the ongoing struggle for gender equality seems evident. As Freeman notes, the 2016 election of Donald "grab em by the pussy"– he was literally caught on tape saying exactly those words and he was still elected! – Trump as President of the United States "was an early sign that this particular backlash would be bad." But I have been thinking a lot about Freeman's analysis of why the discourse around gender and sex has become so very nasty, and what part misogyny has to play in this.

It seems obvious that this "debate" is a victim or symptom of the backlash, but I wonder whether the truth lies elsewhere. Could it be that the reason fear and misinformation around transgender people has grown so extreme in parts of the women’s movement is that, amid the backlash to feminist progress, women are looking around at how far they have come and how much further there is to go? Maybe they are looking for something to blame.  

You might completely disagree with me, and that's okay. The point I want to focus on is that we are living through a backlash to feminist progress that is dividing and hurting women. I have been watching this unfurl and felt struck dumb. I don't understand what is happening, and I want to. 

And on this note, I am delighted (and slightly embarrassed, I must admit) to introduce you to the first edition of this newsletter: The Backlash! Every month or so, I will publish an interview, conducted in writing, with someone who can help us understand where we are in this moment in the struggle for women's rights, how the backlash to feminist progress is playing out, and what can be done about it. It will go beyond the gender/sex debate, I promise. I will also share links to things that are useful to read or watch or listen to. I might add bells and whistles later, but for the moment, let me underpromise (and hopefully overdeliver). 

So please, subscribe! and watch this space for the second edition.