Julie Bindel

In my 40 years as a feminist activist campaigning to end male violence, I have never felt so engulfed in a culture of woman hating. I first met feminists in Leeds, West Yorkshire, in 1979, shortly before Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, was finally arrested, weeks after he murdered and mutilated his 13th victim, Jacqueline Hill. During the five years that Sutcliffe was killing, the climate of fear and hostility towards women kept many of us indoors. We were terrified to walk the streets at night, but also galvanising others into protesting at the bungled police operation and the disgraceful misogynistic newspaper coverage of the murders. According to police and the press, there were ‘good’ and ‘bad’ victims.

Imagine you are regularly invited to visit universities to speak with students (unpaid) on your specialist subject, but in order to be allowed to enter the campus, you are required to fill out a form to confirm that you are neither a bigot nor likely to cause offence or distress to the students. Unfortunately, I do not have to imagine such a scenario. Last year, I received an email from the president of the Durham University Union, reciting my CV back at me, schmoozing me up in the hope I would agree to take the three hour train journey from London to take part in a debate about prostitution laws. The date was fixed as 31 January 2020. I put it in my diary. Then came silence.

Are women inherently dishonest? We must be, particularly when accusing men of rape. This is one of the most pervasive of all rape myths: that women love nothing better than maliciously and falsely accusing decent, law-abiding men of sexual violation. Some of the coverage of the poor young woman in Cyprus would lead you to believe that men are walking targets for female fantasists hellbent on destroying their lives. Having met the young woman convicted of making false allegations of rape against 12 men, I am very clear that she's not lying. Why is it then that we are so keen to believe that young women in particular lie about rape? Let's look at the recent figures from the UK.

I decided to go booze free this Christmas. I had a lot of people staying, which means work, stress, and potential vicious, drink-fuelled arguments. With a post-Christmas holiday planned in Cuba, an island drowning in rum, I wanted to give my liver a break in preparation. I prepared well: I got the latest alcohol free ‘spirits’ and beers, bought in some quality mixers, and looked forward to a festive period free of hangovers, broken glass and fighting. I wish I could say it worked. First of all, we forget how boring other people are when drunk and we are sober. To sit and listen to repetition, petty disagreements, and the giggles that come out of nowhere for days on end makes me want to kill.

I am at a conference on domestic violence today, entitled Stand up to Domestic Abuse, listening to story after story of violent men murdering women they had professed to love. Men who slayed their victims because they had the audacity to attempt to leave them. I hear the dreadful tale told by Luke Hart, whose mother Claire and sister Charlotte were shot dead by his controlling, narcissistic father. The conference room was deathly silent when a 15-year-old girl spoke about her mother being murdered by her violent husband. The woman that organised this conference, the redoubtable Rachel Williams, was shot by her ex-husband after enduring 18 years of abuse at his hands. Later that day he took his own life.

Lesbian tourism has long been a thing — women who once kissed a girl trying to appear more interesting while living a heterosexual life. Anne Heche, Madonna, Britney Spears and Ariana Grande have used lesbian/bisexual hints to titillate fans and sell more records. But nothing riles me like the Miley Cyrus approach which is to be heterosexual, married to a man, but claiming to be ‘queer’ and edgy. In a recent interview about her marriage to Liam Hemsworth, she said: ‘We’re redefining, to be fucking frank, what it looks like for someone that’s a queer person like myself to be in a hetero relationship.’ What a load of pretentious baloney. Cyrus is as heterosexual as the next woman.

Lesbian tourism has long been a thing — women who once kissed a girl trying to appear more interesting while living a heterosexual life. Anne Heche, Madonna, Britney Spears and Ariana Grande have used lesbian/bisexual hints to titillate fans and sell more records. But nothing riles me like the Miley Cyrus approach which is to be heterosexual, married to a man, but claiming to be ‘queer’ and edgy. In a recent interview about her marriage to Liam Hemsworth, she said: ‘We’re redefining, to be fucking frank, what it looks like for someone that’s a queer person like myself to be in a hetero relationship.’ What a load of pretentious baloney. Cyrus is as heterosexual as the next woman.

The city of Amsterdam is to finally ban guided tours around its most notorious window brothel area, the sex tourist trap known as De Wallen. Since Holland legalised its already burgeoning sex trade back in the year 2000, it has become apparent that if you display women in windows, wearing nothing but a bikini and a fake smile, and market them like pieces of meat, that is how they will be treated by those that flock into the area to have a laugh at the human zoo. I have been in and out of Amsterdam on dozens of occasions reporting on its absolutely abhorrent prostitution market. Walking around De Wallen, at whatever time of the day or night, I always bump into a tour group being told how ‘brilliantly’ legalisation works for the women and the rest of Dutch society.