Julie Bindel

Starting in October, OnlyFans, which has 130 million users, two million contributors and billions in revenue will ban its creators from posting pornographic material on its site, which many sex workers use to sell explicit content. Nude photos and videos will still be permitted provided they are consistent with OnlyFans’ policy, the company has announced. As soon as the announcement was made, the narrative quickly focused on how unfair and discriminatory this move was, with many saying that the victims of the ban would be ‘sex workers’. The BBC suggested the porn ban would be a ‘“kick in the teeth” for creators’.

A case heard in the Court of Appeal today will decide whether or not carers should be expected to indulge in a spot of light pimping should their disabled client decide he requires the ‘services’ of a prostituted person. This April, Justice Hayden ruled that a care worker who assisted C, a learning-disabled man, to secure the ‘services’ of a prostitute had not committed a criminal offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The Secretary of State for Justice was granted permission to appeal, and there was also an intervention in the case from the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) as well as Women at the Well and the NIA Project, both of which are NGOs that work directly with girls and women who are, or who have been, involved in prostitution.

Since the first Covid-19 lockdown last year, cases of domestic abuse and subsequent deaths have risen. In England and Wales, a woman dies as a result of domestic violence every three days. But the reality is that few perpetrators are arrested, let alone charged and convicted. The rise in cases is beginning to worry government ministers, which is no surprise given domestic abuse has never been properly tackled. Cabinet office minister Michael Gove has been planning how best to use existing powers to tackle this shadow pandemic. Ideas include a minimum standard for police and other criminal justice agencies to increase prosecutions and better protect the victims.

When did ‘lesbian’ become a dirty word again? Perhaps it is since the trans-Taliban decided that we were a group of bigots and fascists, motivated by hatred of transgender people, existing solely to remove the rights of non-binary, sapiosexual, polyamorous blue fringed narcissists. When I came out in 1977, lesbians would be routinely physically and sexually assaulted by men who took offence at being sexually rejected. We were sacked from our jobs, bullied and harassed on the street and in bars, and told we were freaks and perverts. Today, the job of making our lives a misery has been taken over by some trans-activists, aided and abetted by their bearded ‘allies’.

Goodbye and good riddance to the Leeds ‘Managed Zone’ in which punters were given amnesty to buy the most disenfranchised and desperate women. Following a seven-year campaign by feminists, residents and some of the women who had previously been prostituted in the zone, this week Leeds City Council announced that the zone will not be re-opening following the end of the Covid lockdown. The zone originated following pressure on the police and council to tackle street prostitution in the centre of Leeds. Residents and workers, sick of stepping over used condoms and fending off harassment from kerb crawlers, complained so regularly that the zone was set up by way of appeasement.

This week a game-changer of a report released by Essex university led to its Vice Chancellor abjectly apologising for the university cancelling two feminist academics for their views on gender identity and sex. Both professors Jo Phoenix and Rosa Freedman have views which accord with our current laws on gender identity, and yet they had a number of talks cancelled by Essex university and Freedman was potentially rejected from a job after they were labelled ‘transphobes’ by a mob of intolerant academics and students. Now Essex has been forced into issuing a humiliating apology and admitted that its treatment of the professors infringed on their freedom of speech. So how did the university end up in such a mess?

In April 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 crisis, New York governor Andrew Cuomo approved a much needed state budget. Buried in this 400-page document was a provision to legalize commercial surrogacy. Passed without the opportunity for legislative hearings or public debates, the law came into effect in February 2021. Critics claim that Cuomo is unleashing an exploitative multi-billion-dollar industry that preys on the vulnerabilities of women. While surrogates are usually from poorer backgrounds and, in many states, are more likely to be of color and in particular black, the implanted eggs are selected from mainly white women up to the age of 25, usually highly educated and screened for any hereditary illness.

In the latest episode of ‘You couldn’t make it up’, a court has ruled that it is lawful for carers in particular circumstances to assist their clients in paying for sex. The case was brought on behalf of a 27-year-old mentally disabled man who was described as wishing to ‘fulfil a natural desire.’ Since when was paying for access to the inside of a person’s body for one-sided sexual gratification a ‘natural desire’? The ruling, unless successfully challenged, will have major implications not only for carers but for society at large. Government ministers have been granted permission to appeal the decision because it clashes with its aim to eradicate prostitution by way of criminalising the demand for sexual services.

Aimee Knight, previously known as Aimee Challenor, has been sacked by Reddit. But while Challenor has now gone, her reappearance in the headlines — and the way in which Reddit mishandled this story — is a revealing and disturbing insight into the transgender debate. It all began with an article I wrote for these pages on Green party gender madness in which I briefly mentioned Challenor’s suspension from the party in 2018. It was a scandal that Challenor did not wish to see dragged up. When a moderator of the popular UK politics community on Reddit shared that article, mentioning Challenor by name, the post was removed and the moderator banned. Had Challenor persuaded the powers that be at Reddit to prevent users from discussing her past?

In the 12 months since the first lockdown, at least 112 women in the UK have been killed by men. Killers such as Anthony Williams are often treated sympathetically by the courts because the men claim to have been adversely affected by the pandemic, meaning that judges and jurors go soft on them in the same way they take it easy on men who say they only killed their partners because she nagged or cheated. Many of these men who commit fatal acts of violence have put women through hell for years, if not decades, before killing. But as the survivors of domestic abuse know, a woman unlucky enough to be trapped with an abusive man will often face the worst of it if she manages to escape.

How do men become misogynists? I recall the boys at my sink school in the north east of England – many of them were vile bullies that relentlessly targeted girls with sexual harassment and bullying. They learned it from older boys, fathers, and pornography. How much worse it is today, despite decades of feminist campaigning. Today, nothing paints as clear a picture of how much some men hate women as the Incel movement. The Incel (Involuntary Celibates) community was popularised when Elliot Rodger killed six people in California in what became known as the Isla Vista massacre. Rodger shot himself in the head and died. A video titled ‘Elliot Rodger's Retribution’ was later discovered in which he outlined his motives for the well-planned attack.

The disappearance of Sarah Everard in south London has once again led to women being advised by police to stay at home and be extra vigilant, according to a report in the Sun. Such warnings perpetuate damaging myths about danger, for example that only men can protect women and, ergo, women can’t protect themselves; that women are somehow complicit if they are outside and alone at night; and that night-time is dangerous and not the men responsible. Regardless of what happened to Ms Everard, and like all those following this story I’m hoping that she is found safe and as soon as possible, there is a troubling theme in the police’s response.