Hi everyone A couple of weeks before I went to Manchester for the Fringe Book Festival I had a long chat with a woman called Mandy Clare who was trying to get some attention and funding for her case. I won't go into the details here as I have just written them up on the genderblog website. Mandy is a Reform UK councillor in the North West of England who was due to stand trial for assault by beating and criminal damage. Mandy kindly came along to the Manchester Festival where she spoke during the Q&A part of a session I attended. We stayed in touch. After reviewing as much information as I could, I felt that, unless there was something I had not been told, there was simply no good reason for Mandy being subject to criminal charges. The lack of evidence of assault by beating and criminal damage being the first big stumbling block. Maybe someone knew something I didn't, but I began to trust Mandy and resolved to cover her story in some way. Read all about what Mandy has been having to deal with and how it was resolved. It is quite the tale. I have let it run long because Mandy has a lot to say and she is an interesting person. I am grateful to her for trusting me. If you want to hear Mandy talking about her story rather than reading it, the insanely productive Julie Bindel has launched another series of podcasts mainly about Stephen Ireland from Pride in Surrey, but also touching on the wider Pride movement as it now is. Mandy features as a special bonus episode. The whole series is called Pride and Predator, it is produced by the brilliant Sam Smith (who also produces the SEEN in Journalism podcasts) and it is highly recommended. Speaking of the Manchester Fringe Book Festival Thanks so much to everyone who turned up. It was great to meet and say hello again to so many people. The week beforehand I asked a friend of mine who lectures at Salford University journalism course if he would be kind enough to tell his students about the festival. I am deeply grateful to Cath and the other organisers who agreed to giving those students who applied a press pass. I am pleased to present a review of the event by Samantha Stimpson, one of the student journalists who attended. Do support Samantha's work if you can by giving her a follow on Medium. It was a wonderful, life-affirming event and I had the very best time. Photos of the festival were not encouraged (to protect the identities of people who may experience some pushback for attending) so I didn't take any, which may have been a bit silly, as I am sure if I got permission of everyone in shot it wouldn't have been a problem, but I did get a photo of two of the souls supporting Save Women's Sports (there were at least nine) who braved a Moss Side Parkrun on the morning of the festival, which was also great fun.
Puberty Blocker trial protest On Wednesday I went to Westminster in London to witness the Puberty Blocker Trial protest organised by Venice Allen, emceed by Baroness Fox. It was good turnout, with lots of familiar faces amongst the speakers and in the crowd. I was able to put some faces to familiar names on social media and get some photos.
One of the people I met, Mary Garner, told me about a similar protest planned for Sat 24 January in Manchester. Here is a flyer:
If you have never been to the Emmeline Pankhurst Statue in St Peter's Square in Manchester, this is what it looks like, with Mary and friends clearly doing a dry run for next month in front of it!
Rattle bag round up The good women of the Cambridge Society of Women continue to make news. Thea Sewell (who also managed to make it to both the Fringe Festival and the Puberty Blocker Trial protest) was the subject of a Daily Telegraph profile. Reduxx have surpassed themselves with this article about a British man titled: "Influential Trans Activist Advocating For Child Transitioning Worked With Extreme Porn Lobby Group Which Campaigned Against Criminalizing Sexual Images Of Minors". The continued capture of our trade unions continues unabated. How this mince-brained individual (profiled in Politics Home) has got anywhere close to wielding power mystifies me. This is a bit old, but having met and spent some time with the redoubtable Sarah Vine KC I am in awe of the way she lays out some serious problems with humour and clarity at this year's Labour Party Conference Fringe. Sarah Vine was also, very briefly, Mandy Clare's barrister, so I've been thinking about her a lot, and after watching this, I suspect you will be. The world needs more people like this. I wish I'd studied Finally, at the behest of an Oxford professor and an American think tank, I spent a a couple of days in December considering sex, gender, history and politics at a country hotel near Windsor. This is not as cool as the time I co-presented a paper to a room full of rocket scientists alongside Alex James from Blur at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, but close. For two days I sat between a Professor of Philosophy from UCL and a Professor of Musicology from Oberlin College, Ohio as a table of around 17 mainly academics discussed various texts from Genesis (I now know a whole lot more about feminist interpretations of original sin) to a September 2025 Spectator piece called The Feminist Case for Marriage. In between we covered the SCUM Manifesto and writers including Mary Astell, Anna Cooper Julia, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Kathleen Stock, Christine de Pizan and the magnificently-named Francois Poullain de la Barre. By the end, my head was spinning, but I was deeply grateful to be invited along. The reason I am telling you this is because another author we looked at was Andrea Long Chu, specifically his 2018 essay On Liking Women. It gives the game away to such an extent, I find it mystifying that gender ideology ever took hold and swept like hot glue through Western institutions. Chu is clearly one of the movement's more intelligent leading lights, yet there's no way he's going to be tied to the idea that trans women are women, even though he claims to be one. This essay sends up and skewers the whole sorry idea. Here's the obligatory reddit thread slagging it off. I might spend the Christmas period tweeting out passages from some of the texts we examined ("The Hardships of the English Laws in Relation to Wives: With an Explanation of the Original Curse of Subjection Passed upon the Woman: In an Humble Address to the Legislature", anyone?), or I might just eat myself into a mince pie coma and forget about things for a bit. Anyway, I was keen to get the Mandy Clare piece out before Christmas, so I could both let you know about it and wish you all the very best for the festive period in this newsletter. Thank you to everyone I have met, interviewed, exchanged tweets with and more over the last 12 months. It has been a steep learning curve. I've tried to do some useful and original stuff on the blog and I aim to do more in 2025. Have a wonderful Christmas break if you are able to do so, and I very much hope to be in contact in the New Year. Who knows what that will bring...?! Best Nick This is the GenderBlog newsletter. If you have been forwarded it and would like to join the mailing list so each newsletter (and GenderBlog blog post) drops, freshly-baked, directly into your email inbox, please consider making a small one-off donation via the donate page on my GenderBlog website. Thanks. © Nick Wallis 2025 |
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