The accusation by an NUS representative that human rights activist Peter Tatchell  was guilty of “racism and transphobia” was the final straw for many liberals. “But Tatchell is a national treasure,” they bleated over their organic muesli, recalling with horror when another hero of the intellectual elite, Professor Mary Beard, came under fire for daring to sign a petition against censorship. 

Tatchell and Beard are both figures lauded by mainstream liberal society, whereas radical feminists such as myself are seen to be a bit too edgy for them to support. During the time I was being censored and picketed, few progressives spoke out publicly in support of me, for fear that they would also be given the “Bindel treatment”. But when the bullies began to target the liberal lovelies, all hell broke loose. After all, this McCarthyite madness could actually affect them.

The latest casualties in this war on logic are two women who are largely unused to controversy, both of whom are well-loved establishment figures.

The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been called “transphobic” and told to apologise because she dared to rely on logic and truth as opposed to wheeling out a naked emperor when she said in an interview on Channel 4 News, “When people talk about ‘Are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women.”

Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray, who is a classic liberal feminist and tends never to involve herself in controversial issues, also refused to capitulate when the trans activists and their cronies came after her  following a piece she wrote in a Sunday newspaper. What was so terrible about the piece as to provoke calls for her to be sacked from the BBC, and subsequently to being picketed at a literary festival? Murray made the startling observation that men who chose to live as women in later life have had a different experience in growing up from women raised female.

The values at stake are liberal ones, and yet the liberals are largely to blame for the normalisation and widespread nature of the new censorship. The trans activists and their allies do not go after bigots, fascists or right-wing moralists, but progressives, while the liberals say nothing and hope they remain out of range. 

Prior to Tatchell and Beard being targeted, I was more or less alone in the criticism and bullying I encountered from those who told me I was a fascist for saying, for example, that a penis is not a “ladystick”. I received daily messages from people saying they were appalled at what was happening, but dared not speak out lest it happened to them. Indeed, both Tatchell and Beard defended themselves by agreeing that I was “transphobic” and that they disapproved, but free speech, etc, etc. Now the new McCarthyists have come for Adichie and Murray, will the elitists finally drag their heads out of the sand and speak up?