The Independent's open-door policy for misogynists, cranks and gender ideologues

Recently we covered The Guardian’s descent into pushing overt conspiracy theories, but The Independent appears to be left-wing media’s apprenticeship of misogynistic writing.

It has just published an article on why women’s toilets are the ultimate safe space for women: ‘Public spaces where women feel entirely safe can be few and far between: one in two women have been sexually harassed at work, 71 percent of women have had an uncomfortable interaction at the gym and 55 percent of women in London have been a victim of some form of sexual behaviour by a stranger on public transport. Enter the women’s bathroom, a place of camaraderie and bonding’.

To show how safe women are in a women’s toilet, it speaks to … a man.

And not just any man, but someone who, among many other things, believes that JK Rowling is a threat to children because she can see the dangers of men identifying their way into women’s spaces, and who once quote-tweeted a woman on Mumsnet who had discussed her rape - to mock her.

The Independent is also the website that has published several articles by another abusive man who says he’s a woman; Gemma Stone, better known as notCursedE.

Stone has also made numerous comments about women’s toilets, in particular how much he enjoys his penis being in them.

Here’s just a few of the other writers The Independent has published in recent years:

Helen Webberley, who is about to face a medical tribunal, was convicted of running an illegal clinic selling hormones to children as young as 12. One of the children went on to commit suicide.

Former Labour women’s officer Lily Madigan, who faced allegations of sexual harassment at university, once said Muslim women need to be ‘educated’ if they don’t like changing next to naked males.

Jane Fae is one of the few ‘women’ who gives advice to men on how to evade police action on extreme porn. Fae was also a witness for the defence of Darryn Walker, a Newcastle civil servant who wrote and uploaded to the Internet a sadistic story about murdering members of the pop group Girls Aloud and performing sex acts with their body parts.

Susie Green is the CEO of Mermaids. In a Ted Talk, she admitted that the decision to trans her son was taken because of parental discomfort with his gender nonconformity.

Peter Tatchell once wrote: ‘Not all sex involving children is abuse’.

Ruth Hunt was the CEO of Stonewall when it employed Aimee Challenor, who is still named on its ‘A Vision For Change’ document. Under Hunt’s stewardship, Stonewall began promoting the hugely divisive policy of Self ID.

Bergdorf branded the suffragettes ‘white supremacists’ and told women attending the women’s march that “Centring reproductive systems…is reductive and exclusionary”.

Paris Lees wrote an article for Vice on how validating it was to be catcalled. ‘I love catcalls. I like being called princess and giggling inside’. Lees was a male prostitute who spent two years in a young offender’s institution for robbing a client.

Faye once told a woman ‘I’m a woman because I say I am. You’ve lost. Enjoy your erasure’.

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And then there’s The Independent’s full-time employees. For example, in 2019 its chief sports writer, Jonathan Liew, on defending the rise of men in women’s sports, wrote: ‘You know what? Sport isn’t fair. Never has been. Privilege isn’t fair. Let’s say the floodgates do open. Let’s say transgender athletes pour into women’s sport, and let’s say, despite the flimsy and poorly-understood relationship between testosterone and elite performance, they dominate everything they touch. Why would that be bad? Really? Imagine the power of a trans child or teenager seeing a trans athlete on the top step of the Olympic podium. In a way, it would be inspiring. Giving some of society’s most marginalised groups a chance to express their talent doesn’t harm anyone. Because trans women are women. And sport, I’m afraid, is only sport.’

In fact, in a move that perhaps symbolises the left wing media’s coverage of the trans issue, Liew, - a sports writer who’d just admitted that he’d like to see women’s sport destroyed - was shortly afterwards snapped up by The Guardian.