We had all been waiting for this lunch for a very long time. JK Rowling had asked a number of women who have supported her and each other during the great ‘gender wars’ for a slap-up Christmas lunch.

In the run-up, we all chatted excitedly about it. I knew some of the women involved, some not and I’d never met Jo herself. Obviously there had been messages of support from her during what I call the great “unpleasantness” at my former paper. Which meant a lot. Like everyone else, I have watched day in, day out the abuse she gets on social media for standing up for women and girls. Anyone in the public eye who speaks out gets abuse, but the extent to which Rowling has stood firm in spite of being vilified is testament to her extraordinary strength. What I didn’t know until we started messaging is quite how hilarious and sweary she is. These are all qualities I like in a woman.

Alas, that lunch never happened as Covid rates shot up. Rowling’s husband is a doctor and had advised her not to get us all together at that point in December. We reluctantly agreed that even though he is a man, he may know what he is talking about. Instead, she sent us all goody bags. Totally lovely.  

Yet us would-be ladies who lunch, including of course the alleged “international network of powerful lesbians” seem to have formed a little support group as each of us have been under attack at various times. Maya Forstater, Rosie Duffield, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel, Joanna Cherry, Allison Bailey and Bev Jackson: all of us know what it’s like to open Twitter and see nothing but abuse and “Die Terf” threats. This undiluted misogyny in the name of trans rights is mostly not perpetrated by trans people at all but by their so-called allies, often very alienated men.

But the lunch with this bunch of women finally did happen and I have now read several accounts as to why it took place.  

We must be a coven, or launching a campaign or plotting. The actual reason? To eat, drink and be extremely merry, which seems never to have occurred to these steely investigative reporters.

Jo had booked a private room at The River Café. I arrived to find a beautiful table, the wine already flowing and a bunch of overexcited women. I was seated next to Julie Bindel. For decades she has been fighting for women in prison, who are trafficked and abused. She has been physically attacked for opposing “gender ideology”. But that’s not the only reason why I love her. She is full of mischief and raucousness. Helen Joyce whose book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality was next to me. Her book has done brilliantly, as has Professor Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls. This is a huge boo-ya to the publishing world who are complete cowards on this subject.  

Most of the women I had met before and the rest I felt I knew anyway. It was fabulous to meet Angela Wild and Liane Timmerman, out and proud butch lesbians. So please don’t talk to me about gender non-conformity. All the prissy little puritans have no idea how physically brave such women are. Liane was wearing a T-shirt with ‘Lesbian Not Queer’ on it. Maya Forstater has just launched the Respect My Sex campaign, calling on local authorities and others to commit to protecting sex-based rights and to acknowledge “that sex matters. Women matter. Single-sex spaces matter. Female-only sporting events matter. Child safeguarding matters.” Those who don’t respect this will not receive their vote, they starkly warn. Were we there to plan the next phase of this campaign? No, not at all, though I was pleased to see her so well after all she has been through.

No, in fact we were there to discuss incredibly important subjects. Like, has KD Laing ‘gone off’ as a gay icon? And the Keanu Reeves test. Me and JK think if you don’t fancy Keanu you definitely are a lesbian. Bindel, as ever, was goading us, saying we were not as heterosexual as we think. JK, she reckons, is about 66 per cent straight. She seems to believe that she has some sort of lesbian Geiger counter. In a conversation when we joked about whether Angela Merkel could be secretly gay, she found it hysterical when I said “Isn’t she just a scientist?” .  

It would be lovely to tell you we discussed how to bring down the patriarchy, shared some innovative campaigning strategies, had an agenda and took notes. In fact we had so much gorgeous food and wine – The River Café does a nice spot of pasta – that we phoned up Martina Navratilova and sang ‘We love you Martina!” to her voicemail. God knows what she will make of that message!  

There was some chat about whether, if we could impregnate women without men, we would. Apparently I was very keen. Kathleen Stock asked Helen and I about the failure of investigative journalism when it came to this issue.

JK and I talked about how many high profile people we know who send us support in private, but will not come out with that support in public. There were speeches. Possibly I made one. They were mostly about how wonderful it was to be together having felt so outcast. Obviously, there has been Covid but all of us there – straight/gay/bi, single parents, Left-wing – have been made to feel as if we are pariahs simply because we challenge the idea that womanhood is a feeling in a man’s head. Ironically, I got so much grief over this – especially because I did not support Corbyn – from young guys telling me I was old, ugly and drunk. How I have had three kids and a career is a mystery to them.

We have reached the utterly bizarre situation where the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, cannot say what a woman is, whereas Boris Johnson – who I have never said a good word about – can spell it out quite plainly. Indeed, in one of the clearest statements he has ever given, recently he said that biology is real, that those who had gone through male puberty should not compete with females in sport and that children should not be rushed into transition.  

Meanwhile Labour flounders; saying that a woman can have a penis (Thornberry) and men can grow a cervix (Lammy) while most of us sit agog and think: “Stop drinking the Kool Aid and talk to your voters”. None of us wants to stop trans people expressing themselves or accessing healthcare, but nothing Rowling has written is transphobic. What it is though, is a considered view about protecting the rights of women, particularly vulnerable ones, and not medicalising girls who may simply be unhappy and may be gay.  

This week a perfectly nice woman canvassing for Labour knocked on my door and I explained to her that I would not be voting for a party that does not know what a woman is. She looked utterly bewildered and I felt so sorry for her that I started talking about bin collection. But how can Labour be so unprepared for this question? A Democrat friend in the US tells me that the whole sports issues highlighted by swimmer Lia Thomas is really playing badly for Biden on the doorstep.

How perfect, then, that the lunch had been rearranged to take place on a sunny day when gender critical views are now becoming seen as the common sense they are.

And it really was perfect. Not only did we get extremely and gloriously smashed, but there is nothing like laughing with other women. It’s just the most life-enhancing thing. As Maya Angelou said: “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh”. That is in the end why we will win. We cackled away not just at the humourless little puritans who think they define us, but at our own silliness. As you can see from the pictures, if radical feminists did hen dos, this is how they’d look.

I got home with another goody bag and found amongst the many treats some beautiful Easter eggs, which I had to eat in the middle of the night, still giggling to myself about the brilliant day, the brilliant women, the brilliant feeling of being in the company of those who are not afraid to stand up and being counted. JK Rowling made this particular gathering happen but all over the country, all kinds of women are standing up too.

And though of course I am never drinking again, I raise my glass to you.  

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Respect my Sex: what is it and why?

Not since Brexit has a cultural-political issue proved so polarising. The question of gender identity and whether biology matters has, perhaps improbably, cast a far-reaching shadow over public debate. 

On one side are those who believe we can define our own gender based on who we feel we are, and that any attempt to deny this is an attack on the rights, wellbeing and safety of transgender people. On the other: those who believe in the primacy of biological reality, and who would seek to defend it against erasure. 

Put more simply, the argument boils down to one deceptively tricky question: what is a woman?

The debate has rumbled on for several years, with frequent flare-ups whenever JK Rowling – the Harry Potter author, who sits firmly on the gender-critical side of the fence – says anything new. But if most politicians had hoped to steer clear of this particular minefield, silence is no longer an option. Now, in the lead-up to the local elections on May 5, a group called Women Uniting that comprises members and supporters of six political parties has launched a campaign called Respect My Sex – and it’s coming for every candidate.

“In corporations and councils, from parliament to playgrounds, the two sexes – man and woman, male and female – are being sidelined in language, law, policy and public spaces,” the group claims on its website. “Biological sex is a fact of life. It is simple and straightforward, and central to how we organise our world. But now the concept of sex is being undermined.”

Describing themselves as a “cross-party group fighting for women’s sex-based rights,” the campaigners are calling on local authorities and others to commit to protecting sex-based rights and to acknowledge “that sex matters. Women matter. Single-sex spaces matter. Female-only sporting events matter. Child safeguarding matters.” Those who don’t respect this will not receive their vote, they starkly warn.

Supporters are encouraged to ask canvassers the kind of questions that have been causing headaches for (predominantly Labour) politicians: what do you think is most important, sex or gender? Do you support the replacement of women’s single sex spaces with mixed sex ones? 

Politically speaking, there are no right answers: whichever side a candidate comes down on, he or she risks alienating voters who fervently believe the opposite. The number of those who have bravely (or gutlessly, depending on your perspective) tried and failed to straddle the divide is growing. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, would not be drawn on whether a woman can have a penis in an LBC radio debate last month. Weeks earlier, Anneliese Dodds, the shadow minister for women and equalities, struggled to offer a clear answer to the question of Labour’s definition of a woman when asked on BBC Woman’s Hour.

It’s not just a Labour problem: Rishi Sunak, the Tory Chancellor, when asked on talkRadio, attempted to bat away the question by saying Prime Minister Boris Johnson had already given the answer – one that he seemed strangely unable to repeat on air.

Johnson’s answer – “I think that when it comes to distinguishing between a man and a woman that basic facts of biology remain overwhelmingly important” – was at least clear, and given in the knowledge he’s unlikely to lose too many woke young voters as a result, since they were probably never his to begin with. 

The Mumsnet vote, meanwhile, is up for grabs. And some vocal users are firm believers in the now-controversial idea that a woman is an adult human female. Their response to Labour’s fence-sitting has been predictably scathing. “I can hear Aretha singing it now,” wrote one, after Dodds’ awkward run-in with the woman question on Radio 4. “You make me feel like a natural context-dependent cervix-haver.”

For some, the cost of living crisis will determine who gets their vote. But for those invested in this thorniest of culture war issues, the question of how to define a woman goes to the heart of whether their elected representatives speak for them.