The email arrived at 12.05pm. It contained the location of a feminist meeting to be held that night, less than seven hours later. “This information is confidential to ticket holders,” it warned.
Why the secrecy? This was the 23rd event in 20 months by A Woman’s Place, a loose collection of volunteers with roots in the trade union movement. The subjects under discussion can seem technical: reforms to the Equality Act, updates to census questions, the replacement of “sex” with “gender” in official forms. But the backlash has been fierce. Transgender activists have repeatedly tried to disrupt the meetings, describing them as hate speech. Venues have cancelled Woman’s Place bookings because of protests (and their associated security costs). An event in Oxford last year attracted condemnation from the student union, which accused the group of being “at the centre of this past year’s violent anti-transgender rhetoric and media abuse”.
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