OPINION - Women are women, not vulva owners — now we know the fight for our rights is not over at all

Margot Robbie

My Difficult Women podcast is relaunching on Monday — new year, new podcast drop! — as I may have mentioned chez moi the other day. “But surely,” my husband muttered, “you must’ve run out of women to interview by now?”

That slightly took the breath away. I’ve interviewed 130 incredible, inspirational, and yes, arsey women so far. They include public figures from Kirstie Allsopp to Kemi Badenoch and the relaunch line-up is similarly stonking.

There are four billion women in the world. The very idea that we could “run out” of interesting women to hear from is, I humbly suggest, insulting and telling in equal measure. Imagine me asking Joe Rogan, Nick Robinson or my LBC colleague James O’Brien, “Haven’t you run out of men to podcast?”

All I could say in response to him indoors was never have we needed difficult women more.

Prince Edward said in a speech what the world is thinking: ‘Men aren’t doing a very good job at the moment’

Confirmation comes from the unlikely source of Prince Edward, who this week said in a speech what the world is thinking.

“Men aren’t doing a very good job at the moment,” he pointed out, understatedly, as war rages in the Middle East and Europe, we are on the brink of an apocalypse, the Doomsday Clock ticks to midnight, and the governing party here has responded to all this by… challenging its leader for the sixth time? (lost count) as if re-badging the Robin Reliant as a Rolls-Royce would convince the public to vote for a fifth term.

Thank you, Prince Edward, for stating the obvious, but nobody seems to want women to take over, win, or even exist.

Consider the important evidence first. The Barbie movie is made by, and stars, Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, aka the Women Who Officially Saved Cinema. Yet the Oscar nod goes to… Ryan Gosling! Who has thanked the Academy for honouring him for “portraying a plastic doll named Ken” and not the female lead and director which is, as everyone has pointed out, literally the entire plot of the Barbie movie.

From Tinseltown to London town. Susan Hall is the Tory candidate for Mayor — but she’s doomed. We all know it. Though I do approve her promise to scrap the bonkers 20mph speed limit on main roads.

Nikki Haley wants to be president of the United States — but she’s doomed. We all know it. Even though she’s quite good, in that she’s a sensible, fit, sentient female rather than a shambling superannuated bloke determined on a vanity grudge match. Meanwhile, my sex is being flung back into the dark ages all over the world — Iran, Afghanistan, etc, all of which is the subject of another column — and even in the US, the shining city on the hill, the rights of women to access abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade lasted only 50 years. Fifty years! Donald Trump, the nailed-on Republican nominee, declared he was proud to have helped overturn Roe, while one Democratic pollster rejoiced, as Roe bit the dust, “We just won the election.”

Not so fast. Yes, abortion will be a big driver of votes to the Democrats, but all the above tells me nothing is safe. No rights are absolute, or eternal. The results keep coming in, and they tell us that if women don’t fight, every day, to hold onto hard-won rights, they will be removed. Even our own words are being erased. I keep reading that I am a Vulva Owner (at first I read it as “Volvo” as I drive a black XC60) not a woman, and about birthing people, not mothers. We can trace this back to around 2020 when the social justice warriors — the blue-haired ones now chanting “from the river to the sea” — decided that women’s rights were old hat. It was all about the new frontier of LGBTQ+ and especially trans.

The pivot from protecting women to deleting them was very effective, and led to women losing their jobs, being publicly shamed, or vilified online for stating — in my view, incontestable — facts and positions: men cannot change their biological sex; male athletes should not compete in female sports; women have the right to sex-based protections in the Equality Act, including female-only spaces.

So, no. Feminism has not gone too far. It hasn’t gone far enough. We need millions more Difficult Women (sorry, I mean Vulva Owners) not less.

Rachel Johnson is a contributing editor of the Evening Standard

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