8
‘There’s an old writer’s challenge to tell a horror story in five words. I can beat that with just two: unisex toilets.’
A good start to a good speech, Janet reflected on the drive back to Wimbledon. Punchy, provocative and, crucially, well received by Hampstead Ladies Society. It was always pleasant to speak at an event where the word ‘terf’ wasn’t even in the collective lexicon, let alone screeched at her by protestors.
But, of course, there was little time for self-congratulating. ‘Chelsea, what are today’s stories?’ Janet said, turning to the girl beside her in the taxi.
‘Um, oh right, yes.’ Chelsea started fumbling with her phone. She was the nineteen-year-old daughter of one of her husband’s banking friends, keen to ‘slip a foot in the media door’, so Janet had agreed to take her on as a temporary intern. Not the brightest spark, but Janet needed the assistance – there was so much to do with the book, the articles, campaigning and public engagements. Since losing her job, she’d never been busier. ‘OK, here’s a few things I found on Twitter and the forums,’ Chelsea said. ‘When questioned, the BBC said they were, like, “open” to the idea of a trans Doctor Who.’
‘Next.’
‘Police in Hertfordshire want help identifying a “person who exposed their genitals” in a Primark changing room. Commenters were, like, pretty sure from the CCTV pictures it’s a transwoman, but the cops were too PC to say so.’
‘Good. Any details on who got flashed?’
‘Um, no, I don’t think so.’
‘See if you can find out. It’s Primark, so we can suppose it’s teenagers, which would be good. I mean, obviously not for them.’ Janet cast a glance at the driver, who didn’t seem to be listening. ‘But, you know.’
‘And there’s an article about the state putting puberty blockers in school meals,’ Chelsea said.
‘Fantastic. Which publication?’
Chelsea swiped down her screen. ‘The Onion. I think that’s, like, a French newspaper or something?’
Janet peered at the young woman over the rim of her glasses. No trace of irony. Not a hint. ‘Send it over with the others. We can’t post it directly, but it’s not an unsalient concept. Might be worth feeding it into the rumour mill, get Sadie to push it on TikTok.’ Janet’s fingers were already at work, flitting across her own screen, composing draft Tweets, firing messages through WhatsApp, updating channels in Telegram. This was a vital part of her work, the evidence gathering and dissemination – you needed everyone singing from the same hymn sheet. Coordination. Amplification. Results.
The car drew to an abrupt halt.
‘Er… this is your house, with the gates?’ the driver asked.
‘Yes, yes, just drop us off outside,’ Janet said. She unbuckled her belt and opened the door.
‘Are you aware of –’ the driver began, just as she stepped outside and saw.
‘Oh shit,’ Chelsea said, joining her.
Janet didn’t say anything. The words before her, emblazoned in pink paint on glittery card backing, seemed to glow in the darkening sky.
‘Shall I take them down?’ Chelsea asked.
‘No,’ Janet replied, opening her camera app. ‘Turn on the floodlights.’ This week’s column was starting to write itself.
7
Alexa should have just gone to sleep. She shouldn’t have cracked open the window, squeezed onto the ledge and had a cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the night sky. And she certainly shouldn’t have opened up Twitter.
Because now she was three hours into a doomscroll, deaf to the fellow students returning from nights out on the street below, blind to all but the little blue screen. Flick, swipe, pause, click.
In between the ads (the skin creams, the eyebrow threading courses, the Buddhist retreats), she watched the activists hanging signs reading ‘bigot’ and ‘shame on terfs’ and ‘trans rights now’ onto the steel gates of prominent gender critic Janet Hedges’ Wimbledon property. She read the comments – that foaming thread of support and outrage. Soon the story was reframed in Janet Hedges’ Telegraph article, So called “trans activists” vandalised my home, a new front in the War on Women. Belinda Hayslip supportively tweeted the article out to her thirteen million followers, naming and tagging the activists. A barrage of hate ensued until the activists shut down their accounts. Mixed in with all this were the memes, the slurs, the #TranswomenAreWomen, the #ISitWithKelly. Opinion, jab, call out, attack, counterattack.
Alexa just wanted it all to stop. She wanted to stop. But she couldn’t peel her eyes away. Her aching thumb jerked across the screen by its own accord.
In moments like these Alexa wished she could’ve just been happy being Jack, like she had before puberty came along and fucked her body up in every which way. She wished life could’ve dealt her an easier hand and she could remain blissfully oblivious to all this hateful shit.
6
‘I’ll have the tuna tartare and we’ll go for… a bottle of the Pinot Blanc? Fuck it, let’s get the Chablis.’ Janet handed the waiter her menu. She was in a buoyant mood. It was always good to get together with some of the girls in person, especially when Janet would treat them to a boozy lunch at The Panama Lounge. She’d spent the morning editing her forthcoming book, War on Women, a call to arms against the dangers of gender reforms and the spiritual sequel to last year’s collection of essays Transfixion: How Trans Orthodoxy Killed Feminism.
Joining Janet today were Morgana Jones, the first MP to publicly come out as gender critical, and Roz Bannatyne, lead campaigner at lesbian rights group No T For Me. Plus Chelsea, who wouldn’t be having a glass of the Chablis as she was technically on the clock – or whatever the unpaid internship equivalent of a clock was (a sundial?).
‘Cheers, ladies,’ Roz said, necking her first glass. She was a bullish Scot, who fought hard for the right to vagina-certified gay bars ever since a transwoman had offered to buy her a drink on a night out. ‘People always accuse us of wanting a fight, but not offering solutions,’ she went on. ‘But I’ve been speaking to an engineering mate, and I think we’ve solved the toilet debate. A foolproof way to keep men’s rapey cocks out of our bogs.’
‘It’s not the bathroom bouncers again, is it?’ Morgana asked, rolling her eyes. ‘I’ve raised this with various ministers and there’s just no chance we can get the taxpayer to fund genital attendants at every public lavatory.’ Morgana Jones was building a name for herself on her gender critical views, shining a light on women’s rights from the deepest shadows of the opposition back benches. She’d made a valuable addition to the cause, bringing political clout and deepening the left’s schism over trans issues.
‘It’s not the bathroom bouncers.’ Roz said.
‘Or the genital identity cards?’ Janet added. The idea had been floated to issue cards that independently verified a person’s biological sex, and these could be swiped to unlock the appropriate toilets or changing rooms. ‘It’s a privacy no-go.’
‘Exactly,’ Roz replied. ‘So we keep the locks on the public lavs, but rather than a physical inspection or a card to get in, we have an x-ray built into the door. Quick snap of the crotch, and the machine decides whether you’re safe to enter. Any hint of a prick and no sir’ – she formed an X with her arms – ‘you ain’t coming in our loos.’
Morgana sighed. ‘What are you going to call it, the Bulge Buster?’
‘Or the Cock Blocker?’ Janet suggested. She and Morgana shared a laugh.
‘Ah, get to fuck,’ Roz huffed. ‘I think it’s got potential.’
You couldn’t fault Roz’s passion, but she didn’t half come up with some moronic suggestions. Still, it helped to have the lezzers on side. They brough a powerful weight to the sex vs gender argument, and helped deflect accusations of homophobia.
Part of Janet’s mission was to recruit a more diverse membership to the Gender Critical Alliance. Even she had to admit, the movement was a little white and boomery. On her current wishlist were a BAME campaigner prepared put anti-racism on the back burner to fight the trans threat, and a gender critical Gen Z star to bring the youth on side. (A Billie Eilish type would be ideal.)
The only faction that was a little more problematic was the GC men. There was always something a little cringeworthy when another has-been sitcom writer or aging country music star found himself on the wrong side of the Great Awokening and tried to breath some feminist life into his career by endorsing ‘the right of women to self-organise against the trans lobby’. Especially when they nabbed all the Newsnight interviews. It was safer to treat them more like allies-at-arms’-length than fully fledged members – and avoid any embarrassment when it inevitably emerged that they’d groped an assistant.
‘I don’t know if this is, like, a stupid idea,’ Chelsea said, preceding what would undoubtedly be a stupid idea. ‘But have you ever thought of pushing for, like, completely individual cubicles that anyone of any gender can use?’
‘Look,’ Janet sighed. ‘We can’t get caught up in providing “solutions” because they inevitably become compromises. The key thing is sounding the alarm about the novel threats men pose to us.’
It was frustrating that the gender critical debate so often became bogged down in public toilet discussions. Obviously the point was about protecting women in the spaces where they were most vulnerable – like women’s refuges. It was terrifying to think that a predatory man could claim to be trans and barge his way in there. But people didn’t like to imagine themselves in a women’s shelter – or God forbid a ladies’ prison – it was unrelatable, and depressing. So early on, Janet had decided to focus on the danger in places women all go, like public toilets; evoking the nightmare of violent six-foot penises pounding down stall doors, and in doing so win safeguards for vulnerable women across the board.
‘Anyway,’ Janet said. ‘I supposed you’ve all heard the news about Madame Brumley.’
‘What’s that gobshite done now?’ Roz asked.
‘Brumley has announced a foundation to fund surgery for young trans people. He’s called it New Faces, you know, a pun on the title of his old show.’
‘You’re fucking joking.’
‘If only,’ Janet said. ‘What’s more, Cambridge Women’s Union has decided to honour our favourite pantomime dame with the Pankhurst Prize for Inspirational Woman of the Year.’
‘And he’s gonna accept it?’
‘We can only presume so,’ Morgana sighed. ‘Of course, I awarded that prize myself, back in ’04. When being an inspirational woman meant, well, being an actual woman for a start. But that’s not the key issue here. The Prize will legitimise Brumley’s venture, putting him in direct contact with countless young people, including vulnerable girls.’
‘Holy Christ.’ Roz was dumbstruck, her Chablis forgotten.
‘We have to shut this down,’ Janet said. ‘This is a tipping point battle. If we let society say it’s OK to let a potentially dangerous person – who is biologically a man – a man with a history of perverted, nasty behaviour – into an influential position with children, the floodgates will open. We’ll have rapists storming the nunneries, ladies’ swim ponds awash with semen, every innocent girl in prison impregnated.’
‘From locked up to knocked up,’ Roz mused.
The women shuddered.
‘This isn’t anything against trans people,’ Janet said, something she was always adamant to clarify, even in their private company. ‘It’s purely about protecting women’s hard-won rights.’
‘Absolutely,’ Morgana agreed.
‘Aye,’ Roz said. ‘And keeping men’s lechy hands off them…’
5
How did it come to this?
For Janet, the trigger had been Todd Brumley. Though even saying that name was now a crime. But Janet remembered who Todd was, and the kind of things he had done, even if the world had collectively erased that past the moment Todd became Talia.
Until a couple of years ago, Janet had been a bastion of the liberal left. She’d spent two decades writing passionately about important issues like feminism and racial equality. She’d campaigned, marched, stood on the board of charities. And then, because of one throwaway comment in her weekly Guardian column, it had all come crashing down. She’d been cast aside, banished, cancelled. Just for having an alternative point of view that society suddenly deemed unspeakable, as she’d gone on to explain in The Mail, The Times, The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Critic, Spiked and UnHerd.
In much the same way as privilege emboldened racists to stage minstrel shows, liberal post-modern society has now allowed men to hijack our female identity.
Context. That was what society had abandoned. Her column had always been her sardonic musings on what was happening in her life and the world around her. Like any writer, she would use comic exaggeration or irony – it wasn’t all meant to be taken literally. (Though in this case, Janet thought she’d made her point rather well. And judging by the private messages she received in response, a lot of women agreed with her.)
This was the week after Todd Brumley had come out of both the closet and career hibernation as a transgender woman called Talia. The new Ms Brumley arrived on the front of Attitude magazine with a custom Dior dress, box-fresh tits and a tell all interview. Sycophantic celebrities, politicians and journalists fell over each other in their rush to garland praise on this ‘brave’ and ‘inspirational’ individual.
But Janet remembered. Even as Talia graced chat shows, authored a picture book, released a cosmetics line and hosted a new primetime Saturday night gameshow, Janet remembered. She saw through the glossy new female exterior to the man that lurked within. The man she’d spent the better part of a decade working to expose.
In the early noughties, Todd Brumley had been part of a comedy double act that had ridden the wave of sketch shows with their vehicle, Two Faces. In the show, the pair had played a plethora of ‘funny’ characters under a coating of prosthetics and outlandish costumes. Todd’s had included Dr Bhaji, an Indian who tried to ‘spice up’ various English countryside traditions; Mr Fu Ming, a short-fused Chinese takeaway owner who would attack patrons with kitchen knives and karate; and Madame Florentine, a bawdy French teacher who made her older students squirm with outrageous inuendo and handsy advances.
At the time of course, the public found it hilarious.
Janet was one of the few who had called out the show’s blatant racist and misogynistic tropes, writing column after column in the same papers that gave the programme glowing reviews. It took almost twenty years, the murder of yet another black American by police and a global uprising before Two Faces got its reckoning. Social media users posted old clips captioned with belated outrage, streaming services quietly flushed the episodes from their rosters, and its creators – whose careers had long since drifted apart and fizzled out – issued apologies and pledges to ‘do better’.
Then, two months later, Todd was Talia, and Janet was livid. She wrote a piece decrying the now celebrated star who built his career on the back of the grotesque Madame Florentine, arguing that perhaps ‘womanface’ should be regarded with the same disgust as blackface and innocently suggesting that just maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to embrace the trans movement’s every demand without examining their potential impact on women. And for that, she was decried, vilified and sacked. An enemy of progress.
So the battle began.
4
Fingers shaking, nails scratching on the wheel, too angry, too hurt, to get that catch, that spark, then finally came the flame, dancing, the cigarette lighting, the blessed inhalation.
Alexa leaned her head against the chilled glass of her window, blowing smoke to the darkness outside. She hadn’t wanted any of this. Going to university was meant to be a chance to open her horizons, find her tribe, immerse herself in the depths and complexities of theology for three years. Not rowdy discussions at kitchen pre-drinks over whether trans people should have to ‘pass’ or if fancying a transwoman made a bloke gay. The worst part was her hallmates expected Alexa to be the arbiter of each resolution, when in reality she was too mortified to utter a single word. At the first opportunity she’d slipped away, locked her bedroom door, cried and smoked.
And sunk into Twitter.
Her timeline was kicking off because Janet Hedges, who made a pastime of photographing transwomen ‘caught’ using women’s toilets, had herself been photographed coming out of the men’s at Chieveley Services.
Well this is awkward… tweeted left-wing commentator Oliver White, reposting the picture.
Alexa liked the post, and many others in a similar vein, each tap of the heart icon making her feel a little better, a tiny fragment of her power reclaimed. (Though she couldn’t stop that snide voice telling her everything she did was insufficient. What was liking a tweet compared to the valiant activists of the past who’d literally thrown themselves under horses in their fight for progress?)
In relation to the personal and intrusive photograph circulating, there was a very long queue for the ladies – this is a completely different situation to men invading women’s safe spaces! Janet Hedges protested.
Hypocrite, more like… hypo-shit, added Talia Brumley, with cry-laughter and poo emojis.
Alexa hesitated. Like most of her generation, she’d grown up on comedy like Two Faces, oblivious to how offensive and insensitive it was until years later. Already a problematic figure, Talia Brumley had brought both positive attention and unwanted heat down on the trans community, cashing in and remaining insulated from the reality of society’s spite by her celebrity. But fuck it, Alexa was angry.
She hit the heart, flicked her lighter and lit up another cigarette.
3
A world in permacrisis called for a constant stream of content. How else was Janet supposed to compete against climate collapse, economic inequality, drowning migrants, rising fascism, freezing grannies and the threat of nuclear war, and draw attention to the real issue – the conflict between trans and women’s rights?
The more mouthpieces issuing this content, the better. It was the only way they would ultimately win this war, by drowning out the opposition and reaching as many of the neutrals until their point of view was accepted as universal.
Still, sometimes these mouthpieces could malfunction.
‘Roz,’ she said sternly down the phone, in the back of a cab en route to The Panama Lounge.
‘I know what you’re gonna say, hon,’ Roz said.
‘Then why did you tweet it?’ Janet groaned.
‘Heat of the moment. I was pissed off. And it was funny. Come on, you’ve gotta admit that.’
Transgender women are like those vegan meat burgers. They may look convincing from a distance, but they don’t bleed like the real thing.
Janet had called Roz the moment she’d seen the tweet – it was too late to delete it, of course. The backlash had ignited and reversing course now would only admit impropriety. There were so many talking points Janet had given the women to choose from – male violence against females, the inequality of male hormones in women’s sports, defending gender critical views in the workplace, detransitioners, children pressured into medical interventions. But you should never say anything overtly anti-trans. Sure, you could align trans freedoms with freedoms of paedophiles and predators, but don’t explicitly tie the groups together. You might as well start empathising with the daily discrimination and dangers trans people face. Rule number one – don’t undermine the message.
‘OK, we can fix this,’ Janet said. ‘Have you got any threatening replies?’
‘I’m a GC woman on Twitter, of course I’ve got threatening replies.’
‘Good. Look for those that mention death, rape, execution, stuff like that. Chelsea can help you.’ Janet clicked her fingers at the intern. ‘Quote tweet the most explicit ones, calling out anyone – particularly any man – criticising you as endorsing these threats against a woman.’
‘Righteo,’ Roz said.
‘Ever been assaulted?’
‘What?’
‘Have you ever been assaulted? Sexually, ideally.’
‘Well, I’ve had my bum grabbed in the pub and that –’
‘That’ll do,’ Janet said. It was a tragic fact that pretty much every woman had some experience of aggressive and unwanted sexual advances – from physical assault by a stranger or partner to pervy touching, staring or stalking in public. But every tragic fact could form a weapon in your arsenal. ‘Tweet that as well – you’re a survivor of assault. Make it clear – anyone who disagrees with your opinion is silencing abuse victims and supporting rape and death threats against them. Got it?’
‘Got it, Janet.’
‘Good.’ Janet hung up.
Chelsea squirmed. ‘Is it not, like, a little wrong to use sexual assault like that?’
‘Welcome to war, petal. You’re on the front line now.’
Janet and Chelsea got out of the taxi, walked into The Panama Lounge and over to their table where Roz was hurriedly tweeting on her phone and Kelly Pugh was cracking open a bottle of Beaujolais. Kelly was a fierce campaigner who’d made headlines after she’d been fired from a health club for staging a sitdown protest in order to prevent a trans colleague using the women’s showers. She’d since become a figurehead for the GCA, fighting numerous legal battles against her former employers and helping to secure a crucial victory in the campaign to grant having gender critical views more legal protection than identifying as trans.
‘Glass of red?’ Kelly offered.
‘No, get the Bollinger in. We’re celebrating.’
‘Yeah?’
Janet smiled. ‘Got the confirmation this morning. Channel 4 have commissioned a documentary tie in with my new book, War on Women.’
‘Huzzah!’ Kelly exclaimed.
The women chinked glasses once the bubbly had arrived (except Chelsea of course, on the clock).
‘But we do have other important news to discuss,’ Janet said gravely.
‘The x-ray bog locks?’ Roz asked.
Janet ignored her. ‘Madame Brumley’s invitation. Published in The Independent, and circulating madly on Twitter. I don’t think we can ignore it.’
Talia Brumley had released an open letter, formally inviting gender critical women such as Janet, Morgana, Kelly, Roz and Belinda Hayslip onto her talk show to discuss ‘all areas where women’s and trans interests may conflict’, debate with a studio audience and reach ‘reasonable and respectful resolutions’.
‘Well, we can’t do it,’ Kelly said. ‘It’s offensive to give that grotesque caricature of a woman the time of day.’
‘To refuse risks looking cowardly,’ Janet replied.
‘I’ll go on there and deck the lipsticked fucker,’ Roz said.
‘Metaphorically, you mean,’ Janet said.
‘Aye, metaphorically.’
‘If we engage with him,’ Kelly said, ‘we’ll only give ground. We’d be conceding the hard-won rights of women across the country.’
‘If we don’t, we’ll be seen as unwilling to work towards solutions.’
‘I told you we gotta push for the toilet x-rays,’ Roz interjected.
‘And we’ll also be leaving the floor open for them to decide their own solutions,’ Janet went on. ‘Self ID, open access to refuges and prisons, kids on irreversible meds. They’ve got a platform now, anything is possible.’
Kelly shuddered. ‘So we’ve gotta do it?’
Janet thought for a moment, rolling the remaining champagne around her glass.
‘I’ve got a talk coming up at the Coventry Women’s Literary Festival to promote, among other things, my new book, War on Women. I could look into swapping that talk for a panel discussion, hosted by me, with a diverse range of GC contributors – you ladies – plus Madame Brumley as the guest of honour.’
‘That could work,’ Kelly nodded. ‘Make him to come to us.’
‘I could get the Channel 4 crew along to film it,’ Janet said, the idea taking shape in her mind. ‘Brumley vs his sharpest critics, in front a crowd of likely GC-sympathetic, middle-aged women.’
Roz’s eyes sparkled as she downed her drink. ‘We’ll roast that tranny alive.’
‘Roz.’
‘Metaphorically,’ she added.
2
The thoughts had been building, pounding, pummelling like a thousand freight trains through Alexa’s mind. She’d tried to meditate, she’d tried to sleep, she’d tried blasting heavy metal. Nothing could shut them out.
Today had been horrendous. In a tentative attempt to make new friends, Alexa had gone along to a Young Trans Meetup at a local café. She’d got a latte and started chatting with a couple of other students, not even aware of the Mother and Toddler Book Club at another table until a group of furious women, who were very much aware of the simultaneous gatherings, stormed the venue. Livestreaming everything through their phones, the women homed in on the trans students, raging at them for ‘subverting children to their gender ideology’. Despite the mothers’ attempts to calm the situation, the rowdy protestors refused to budge, screeching ‘perverts’, ‘groomers’ and ‘paedophiles’ at the students until they fled the café, sobbing.
Locked in her dorm room, Alexa opened Twitter, which had been in meltdown all week over Janet Hedges’ upcoming ‘trans debate’. Clips from the café row were already proliferating, presented in such a chopped up way as to imply that the trans meetup had tried to invade the toddler club, until thwarted by some courageous bystanders. Hedges herself had reposted one video with a comment, And you really think trans activists aren’t out to influence our kids? Soon Alexa had been identified and her account bombarded with messages wishing her convicted, raped or paraded naked through the streets. Your pronouns should be Fucking/Die.
After hours tormented by a storm of the darkest thoughts, something came to Alexa. A single idea, a spark, clarity. There was one thing she could do, one contribution she could make, one action that would give her fragile life meaning.
She made a quick trip to the garage and then, resolute and at peace, posted to her seventy-two followers:
Tomorrow I will show them. Tomorrow I’m taking a stand.
1
A crisp morning at the Coventry Women’s Literary Festival found Janet Hedges pacing the backstage area of the large tent where her panel discussion, ‘Trans vs Women’s Rights: The Final Debate’, was due to begin shortly. The walls of the tent billowed in time to the bellows of the protestors outside, who had just started another rendition of their favourite chant, Transwomen are women!
‘Jesus, when will that wee woke brigade give it a rest?’ Roz asked, lighting up a cigarette.
‘Don’t smoke that in here,’ Janet snapped, making sure the documentary cameras weren’t trained on Roz. Breaking health and safety regs would not be a good look for those fighting for more public protections. ‘Embrace the hate. It only makes our argument stronger.’
‘Is Belinda coming?’ Roz said.
‘No.’ Janet tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice. Belinda Hayslip had been perhaps the greatest publicity coup for their cause – a beloved novelist who’d come out as gender critical, trading cherished children’s books for snarky tweets about trans activists. Janet, who was also trying to persuade Belinda to contribute a foreword to War on Women, had urged the author to join today’s event but Belinda had declined, saying she preferred to keep her activism ‘Twitter based’.
This was not the only loss to Janet’s event line up. Roz, Kelly and Morgana had reported for duty, but the star attraction – Talia Brumley – had dropped out at the eleventh hour. I cannot in good conscience participate in a panel stacked with undeniably transphobic figures, the ‘comedienne’ had posted. Never mind. Janet already had this spinning as clear evidence of the woke lobby refusing to engage in debate. In private, Brumley had told her the final straw had been the addition to the panel of Bridget Barton, the self-described ‘most hated transexual in Britain’, who’d caused a stir in her Question Time appearance by claiming most transwomen were ‘actual perverts’ and ‘a danger to real women’ even after they had, like her, ‘had their cocks lopped off’.
Morgana returned from peeking through the curtain to the main area of the tent. ‘Good turnout.’
‘You can always count on the terfs,’ Bridget said with a throaty chuckle.
Janet scowled at her. ‘Terf’ – like ‘cis’ or ‘transphobe’ – was a banned word, the use of which she was striving to get legally recognised as a hate crime.
Sid, the bald muscle-mountain running security, gave Janet the nod. ‘Audience is seated and the venue is secure.’
‘Good.’ Janet turned to the other members of the GCA. ‘Let’s go, ladies.’
Janet led the march through the curtain and out onto the raised platform that formed the stage, the audience breaking out into applause. She smiled and waved as the other panellists took their places in the curve of stools.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ she said. ‘Welcome, women. And I say women, because we are women. We are not birthing people, or menstruators, or bodies with vaginas. We are women! Women who have come together to acknowledge that we are in the midst of a War on Women.’ This was followed by another round of applause, though not as riotous as Janet had been hoping for – she made a mental note to nag her publishers for more of a marketing push; brand recognition should be higher with the book’s release imminent. Casting her eyes across the faces gazing up at her was like looking at a game of Guess Who where all the tabs had been replaced by mirrors, a hundred E-FITs of middle-aged, middle-class white woman. She really must get back on recruiting that Billie Eilish type.
‘Today I’m joined by a panel of fantastic, free-thinking women…’ Janet trailed off as an audience member rose from their seat in the third row. It was a bony girl of maybe nineteen or twenty, lanky black hair brushing her shoulders as she began to approach the stage along the side of the tent. Janet experienced a flicker of jubilation – the young GCs were finally here – before the girl started clambering up onto the stage.
The audience’s attention rallied to this intruder, her punky, dishevelled clothing, carrier bag dangling from her fist, and a muttering tide rolled across the tent.
‘Excuse me,’ Janet said. ‘Audience participation – questions – will come later.’
‘No, they won’t,’ the girl replied, her tone flat, her eyes somehow glaring but also glazed. Janet shivered. The intruder addressed the crowd. ‘My name is Alexa. I am a transwoman. I am the face of the concept you wish to demonise and scapegoat.’
Roz tutted. Morgana sighed and rolled her eyes. The audience shifted uncomfortably. Sid brushed by Janet, moving towards the protestor, but Janet stopped him. She’d seen what was in Alexa’s other hand. ‘Let this play out,’ she whispered. A quick glance reassured her the documentary crew’s cameras were trained on the incursion from the back of the tent, but she discreetly set her own phone to film from her hip.
‘I am done,’ Alexa went on, her neutral delivery cracking, a raw exhaustion bursting from beneath. ‘I am done with you throwing us on your culture war bonfire. I am done with you inflicting your pain and resentment at an unfair system on us. Trans lives matter. You want me to burn, I’ll burn.’
With that, Alexa shed the carrier bag from its contents – a plastic bottle she hurriedly unscrewed and tipped over her head. Gasps escaped the crowd as the liquid glugged down the girl’s body, even before the tang of petrol hit their nostrils. Alexa closed her eyes, brought her other hand to her chest and flicked the lighter clasped within it. A solitary flame shimmered for a moment, like a provocative glint in a lover’s eye, before fire erupted from her heart, engulfing her whole body in an instant.
Then the screams began.
They came from the audience, scrambling away in a melee of collapsing chairs; they came from the panellists, retreating into a tangle of curtains; they came from Sid, barrelling forwards, before stopping, impotent. But the most harrowing came from the blazing effigy staggering around the stage, all notion of its gender seared away by the flames.
Only Janet held firm, recording the chaos on her phone.
Alexa had become a human torch with a coal black core, a pillar of fire leering up to the tent roof. Flames tickled the canvas before leaping across its surface, flaps of burning material wafting down alongside the smell of charred meat towards the fleeing crowds. Janet decided this was an opportune moment to slip away.
She ducked out the back of the tent, marching across the festival fields, through the throngs of horrified women and protestors, past the organisers rushing towards the inferno, her face flushed, her jaw set, her mind whirring. She flipped through words like jigsaw pieces, trying each one out for size, settling on the perfect combination. By the time she reached her car, she had it.
Janet checked the video, trimmed out all of Alexa’s speech except the phrase ‘trans lives matter’, and uploaded it to Twitter with her caption:
A HORRIFIC ATTACK on a peaceful debate. But trans violence will never silence our female voices. This is a WAR ON WOMEN and one we will WIN.
Chelsea clambered out from the passenger’s side, looking distressed. Janet had completely forgotten she’d left the girl in there. ‘Do you think we should, like, call 911?’ Chelsea asked.
Janet leaned against her car, watching the thick plumes of smoke darkening the sky. As that black cloud swallowed up the day, a tinge of doubt began to form in her gut. A few faint screams were still escaping the roaring flames, firefighters were now tearing towards the blaze and crowds were wailing in horror at the spectacle. Maybe this had all got a bit out of control… But a couple of minutes later a private message from Belinda Hayslip whooshed in: Mission accomplished!! You brave and inspirational woman – a crate of champers from me is on its way!
And Janet smiled, her lips already savouring that victory fizz.
‘Mission Critical’ is the third part in a loose Twitter trilogy, preceded by ‘Sadie Day’ in The Other World and ‘So You’ve Been Cancelled’ in Everyone Is Awful.
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