Big pen and bigmouth of British journalism, Suzanne Moore, 62, slammed the door of the Guardian November 16an enigmatic Tweet. “I just left the Guardian. There are a few people that I will miss [dans le journal]. That’s all I can say for now. “ Ten days later, the columnist, known for her sarcastic tone, her contempt for conventions, was explained at length in the right-wing press (the online site UnHerd and the Daily Telegraph) on the reasons for his departure, after twenty-five years of career in a daily considered as the beacon of the British left.
In March 2020, she decided to stand up for Selina Todd, a professor of contemporary history at Oxford. Selina Todd has just been brutally “deprogrammed” from a conference on the prestigious campus, on the grounds that she endorses the positions of an organization recognized (Woman’s Place UK) but deemed “transphobic” by trans activists and members of the Labour Party. Selina Todd the feminist is threatened and taken to task online, Suzanne Moore finds it unbearable and signs a powerful tribune: “Women must be able to have the right to organize, we will not be silenced. “
“I know from personal experience what it means to you to be called transphobic by an invisible online court. Suzanne Moore
No, Woman’s Place UK is not a hate organization, she says. Yes, she too thinks, like this organization campaigning for spaces reserved for women, that sex is not a purely social construction. “Sex is not a feeling. Female is a biological classification that applies to the entire animal kingdom. ” The article is incisive, but nuanced: “Most people want the very small fraction of the population that is trans to live the best possible life,” Suzanne Moore explains, adding that the violence against these transgender people, who mainly comes from men, should not ultimately turn against feminists. “I know from experience what it means to you to be treated as a transphobic by an invisible online court”, specifies the journalist.
In UnHerd, eight months later, she said that in 2013, following an article on feminism that appeared in New Statesman (left-wing weekly) where at the turn of a sentence she explained that the “Women are angry (…) for not having a Brazilian transsexual body”, she had suffered a real torrent of threats. And was surprised at the time that this verbal violence comes from the left, after having been the target of insults from the far right for so long.
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