Sarah Ditum

Sarah Ditum is an English opinion columnist and writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, The Times, and UnHerd. Ditum's writing has covered issues including violence against women, gender identity, parenting, British parliamentary politics and cancel culture. She also writes regular book reviews. Her book Upskirt Decade: Women, Fame and The Noughties is scheduled to be published in 2023. Ditum is based in Bath.

Quotes

• Russell Brand, clown that he is, is taken seriously by an awful lot of young men who see any criticism of the cartoon messiah's misogyny as a derail from "the real issues" (whatever they are). The fans claim they love Brand despite the fact that he talks about women as poisoned birds of paradise, sucubus-like vultures or material accoutrements of wealth.
• I think the fans are dishonest: the sexism is part of the sell. If you know what power feels like, even if you have ever so little of it, how many people could commit to a new order with none at all?
  The men who love Brand love him because his "revolution" promises with chirpy vagueness to overturn every hierarchy – apart from the hierarchy of men over women, which Brand specifically and concretely reinforces. In Brand’s coming kingdom, a geezer can still lay claim to his bird. That is no revolution at all.
  • "Stuff your revolution if it doesn’t include treating women as people", New Statesman (3 November 2014)

• In June Cancer Research UK, a charity, tweeted: "Cervical screening (or the smear test) is relevant for everyone aged 25-64 with a cervix." The odd phrasing—"everyone with a cervix" rather than "women"—was not accidental. The charity explained that it had deliberately chosen to use what it described as "inclusive language". Similarly, the campaign Bloody Good Period, which donates tampons and sanitary towels to asylum-seekers, uses the word "menstruators" rather than "women". And Green Party Women, an internal campaign group of the British Green Party, confirmed last year that its preferred designation for the constituency it represented was not, in fact, "women" but "non-men".
• Yet rather than confront male violence or lobby the medical system, the focus of trans activism has overwhelmingly been the feminist movement, spaces and services designed for women, and the meaning of the word "woman".
  It is notable that Cancer Research UK did not test its "inclusive" approach with a male-specific cancer. Its campaign messages about prostate and testicular cancer address "men", rather than "everyone with a prostate" or "everyone with testicles".
  • "Trans rights should not come at the cost of women’s fragile gains" The Economist (5 July 2018)

• Effectively, Scotland will now issue GRCs on demand. Any man who wishes to be legally recognised as a woman just has to ask. As critics of the bill pointed out, this is likely to be highly appealing to the kinds of men who particularly want access to women's spaces — otherwise known as sex offenders.
• Holyrood could have voted for an amendment barring convicted rapists from applying for GRCs. This was rejected because, said reformers, it unfairly conflated sex offenders with trans people. I’d say the conflation happens when you make it possible for sex offenders to opt into trans status, but I’ve long stopped expecting any of this to make sense.
  • "The gender issue is now a religion. Fear of blaspheming keeps sensible people quiet" The Sunday Times (24 December 2022)
  • Published shortly after the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament.

• I don't think the nastiness of it was really comprehensible to me at the time. [...] I saw it more in the context of this escalating tradition of zoo radio - this brash, envelope-pushing environment, which has been taking place not just on the BBC but commercial networks as well.
  You go back to it now and you just think, that is outrageously horrible, and it's treating her as an object.
  • Cited in "Russell Brand: Resurfaced clips give a sobering reminder of noughties culture", BBC News (19 September 2023).
  • Referring to the October 2008 The Russell Brand Show prank calls row concerning the offensive messages Brand (and Jonathan Ross) left on the answerphone of actor Andrew Sachs. These comments concerned Brand's brief relationship with Sach's granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, and were broadcast on BBC Radio 2.

• It's true that maternity throws a spanner in women's careers. But women with dependent children are actually more likely to be in work than either women or men without, so the domestic divide can't be explained that way. And there's another quirk: different research shows that mothers who out-earn their male partner shoulder an even more unequal housework burden.
  I'll repeat that, because it's objectively insane. When a man is the breadwinner, women are expected to do more of the chores. And when a woman is the breadwinner, she still ends up doing more of the chores. Because who does what inside the home bears very little rational relationship to who does what outside the home.
  • "At last! Men think the chores should be shared — just not in their own household", The Sunday Times (24 September 2023)