Many slurs aren't from men but self-righteous young women

Witch, Harridan, Harpy, and new insults like Karen and Terf. Even worse, many such slurs aren’t from men but self-righteous young women. Now a book – provocatively titled Hags – asks: Why is hating middle-aged women the last acceptable prejudice?

The more modern insult ‘Karen’ is a middle-aged white woman who has opinions
I’ve been called all the names. ‘Pearl-clutching middle-aged prude’ came first

Oh, I’ve been called all the names. ‘Pearl-clutching middle-aged prude’ came first — live on air from a male radio presenter. My crime? Arguing that pornography does incalculable damage to women and children, indeed to the world.

A Left-wing man denounced me as an ‘old witch’ on Facebook — all because I’d suggested mildly that even if you disliked Boris Johnson, his address to a packed Ukrainian cathedral in London (not long after Putin invaded) was moving and brilliant.

Then comes the more modern insult, ‘Karen’: a middle-aged white woman who — shock, horror — has opinions. I was recently smeared as a ‘Karen’ on social media by a beautiful, young, black businesswoman. What had I done? Taken issue with an assumption that Megs and Hazza are brave saints, victims of racist Britain.

Last but not least is ‘Terf’. As someone who has stood up for women’s rights against the ‘trans’ takeover of our spaces, our language, our identity, being called a ‘Trans-exclusionary radical feminist’ was par for the course. Bring it on. Broomsticks to the barricades!

Needless to say, I stored up all the curses with a witchy cackle and added them to the bubbling cauldron of wicked spells stirred by my fellow hags.

But to doff my pointy hat for a moment, I have to admit I’m now well beyond these names that spurn a woman in middle age. No, this punchy granny identifies as a veritable crone. So call me a prude, a witch, a Karen, a Terf — even a harridan and a harpy — I’m much too leathery to care.

The trouble is, my slightly younger sisters do care. They care very much. So why is hating middle-aged women the last acceptable prejudice? Why should women in their mid-40s suddenly feel targets of disdain for expressing their opinions? For centuries, we were supposed to accept our status as second-class citizens — and if you think that stopped in the 21st century, you need a wake-up potion.

Women are used to men putting them down. But what happens when other women join in? As a provocative new book claims, these days, younger women seem to loathe us older women for our un-progressive views.

As someone who considers herself on the right side of the word ‘liberal’, it gives me no pleasure to note that the liberal-Left (women and men alike), who think themselves so virtuous and ‘kind’, in fact have the monopoly on abuse.

In her new book Hags, the journalist Victoria Smith has written a devastating and clever critique of why and how older women like herself (not yet 50!) seem to be dismissed as morally inferior to the open-minded, sexually tolerant younger generation.

They are the ones who diminish the brutal reality of prostitution by calling it ‘sex work’, see nothing wrong with students regarding digital stripping as a career option and chorus ‘trans women are women’ with all the fervent piety of acolytes at the altar.

Smith traces hostile attitudes back to primitive fears of older women that demonised the crone at the end of the village. She may have been a herbalist who handed out wisdom and cures — but she was a threat. So find the witch! Burn the hag!

Smith asks why is this kind of demonisation so prevalent now? Why the rage, ageism and misogyny?

My baby-boomer generation wanted everything and thought we had it. But 1960s feminists like me grew older, had children and realised the world is far more complicated than we thought.

Why did Emma Watson join Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint in disassociating herself from the great J.K. Rowling — the Harry Potter author without whose stupendous creativity they (indifferent actors all) would not have got such lucky breaks as children and subsequently amassed millions?

That progression seems to have happened to the author of Hags, too. All through her book, Smith reflects ruefully on her youthfully progressive views and assumptions, compared to the reality today.

One aspect of that reality is younger men showing contempt for older women. The old hags are no longer fertile or fanciable. They’ve grown into feisty old bags who stand up — using reason plus emotion — to challenge the progressive status quo.

And we are called ‘bigots’ for our pains. Posturing drag queens in schools and libraries, sex-education that brainwashes children to think there are any number of genders, the ubiquity of loathsome, woman-hating pornography which schoolboys can access at a click? All this turns mothers into militants and grannies into (imaginary) gunslingers. Older women unite under a banner that screams: ‘NO!’

But here’s the difficult question. Why do some other women hold back? Why do we see, on a recent episode of TV’s Loose Women, four professional women fawning shamefully over the trans activist and model Munroe Bergdorf?

They did not ask a single question when Bergdorf praised the trans charity Mermaids — notorious for lobbying clinicians at the now-discredited NHS Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock clinic — recommending early interventions on children.

The damage done to these unfortunate youngsters has still not been quantified. Nothing of that on Loose Women. Those idiots just wanted to play ‘nice’.

Why do so many intelligent young women bow down to the same bizarre new orthodoxy and agree to style themselves ‘cis’ women — that is, female-bodied — in contrast to trans women who are just ‘women’?

Why did Kiran Millwood Hargrave, a 32-year-old prize-winning writer, refuse to sit on a panel judging a competition for a woman’s-writing magazine in 2020?

Because she disapproved of the established novelist and fellow panellist Amanda Craig, 64, who had dared to sign an open letter condemning the misogynist abuse of J.K. Rowling following her statements on women’s rights and transgender politics.

As Victoria Smith explains: ‘Note that the letter was not in support of Rowling’s views per se. Rather it objected to the d**k pics and threats of choking that followed.’

Try to get your head around the lunacy here: a magazine set up to champion women’s writing chose to punish a distinguished older woman for signing a letter expressing disgust at J.K. Rowling — a brilliant creative writer — being the victim of rape, death and violent threats

What happened? Craig was ditched from the panel while young Hargrave said she was glad the magazine, Mslexia, had ‘taken a stand in support of a persecuted minority’.

This is the madness that happens when the modern witch-finder generals stride around, looking for dried out women who pose a threat, to burn them metaphorically at the stake.

It is bad enough when those witch-finders are male, but when they are female you start to wonder what is going on to fuel the betrayal of what used to be called sisterhood.

In Hags, Victoria Smith comments: ‘I cannot help but think of the way in which a generationally coded sex and gender debate has become a means for younger women to try to force older ones out of the way professionally, with unfeminine ambition masquerading as feminine compassion for the most marginalised.’

So the young women yell: ‘Out of the way, you hags, you’ve had your day. We want what you’ve got!’

Those younger women have been brainwashed by the gender-identity ideology that questions their own existence as real women.

Older women see what’s going on — and reject it. We remember the first sore growth of our breasts, the first period, anxiety of pregnancy, childbirth, child-rearing, multiple family responsibilities, juggling work, menopause: the gamut of female experience from girlhood to bewitching sexy thing to mother to old hag.

You can’t take that away. Nor can you claim it by taking hormones and by demanding ‘she/her’ pronouns.

What all this is about, as Smith’s book makes very clear, is fear. It seems those useless panellists on Loose Women were so terrified of appearing to be older (which they are) and illiberal that they missed an opportunity to raise vital questions about protecting children.

You will remember with shame how you demonised the women who stood up for their sisters — heroines such as J.K. Rowling, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel, Allison Bailey and all the rest — and realise you got it all wrong

Young writers, dancers, artists, students are so anxious to appear ‘kind’ and modern and progressive that they gang up to bully the older women who dare question their views.

Men with beards claim to be more feminist than old-school feminists and obedient young radical women go along with the pretence. It is just SO old-fashioned!

When older women who know biological sex is real, that male-bodied people have no place competing in women’s sports and that concept of ‘women’s health’ is real (and we are not ’uterus-havers’) — when all of us, the coven of hags, are screamed at by younger women, what’s happening?

Those little sisters have bought into a Left-wing package that wishes to destroy (in the name of ‘progress’) family values, stability, social cohesion and so on, with as much ease as toppling a statue. But is there something else? What else do they fear? Are they haunted by a nightmare in which the horrible hags ride into their rooms at night and take over their bodies? That thick waists and wrinkles are catching?

You can witter on all you like about your pronouns and insisting you’re ‘kind’ — while bent on destruction. You can make common cause with those who criticise rape victims for not wanting male-bodied people in their counselling sessions.

You can agree with those blokes who vilify lesbians for not wanting sex with male-bodied people.

You can scream when a feminist’s T-shirt proudly proclaims: WOMAN: ADULT HUMAN FEMALE. But what you can’t do is stay young. Do you manipulate your image on Instagram and hope you can live up to it? Forget the dream.

Just as we get saggy, so you will, too. Your bodies will change — and as they do, your minds may shift with them. Then you may start associating wrinkles with . . . well . . . wisdom.

You may not even notice that crucial transformation happening. One day, for example, you’ll read the appalling, terrifying figures detailing violence against women here and all over the world — and realise with a frisson of shame that the cause of a tiny minority of ‘trans women’ you have championed is as nothing in comparison.

You may watch your daughters growing and realise that your fears for their safety in a hyper-sexualised world count more than anything. You start to use reason. You will remember with shame how you demonised the women who stood up for their sisters — heroines such as J.K. Rowling, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel, Allison Bailey and all the rest — and realise you got it all wrong.

Yes, you will become what we are today — if you are lucky. And then you will be proud to call yourself a Hag, too. Just you wait.

HAGS: The Demonisation Of Middle-aged Women by Victoria Smith is published by Fleet at £20

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