ANDREW NEIL: Why I’m proud to be a ‘TERF’ and join JK Rowling on the front line in the

It all started innocently enough. I watched the testimony of a 19-year-old Californian, Chloe Cole, before a committee of the U.S. Congress last Thursday.

She was giving evidence about the experience she underwent in her transition to becoming a boy and it was pretty harrowing stuff.

Chloe revealed she had been given puberty blockers aged 13 and underwent a double mastectomy aged 15. Now de-transitioning, she fought back the tears as she revealed to the politicians before her that she had scars on her breast, her nipples weeped fluids, she would never be able to breastfeed, she struggled to look at herself in the mirror and when she did she saw a ‘monster’.

I fought to hold back my own tears.

Why had her parents gone along with all this? The doctors prescribing the drugs and proposing the mutilation, she explained, had asked them if they wanted a ‘dead daughter’ or a ‘live trans son’.

I decided to tweet to my 1.2 million followers an excerpt from her testimony, commenting that it was ‘heart-breaking’, ‘barbaric’ and asked: ‘What have we become?’

That’s when the balloon went up.

Andrew Neil: ‘I’m ready for the further abuse that awaits me for siding with such company. Frankly, it’s water off a duck’s back’

Andrew Neil said that if being a ‘TERF’ put him in the same camp as author JK Rowling (pictured), he was pleased because it made him a supporter of women’s rights

I’ve never commented publicly before on any of the issues swirling round the transgender debate. Readers of my columns and viewers of my TV shows will know I tend to stick to mainstream politics and economics, my areas of expertise. My tweet was a baptism of fire.

A Cabinet minister texted me: ‘Welcome to the dark side.’ They weren’t wrong. I was quickly denounced as a ‘Terf’.

I’d seen this term used to smear JK Rowling and other critics of the transgender lobby but, I explained, it wasn’t effective abuse against me since I didn’t really know what it meant. Someone helpfully explained that it stood for ‘Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist’ (meaning, I think, advocating feminist rights at the expense of trans rights).

I’ve always regarded myself as something of a feminist, having appointed the first-ever female editor of The Scotsman, for example, and the first female editor of The Sunday Times colour magazine in the days when these things didn’t really happen. But a ‘radical feminist?’ I can’t wait to tell Germaine Greer, I tweeted in jest. In truth, there is nothing funny about the trans debate.

A number of fellow ‘Terfs’ posted tweets welcoming me to the cause but pointing out, correctly, I was something of a johnny-come-lately.

Times columnist Janice Turner said she and other women had been writing about the use of drugs and surgery on transitioning teenagers for at least six years and taking no notice was a lesson for me ‘not to tune out women’.

I replied that it was usually wiser to welcome converts to the cause rather than upbraid them. But I now see that was ungracious. Women like Janice (and it’s nearly always been women) who’ve been in the vanguard of exposing the horrors of this scandal have experienced the vilest abuse — and received precious little support or comfort from the rest of us.

They have been vilified by the more extreme elements in the transgender lobby as ‘hysterical bigots’ and regularly threatened with violence, including rape and murder.

One woman showed me evidence of threats to ‘come to your house’ and ‘rip the nipples off your bare chest’. Another was promised a ‘night of the long knives’. And there’s much worse than this. It’s simply unrepeatable in a newspaper.

Neil reacted to the story of de-transitioner Chloe Cole, 19, who had both breasts removed at 15 as part of gender reassignment surgery and was left feeling ‘suicidal’ and filled with regret

It’s not just threats. Women who’ve dared to question the trans consensus have lost their jobs or been sidelined. A senior Arts Council England official was driven to resign (she later won her harassment claim before an employment tribunal).

Journalists, such as Suzanne Moore from the Guardian, have quit after being shunned by colleagues. Even academics, such as Professor Kathleen Stock, have been hounded out of their university posts by aggressive student campaigns.

These injustices happened under my nose. Either I took no notice, or didn’t think it was my fight — when it should be everybody’s fight.

Of course, journalists like me were not entirely unaware of transgender controversies. We watched, shaking our heads, as men who had transitioned to women started winning events in women’s sports.

Lia Thomas, who’d once competed in American university male swimming teams, became one of the most notorious causes celebres as her tall, muscular body towered above women swimmers on the female winner’s podium.

That seemed simply unfair to all the women who’d given up so much of their youth to become champion swimmers.

Then there was the case of Adam Graham, sentenced to eight years for raping two women, but who — between arrest and sentence — decided to transition to a woman and become Isla Bryson.

At one stage it looked like the rapist’s jail-time time would be served in a woman’s prison and that the SNP government in Scotland would uphold that — until there was an outcry and common sense prevailed. That episode contributed to the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon so, as a Scot, it naturally appeared on my radar.

But I didn’t know the half of it. Fortunately, the brave women standing up against extreme transgender ideology did. And with precious little support from the rest of us, they have had their victories.

NHS England has outlined its strategy to replace the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London, which will close after it was criticised as ‘not fit for purpose’ a review by paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass

Supporters of Sarah Jane Baker gathered outside Westminster Magistrates Court on Friday, July 14, to demand the trans activist’s release after she allegedly told a crowd to ‘punch a terf in the face’

London’s Tavistock NHS Trust is closing its Gender Identity Development Service, the main English clinic responsible for treating teenagers similar to Chloe Cole.

The use of puberty blockers has been curtailed, which is just as well since, despite claims they’re ‘life-saving’ and ‘reversible’, a study into their use in the NHS concluded they could disrupt the long-term brain development of youngsters.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of disinformation floating around. My attention was brought to a Swedish study which, relying on information stretching back over 50 years, found that less than 3 per cent of individuals who transitioned ever de-transitioned.

But even a cursory look revealed that the study ended in 2010, covered only adults and mainly natal males. So it tells us nothing about the recent explosion of teenagers, mainly girls, seeking to dissociate themselves from the bodies with which they were born.

There is a growing suspicion that many of the young people currently suffering from what’s called gender dysphoria are simply gay and that, if allowed to come to terms with their sexuality with help and counselling, will turn out just fine.

Instead they are being subject to barbarous treatment much like, in more intolerant times, gay people were subjected to electric shock treatment to ‘cure’ them.

If this analysis proves broadly right, we’re living through a medical and societal scandal of massive proportions.

I have merely reached the foothills of all the issues involved in the transgender debate. I now have a new summer reading list whose authors represent a roll call of honour to those who have fought in the trenches, often at great personal cost: Helen Lewis, Julie Bindel, Sarah Ditum, Hannah Barnes, Helen Joyce, Labour MP Rosie Duffield, Hadley Freeman and others too numerous to mention (and, yes, you’ve noticed — there are no men on this list, which only underlines who’s been doing the heavy lifting).

I’m ready for the further abuse that awaits me for siding with such company. Frankly, it’s water off a duck’s back. And it’s never as brutal against men as it is women, which speaks volumes for those dishing out the abuse.

Who cares? If it means I’m a JK Rowling ally and that makes it harder for what happened to Chloe Cole to happen to other young, vulnerable teenagers, then I’m delighted to be a foot soldier in a just cause.