The Book Club: Julie Bindel

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the writer, activist and Spectator contributor Julie Bindel. In her new book Lesbians: Where Are We Now?, Julie asks why lesbian liberation seems – as she sees it – to have taken one step forward and two steps back. She traces the history of lesbian activism, explains why we’re wrong to assume that lesbians and gay men are natural allies, confronts the ‘progressive’ misogyny she identifies in a younger generation – and tells me whether she thinks the Supreme Court’s recent decision marks an end to the trans wars.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On Thursday the 15th of May, the Spectator is hosting a live book club event.
0:05.5	Sam Leith, the host of this podcast, will be joined by former Telegraph Editor-in-Chief
0:09.8	and military historian Max Hastings.
0:12.3	It will be an opportunity to talk about Max's new book, Sword, D-Day, trial by battle,
0:17.6	as well as mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
0:22.2	The full details are as follows,
0:28.5	7.30 on Thursday the 15th of May, at the Shaw Theatre in Houston, London, and tickets start from £27.50, although I believe there are ticket options that include a signed copy of the book.
0:34.3	For those tickets, go to www. Spectator.com.com.com. We look forward to seeing you there.
0:45.3	Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor
0:51.7	of The Spectator, and I'm very pleased to be joined this week by the Spectator
0:55.3	the writer and campaigner Julie Bindle,
0:58.7	whose new book is Lesbians, Where Are We Now?
1:02.3	Julie, I mean, you've supplied your own question.
1:05.2	Where are you now?
1:07.0	Well, we're in a very different position in many ways
1:10.7	than when I came out in the late 1970s when I was still a teenager.
1:17.4	Things are better in many ways, legislatively, and I think in the public consciousness,
1:22.9	certainly in the West, but we're in a much worse position in some ways also because of the last few
1:31.8	years of the rising tide of misogyny of woman hating, which impacts lesbians, I argue in the
1:38.3	book, a bit like the kind of sexism on steroids. So what happens to women, the sexism that women in general
1:45.5	endure, experience in any society, is generally worse for lesbians because, of course,
1:52.7	we're the only sexual orientation that excludes men. That's not why we're lesbians, but that is
	...

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