I also got my menstrual period at age 11 (this was several decades before my gender transition). But whether she is 11, 13, or 15 years old, a girl is a child, not a woman, and a child is not capable of making adult decisions. And more importantly, regardless of age or gender, no style of clothing or makeup excuses ogling or sexual advances. As you…

Amen! And thanks for writing both pieces. This was clear in your 1st piece. Maybe people don’t want to comprehend what they do not want to hear. Defensiveness, ignorance, fear…nothing is more important than the lives and souls of human beings. Be adults. Do the harder thing.

Go fuck yourself, Stephen Fry

Prefacing this with a warning. Not a trigger warning per se, but a warning that unlike Stephen Fry, I will not be discussing child sexual abuse in infantilising language of a posh git who probably still says, ‘botty’ and ‘pee pee’.

Apologies…

Men (we) do not do enough to stop creeps from being. We allow, probably help make, bad things happen with an insidious objectification of women. You, Ellie, are not the problem, ever — men are. Until men own their culpability in all this, we don’t deserve your trust.