Susanna Rustin

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Susanna Rustin

Differing attitudes to women’s and transgender rights activism are often said to be generational. One poll, published a month on from the supreme court ruling that the legal definition of “woman” in the Equality Act is based on biological sex, found 63% supportive of the ruling and 18% opposed. But younger people were far more likely to be in the latter camp, with 53% of 18- to 24-year-olds disagreeing with the judgment. In my age group, 50-64, the figure was just 13%.

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Susanna Rustin

So, after all that, it turns out that under the Equality Act, a woman is an adult human female. A man is an adult human male. The unanimous UK supreme court ruling delivered on Wednesday is a big step towards clearing up the almighty mess created by politicians in Scotland, who got so carried away with promoting transgender rights that they decided transgender women ought to be eligible for seats on public boards on preferential terms that are for women.

2 months ago | susannarustin.substack.com | Susanna Rustin

I admired Julie’s earlier book The Pimping of Prostitution very much, and was lucky to be able to edit an extract which ran in the Guardian. But I’m heterosexual and didn’t expect to find so much interest in a book about lesbians. But I did! And I had a few things I wanted to write down after I finished it so here they are…I interviewed Julie and also Harriet Wistrich in their house when I was researching my own book Sexed: A History of British Feminism (2024).

Mar 17, 2025 | theguardian.com | Susanna Rustin

What’s in a name? With T-levels, quite a lot. By choosing a title that sounded a lot like A-levels – with T for technical – the reformers behind England’s latest post-16 qualification sent a message that the days of vocational education’s second-class status were over. The two-year courses, launched in 2020 (and not adopted in the rest of the UK), were supposed to boost applied learning and the prospects of the more than 50% of young people who don’t study for A-levels followed by a degree.

Jan 13, 2025 | theguardian.com | Susanna Rustin

Two seemingly contradictory things are true. It was appalling for the UK’s domestic policy agenda to be hijacked last week by Elon Musk’s blaze of interest in child sexual exploitation gangs. And government action in response to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse was long overdue.