This year to date, seven women have been murdered in the North. That’s the same number as died violently in the Republic, with three times the North’s population, in the whole of 2025.

And yet a community festival in Belfast has denied a platform to a group campaigning for women’s safety.

Since the Troubles ended, sexual and physical assaults on women have steadily increased in the North, with 98% of its female population now reporting that they’ve suffered gender-based violence. And yet, a community festival in Belfast has denied a platform to a group campaigning for women’s safety.

Just yesterday, a video of a man viciously battering a woman on the head with a brick in Belfast appeared online, and yet a festival has denied a platform to Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland (WRNNI).

I probably don’t need to tell you why.

It’s because the ‘cancelled’ group, believes that women’s rights and safety requires single-sex spaces – in sport, in domestic violence shelters, in changing rooms and toilets, in healthcare.

But Féile an Phobail believes that the rights of males to ‘identify’ as women, and invade these spaces at will, should take priority.

Féile an Phobail favours that sector of the ‘phobail’ who believe that males in dresses are women, and that anyone who disagrees must be chastised, silenced and shamed. It really is that simple.

Wouldn’t you think that of all the places in the world that should have learned the meaning of ‘civil rights’, it’s the North?

Of all the communities that should have learned the importance of freedom of speech and expression, of freedom of conscience and belief, of equality of status and respect, of listening to the genuine concerns of half the population rather than dismissing them as ‘bigots’, it’d be Belfast.

Féile an Phobail had initially agreed to run an event called ‘Respect, Rights and Reality’ by the women’s group at this summer’s festival. But it seems that the pesky ‘reality’ bit posed a problem.

This group believes that biology is real, humans can’t change sex and a man can’t become a woman just by acquiring a legal certificate – or, you know, beliefs that humans have held since time immemorial.

Some people would even say these are not a beliefs or opinions, they’re facts.

At the very least, it is a rather widely held viewpoint that is fully entitled to be aired, and all the more so in a place where the rights of one community were stifled and denied for generations.

But after it emerged that the women’s group was to participate in the festival, the abuse, the threats, and the misogynistic bile that elements of ‘trans’ activism routinely direct at women’s rights campaigners began to disgorge. Rather than standing by this brave and beleaguered group, Féile caved in to the bullies and couched its craven capitulation as a valiant blow for the most oppressed, most demonised, most persecuted women in the North: biological males.

‘Féile an Phobail’, its pompous statement boasted, ‘takes pride in standing up for those who are marginalised and attacked.’

In a society where murders, violence and sexual assaults on women are spiralling out of control, and have been steadily rising for decades, it seems the ones most in need of protection from attack in the North are males.

Féile accused the women of ‘campaigning against the rights of the transgender community’, and pulled the plug on their festival slot.

Let’s get this straight: transgender people have the exact same rights as everyone else. What they’re demanding – in many cases with extreme menaces, death threats and misogynistic abuse – are superior rights: as well as being fully entitled to access male spaces, they also want to be able to intrude, intimidate and dominate women in the female estate.

This is not about protecting a tiny, marginalised community – this is a male supremacy movement aimed at stripping women of their liberties, entitlements and safety.

Trans people are free to ‘identify’ however they want, but when that identification requires the rights of women to be sacrificed, then we have a problem. And for Féile an Phobail to accuse women of oppression, discrimination and bigotry in the pursuit of their rights is not just offensive, it’s defamatory.

That, it seems, is where JK Rowling and her billions come in. The Harry Potter author, and fearless women’s rights campaigner, has offered to help fund any legal action WRNNI wants to take against Féile, and I suspect her pockets are deeper than the group’s.

The international tide is steadily turning against the insanity of the trans cult – look at the support for US basketball star Sophie Cunningham, who would surely have been cancelled just a couple of years ago for her objection to biological males in women’s sports.

On this island, though, we’re always a bit slow to catch up. But perhaps when the legal actions begin to roll in, from mutilated children, from misled parents, and from wronged women, the likes of Féile na Phobail might just conclude that ‘reality’ has its advantages after all.

Love for likenesses seems to wax and wane 

Did the National Wax Museum suffer from an attack of cold feet when it indefinitely postponed yesterday’s planned unveiling of its new Sinéad O’Connor statue? ‘Unforeseen circumstances’ have been cited to explain why the long-awaited waxwork remains under wraps. 

The museum had said that the new likeness was created ‘following a process of careful consideration, research and craftsmanship’, having earlier admitted that the first version ‘didn’t meet the museum’s standards’. That’s one way of putting it. ‘Hideous’ was the more succinct verdict of Sinéad’s brother John on the 2024 effort, produced to mark the first anniversary of her death. ‘Like something out of the Thunderbirds’ was another of his observations. We’ve made a blood sport out of mocking statues and waxworks of famous people in this country, so kudos to whoever undertook this second attempt – the very best they can hope for is ‘not quite as hideous’. No pressure, then.

Baptism of fire as cruel mob turns to a fresh face in the public eye 

Comment of the week, on those images of King Charles greeting the newly installed British PM on Monday, goes to the wit who observed that the last time Charles said the words, ‘Andy Burnham’, he was telling his brother to get rid of some photos.

Apparently the new PM was a bit of a ladies’ man himself in his day, telling an interviewer that canvassing in his constituency was a minefield because so often, when a woman opened the door, he’d be thinking, ‘I remember kissing her…’ He must have a great memory, then, since he’s been with wife Marie-France van Heel for 35 years, and married since 2001. She’s kept a low profile to date, but the poor woman got a nasty baptism of fire this week with a deluge of cruel comments over her choice of a cornflower-blue Victoria Beckham dress for the big day.

It seems she made the mistake of not looking like an undernourished stick insect. I don’t get it – we complain about skinny celebrities presenting unrealistic body images, and when a real woman dares to display a normal 50-something body – one that’s survived breast cancer and carried three babies – in her lovely new dress, she’s savaged.

Let’s be good sports over Dior 

Having Dior’s autumn/winter 2027 catwalk show staged in Trinity College Dublin next December is the fashion equivalent of a World Cup match being played in Croke Park. Yet, despite being a multi-billion-euro global industry that’s followed with great enthusiasm by millions worldwide, fashion is still seen as a ‘niche’ interest – I wonder if that’s because its devotees are mostly women? Hopefully, the decision by Dior’s Derry-born kingpin Jonathan Anderson to unveil his new collection before a Dublin audience, the first Irish Dior show since its Brown Thomas boutique opened in 1950, will ensure it gets the same mainstream media attention as a major sports event. 

The fact that he designed Taylor Swift’s wedding dress, in conditions of such secrecy that his own family didn’t know he had the gig, makes him one of the world’s top designers. Still, I fear the show will get less coverage than a minor club match on Sunday afternoon radio.

Kevin paved the way for thousands of mullet-heads 

Alongside George Best, Kevin Keegan was probably the first footballer to transcend sport and become a fully fledged celebrity, fashion icon and heartthrob, back in his 1970s and ’80s heyday. 

Mind you, it was easy to be a fashion icon in those days, and looking at the tributes following his death at just 75 this week, I couldn’t help comparing Kevin’s lopsided mullet, gold medallion, blue jeans and tanned six-pack (at a time when a six-pack was still a round of beers) with the sculpted, tattooed, bejewelled, elaborately coiffured and couture-clad peacocks of the recent World Cup teams. 

Back then, when Keegan got a tightly curled perm, his daring new look launched a thousand bad hair days – good luck to any modern wannabe trying to copy Marcus Rashford’s elaborate zig-zag braids.

The hosepipe ban is probably the worst heatwave side effect we’ve got to endure here, but pity the poor women of Japan who have to deal with another unforeseen consequence of the hot spell. It seems that Japanese men have been told to ditch their ‘salaryman’ suits and wear shorts to work, in 40C temperatures, but this is not sitting well, so to speak, with the women working alongside them. 

They’ve dubbed their discomfort ‘sunehara’ or ‘leg hair harassment’, and according to research by the aptly named Gorilla Clinic, they’re distressed by the sight of their colleagues’ pale, hairy legs.; they’ve clearly never seen Irishmen in sandals and black socks. Worse still, women are still expected to wear tights to work. The obvious solution, it seems to me, is for ‘salarywomen’ to discard the razors, waxes and tights, for the duration, and rock their own gorilla legs around the office. The men will be back in their wool suits in jig time.