This Christmas, heretics, rebels and free thinkers have every reason to feel jolly. Because 2022 has been the year that the British public said ‘no’ to the worst excesses of US-imported grievance culture – most notably to transgenderism. And those leading the charge through the courts, institutions and streets have been middle-aged women who refuse to take any shit.

A heroine to whom we all owe a debt is researcher Maya Forstater. In 2019, Forstater was forced out of her job at the Centre for Global Development think-tank, for holding what have become known as ‘gender-critical beliefs’. Forstater took her employer to court, and although she lost the original tribunal case, this was overturned in 2021 after an appeal ruled that gender-critical beliefs must be protected from discrimination under the Equality Act. Today, because of Forstater, the right to hold the (once unremarkable) belief that there are two sexes, that sex is immutable and that sex matters is legally protected within workplaces.