As a young millennial, I grew up obsessively watching Mean Girls, a musical remake of which arrives in cinemas this week. One of my favourite moments in the original film is when Cady, the naive new pupil, gets a whistle-stop tour of her classmates’ cliquey seating arrangements in the school canteen. Part of what makes the scene funny is the arbitrariness of how the social groups separate themselves. We’re introduced to ‘varsity jocks’, ‘cool Asians’, ‘Asian nerds’, ‘unfriendly black hotties’, ‘desperate wannabes’, ‘burnouts’ and, most importantly, ‘the plastics’ – the trio of ‘it girls’ who control the school social ladder.

Whenever I hear feminism referred to as a sisterhood, a mischievous part of me thinks of the Mean Girls canteen. The radical feminists at one table, the liberal feminists at another, conservative feminists, intersectional feminists, Christian feminists, the new ‘reactionary’ feminists, the womanists, the eco-feminists… I could go on. Most of us sitting at these hypothetical tables recognize that we share a good deal of common ground and manage to handle our differences respectfully.

Since the rise of gender ideology, however, things have become considerably more fractious. One of Mean Girls’ many ultra-quotable lines is ‘You can’t sit with us!’. The cliques in the film may have petty rivalries, but at least they bitch and let bitch. According to many ‘pro-trans’ feminist organizations, however, if your feminism revolves around acknowledging biological realities, you can’t sit anywhere.