If you had told British women 20 years ago that they would one day face criminal charges for calling a man “a man,” they would’ve dismissed you as crazy. And yet here we are, in the year 2020, with an active movement of gender critical, gender abolitionist, and feminist women in the U.K. who have taken up their fight in response to their government and their culture succumbing to transgender ideology. With breath-taking speed, the cult of gender identity has transformed the political landscape in the U.K. during the last decade, and as far as the law is concerned, there may be no turning back. Gender identity activists now have the upper hand in a way we all would’ve once thought unbelievable, yet British feminists and gender critical women show no signs of backing down. On the contrary, it seems the further transgender activists go in their quest to control and brainwash the entire nation of England (along with the rest of the U.K.), the more female resistance grows. New women of all ages are finding their way to the feminist and gender critical movement in the U.K., and the veterans renew their resolve with each attack they field.

How this war will play out is anybody’s guess. It will likely go on forever, perhaps moving in waves of increased and decreased activity. There was always going to be a backlash of common sense and female self-defense to the transgender mania—as docile as most women are, we all have our limits—and sooner or later, the consequences of medical malpractice against children sucked into the gender cult will come back around to bite the doctors, parents, therapists, and activists. But will we ever see the U.K. return to the days when gender identity was an alien concept to 99% of the population? Probably not. Will the laws put in place to install transgenderism into British society be replaced with new laws protecting free speech, women, and children? Not without a long, uphill battle. If these speculations are too depressing for you, all I can say is: the female condition has been see-sawing from progress to regression since the beginning of time. Feminism is not a movement that can ever reach its ultimate goal and then disappear into obsolescence. Every inch of ground women gain in the war against men’s oppression must be defended forevermore, or else lost and fought for again.

As an outside observer, an American whose own culture seems far more resistant to transgenderism’s cancerous growth, I watch the situation in Britain and British feminists’ response to it with a mix of horror and admiration. Horror at the dramatic and rapid descent the U.K. experienced into the Orwellian, dystopian submission to the transgender cult; admiration for the women who are brave enough to risk prison sentences, physical violence, and unemployment to go up against the state itself, to say nothing of the common man in drag on the street. I can’t imagine my own country reaching the point that the U.K. has reached, and I’m not sure what I would do if I was a woman living in such a hostile, repressive environment seemingly hell-bent on denying material reality. Surely, there are more women in the U.K. who think gender identity is ridiculous garbage than there are women there willing to say so out loud and politically demonstrate against the ideology. That’s always been true when it comes to feminism: the few fight for the many, and the many often standby silently, waiting for the rewards of feminist victory.

It has to be said that the U.K. didn’t get to where it is now without the help of misogynistic and homophobic women. Women who have endorsed transgenderism and done much of the dirty work on behalf of the cult. Some of those women are in Parliament right now. Some of them work in gender identity clinics, in medical and psychiatric offices, in LGBT organizations, and schools. Men may have been the driving force behind the spread of gender identity, but without women’s cooperation, they never would’ve been able to achieve what they’ve achieved in the U.K. Female collaboration and cooperation has always been a pillar of male power in society, and the transgender movement is just the latest example of how that dynamic works. The biggest problem U.K. feminists and gender critical women face is not the violent, deranged men who want to force all women to pretend drag and self-identity makes men into women. The biggest problem is the legion of women throughout British society who have sold out to the trans cult and who will now help persecute other women for refusing to submit to the cult’s will. Feminism has never failed because men are just too powerful for women to beat; it fails only because most women choose to unite with men against the feminist minority. As long as this division and betrayal occur in the female population, male domination and oppression of all women continues. That’s why it’s important for us as feminists to call out women who betray our cause to side with men. Men can’t be changed, but women can be. Feminist consciousness-raising is the means by which that change occurs, and if British feminists and gender critical women are going to return the U.K. to sanity, rationality, and democracy, they’re going to do it with the help of women who are currently working against them, once those women wake up and see transgenderism for what it is.

For now, British feminists and gender critical women are doing what they can, and while it might not seem like much now, it’s the difference between a British society where female humanity might be recognized and a British society thrust back into the past, where women and girls had no rights or legal protections whatsoever.