Zoe Williams

Zoe Abigail Williams (born 7 August 1973) is an English left-wing columnist, journalist, and author.

Quotes

• It's an extremely peculiar situation, if you come at it cold: neither the Labour leader, nor any of his shadow cabinet, can get through a broadcast interview without being asked who has a penis and who has a vagina. Why, at this moment of both national and international crisis, has the media decided that the most important question for a party that hasn't been in government for 12 years, is a hypothetical one about genitals?
  • "Labour needs to own its policy on gender - and unequivocally back trans rights", The Guardian (6 April 2022).

• [In the late 1990s] But the conversations we had then were whether or not it was feminist to wear fishnets. There was never any subtext of violence against women. By the late 00s, lad-mag controversies were of a completely different nature. Danny Dyer had an agony uncle column in Zoo that he used to advise a reader to cut his ex's face to stop anyone else wanting her. Other advice was to set fire to a readers's girlfriend’s pubic hair that he didn't like. These were ghostwritten and as such can only really speak to the new mood in lad-mags, but two things had changed. One was a complete normalisation of violence against women and the other was a void where the humour used to be. The norm had been flipped: the argument in the 90s, that anything was fair game so long as it was funny, had turned into: "Anything is allowable, so long as I say it is funny."
  • "The nasty noughties: Russell Brand and the era of sadistic tabloid misogyny", The Guardian (18 September 2023).
  • The comedian Russell Brand was being accused of the sexual assault of four women by the media, all of which he denies.

• [M]y experience of an all-girls' school, followed by twice as long as a trustee of a prison charity, informed a lot of my politics, including why I became a transgender ally. Before I had thought seriously about trans rights, and the immeasurable preciousness of any human being with the courage to live their most meaningful and truthful life, I thought: "Wait, are you saying all-female spaces are kinder? Purer? Inherently less violent? More supportive? Are you joking? Are you out of your mind?"
  • "Kate doesn’t want Prince George to go to Eton – and for once I agree with her", The Guardian (8 January 2024).