As you may have read last week, The Guardian published an extremely sobering article about the shocking rise in the prevalence of women who are allowed to write books. Some people found the article almost laugh-out-loud funny (several readers were said to have ruined laptops, spitting great gob fulls of coffee out in unexpected mid-morning mirth) but I myself found it no laughing matter. When I read the piece I could hardly believe my eyes - what a dreadful state of affairs. All I can say is thank God that someone was brave enough to speak out on this situation!

I was staggered to see what dangerous waters we are swimming in now, how far we have been swept from the fair shores of Franzen, Grisham, and King by the deadly undercurrents of women writers. Not only have these females been given access to word processors, they have also manipulated their way into the world of publishing (yay unto the offices of some of our finest agents and editors) with the kind of underhand machinations one cannot help but think of as demonic. And now these women, many of them young, and a frightening number not even Oxbridge educated, are forcing themselves onto the defenceless readers of literary fiction, like a pack of pistol-bearing harlots, spreading their syphilitic disregard for the time honoured principles upon which reading itself is built. Not only do they think that it is fitting for a woman to write a book, they seem to believe they are entitled to have their “work” published simply on the grounds of literary merit. This insidious menace is eating away at the very fabric of the publishing industry - this year a staggering 75% of nominees for the Costa First Novel award, and an outrageous 100% of the nominees for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, were in fact female. Just let those facts sink in.

You dear reader may be sitting high on that metaphorical fence, saying to yourself, “Big deal! Somebody has to write all the books I scroll past on instagram - why does it matter if these wenches do it? Give them a break, if men are expected to change their kid’s shitty nappies then it’s only fair if women pick up some of the slack!” And I understand I honestly do.

I see how much the average man is expected to juggle these days in the name of being “woke”. Not only is the paterfamilias responsible for earning a percentage of the household income, for knowing each of his children’s birthdays, and for putting the toilet seat down, but now he is also under obligation to give up his natural role as paragon, potentate, primogenitor of reason and sense, or face being “cancelled”. It is exactly this creeping erosion of men’s rights I am most fearful for, without the cordial subservience of womenfolk how can the male genius, the most fragile and lovely of all God’s creations, ever survive? It’s all very good and well to have Greta Thurnberg squawk about the polar icecaps, and Pamela Anderson bullying President Putin over the plight of the fin whale, but who exactly is standing up for the endangered male novelist? If (God forbid!) Julian Barnes found himself the victim of an oil slick would anyone take the time to fish him out of the North Sea and clean the sludge from his wings? If Martin Amis were to find himself hunted for his tusks, would any “activist” chain themselves to gates of the Zimbabwean embassy? Worryingly, I think not.

Now, before anyone accuses me of being a reactionary, let me make it clear that I am all for women having an education, it’s simply that I hold fast to the words of the late great Theresa May, who said “There are boy jobs and there are girl jobs”. Clearly books are boy jobs, it’s just natural law, not internalised misogyny or anything of the sort. Obviously, women should be taught how to write yes of course, I’m not advocating for Shania law here! I’m even in favour of them writing certain things too, say greetings on birthday cards, and in exceptional circumstances advertising copy for pantyliners (even though here I think probably a gentleman’s objectivity is more properly required). But I do think that the line has been crossed here, by these unladylike would-be-writers, and that they have clearly have no intentions at stopping until they have derailed the hard won careers of any male writers who are foolish enough to cross them. This is nothing less than a coordinated attack by Jeremey Corbyn, Barry M, and Disney+  on the very most central values of Western culture.

Forcibly barred from writing by bigoted lobbies of so-called equal right’s campaigners, male writers find few possible means to resist the new group think of the wokerati. Many well-known authors have already gone into hiding, taking refuge in second homes, or at the villas of alleged child sex offenders in the South of France. A number of the most prominent male novelists are reported to have quit writing for good, fearing that if they carry on knocking out 900 page volumes about how boring and stupid their wives are now they’re pushing 50, they will face the horrors Soviet style reeducation camps. More shocking still, several have sought the protection of Amnesty International, claiming that they are being forced to undergo gender reassignment surgery simply to be in with a chance of a six-figure advance. One unnamed best-selling novelist told the Sunday Times last week, “I don’t know where to turn, my choices are to get a boob job and come out as a non-binary lesbian, or retire on the $200M I made from the movie adaptation of The Da Vinci Code. I don’t think this is a choice anyone should ever have to make.”

It’s high time we ask ourselves, is this the kind of society any of us want to live in? Where men are afraid to make themselves heard, whilst women domineer over culture? We have only to look back on history, to the likes of Wallis Simpson, Eva Peron, and Madame de Pompadour to see where this will lead; to a world of terrible hangovers, mood lighting, and far too much hairspray - and I for one do not want to inhabit such a world.