Where Are the TERFs on Britain’s ‘Grooming Gangs’?

F eminists have long denounced a supposed “rape culture” among straight white men, but they evidently have little to say about the actual rape culture that’s been imported to England by welcoming Pakistani and Muslim immigrants. Self-styled “TERFs” — meaning “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist,” or a feminist who broadly rejects subordinating sex to gender identity — whose campaigns underscored “women’s safety” are seemingly unconcerned about the British girls being abducted, trafficked, beaten, burned, tortured, and raped. Even the leading British feminists who captivated the public by criticizing “trans inclusive” policies for enabling predatory conduct seem to be suffering from rapid-onset muteness.

The “Rape Gang Inquiry Report,” published last week as a product of an independent investigation led by Member of Parliament and current leader of the Restore Britain Party Rupert Lowe, is a distressing document about the so-called “grooming gangs” (translation: “child prostitution rings”) in the United Kingdom that are largely composed of Muslim or Pakistani men. (Read more from NR’s coverage on the report here and here.) It was neither an academic study nor an official government initiative with statutory powers to compel witnesses and document production, therefore it did not yield fresh statistical claims or unearth state documents. The report’s value is its pages of harrowing testimony provided by victims, their families, whistleblowers, and other individuals who observed the gangs. The survivors recall years of enduring sexual exploitation, substance misuse, torture, trafficking, and repeat pregnancies, as well as instances of forced marriages and conversion to Islam — all consistent with existing reporting and previous government-led reviews. However, the report in particular underscores how England itself is complicit: Authorities and staff in the police, the schools, the social-care industry, and the health-care system all failed to intervene or even encouraged the gang activity, in part because they feared accusations of “racism.” Additionally, the report explores cultural and religious factors that motivated the gangsters, such as “the doctrine of Muslim superiority” and clannish norms.

There is no possible happy ending to this horrific saga, but thankfully, the report has facilitated a global conversation about sexual violence, immigration, moral cowardice, and the ineptitude of British institutions. Rupert Lowe’s post on X announcing the report’s publication has amassed nearly 50 million views by now, while Elon Musk himself amplified the issue over the past week.

Yet celebrated feminists — including those in the United Kingdom — have largely remained silent about the rape gangs, even though they unremittingly raised alarm about gender-related laws on the grounds that increased accommodation for “trans women,” meaning men, would directly harm women and girls. To be entirely clear, that argument was and is correct: Policies that permit an individual to access a single-sex facility in accordance with one’s self-asserted “gender identity,” rather than conditioning access on the basis of sex, enable predatory men to target women and girls in particularly vulnerable environments, resulting in instances of sexual misconduct that includes rape, nonconsensual intimate photography, and self-pleasuring. However, it does strike me as odd, perhaps even hypocritical, that the women who cultivated public personas as advocates for enhanced “women’s safety” in light of “trans inclusive” policies have largely disregarded a women’s safety scandal that is more consequential and more widespread.

Consider a few reputable English feminists. Author J. K. Rowling has mentioned the “gangs” before, writing in early 2025 that “the details emerging about what the rape gangs . . . did to girls in Rotherham are downright horrific” and “the allegations of possible police corruption in the case are almost beyond belief.” She hasn’t yet mentioned the new report on social media, although she did post an article about a man arrested in England for voyeurism because he took photos of female customers in a store’s changing rooms — a story that seems unimportant when compared with a teenage victim’s testimony that described being raped, then violated with an alcohol bottle that shattered inside her. (Rowling’s other recent posts address topics like hormonal therapy and the rights of female inmates.) Plenty of other British feminist activists, such as Helen Joyce, who previously referenced the gangs now have likewise refrained from discussing the new report. Searching some prominent feminists’ names online — like Maya Forstater — for public commentary about the gangs yields no relevant results. Kathleen Stock, previously an academic at the University of Sussex, has written insightfully about the gangs in the past year, which makes her current absence from the conversation rather unusual. All of these women — Rowling, Joyce, Forstater, and Stock — were vocal participants in the controversy surrounding Imane Khelif, the male boxer with a genetic condition who snatched a gold medal in the Paris Olympics women’s boxing division; the punches he threw are, somehow, more deserving of a timely public denunciation than the systematic daily rape of little children throughout England.

If an underlying value motivating feminist activism against gender-related policies is something like “I aim to ensure women’s safety from sexual exploitation and physical violence,” then surely that premise would similarly encourage commentary and campaigning in support of the girls who estimated they were raped by “hundreds” of South Asian men. It is a bit ridiculous to allocate more concern toward the girls whose trophies were snatched by male athletes than to the girls who were trafficked around a nation as sex slaves — especially if your current reputation is centered on fighting for women’s rights. In 2024, a United Nations report cited that over 600 female athletes have lost more than 890 medals to male competitors. By contrast, the “conservative” estimate suggests that 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham from 1997 to 2013, although not necessarily all were victims of the gangs. The mantras repeated in support of “gender critical” activism are similarly pertinent in discussions about the “grooming gangs,” but the latter topic warrants comparatively more recognition because it is worse in manner and scale.

To be sure, I don’t want a society where every individual is expected to opine on every cause du jour; I am not going to adopt the totalitarian strategies of the BLM activists who insisted everyone must denounce white supremacy, lest they be mistaken for a white supremacist. It is fine, even wholly natural, to care more about one particular cause than another. Likewise, there isn’t a moral error in devoting oneself to a particular battle in a large crusade. For example, I reckon most pro-life advocates dedicate more time and energy to fighting the abortion industry than euthanasia policies. However, I do expect the feminists — specifically those who have become public figures by repeatedly talking about “women’s rights” and “protections for girls” — to say a word, or maybe indulge us with a full sentence, during a global discourse about the decades-long sexual exploitation scheme present in their own nation. Ultimately, the decibels of feminist outrage when a male athlete stood atop a women’s podium far exceed that in response to stories about England’s pimp dynasties, which prompts me to question whether the TERFs are firmly committed to the principles they espouse.