Tilting at Windmills

When the world is burning, why court a fight with a determined and unreachable ideologue, who has deep pockets filled with other people's money?

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The saga of my battle against the defamatory words of Jolyon Maugham KC inches on. On August 26 2025 he publicised his complaint about me to the Bar Standards Board in defence of ‘young trans woman’ Kate, who is neither young nor called Kate.

Jolyon Maugham had instructed senior counsel to draft the complaint on behalf of Euan Weddell/Sophie Sparkles who was recast as a vulnerable transwoman, driven to an overdose of anti histamines due to my constant ‘harassment’. I have written at some length about the activities and proclivities of ‘Kate’ and why I politely doubt the claimed narrative of victimhood.

On August 29 2025 Maugham defamed me to his then 400K followers on ‘X’ . On September 4 2025 he followed this up with some angry videos across social media, apparently thinking he was about to cross swords in court with JK Rowling. He has ended up with just me. I started my crowdfunder in September and I very grateful to the 1,072 people who so far have contributed.

I sent my letter before action on 8 December 2025. He replied to ask for further and better particulars and got those. He made substantive reply on 30 January 2026. Of course, apology and deletion were never on the cards.

The Good Law Project have published his response on their website; of course they have. Maugham appears to consider he is indistinguishable from the Good Law Project and the money it raises, and is encouraging yet more donations to fight his personal battles under a general umbrella heading of ‘trans rights’. It raises interesting questions about the extent to which Maugham has sought or received any independent advice.

It’s an interesting letter. He relies on a broad and colloquial interpretation of ‘harassment’ rather then the stricter definition offered by the Protection of Harassment Act 1997 which requires a course of conduct that a reasonable person would see as causing harm and distress. Maugham doesn’t appear to think there is any issue of credibility around his star witness and produces no evidence whatsoever for the causal link to the alleged suicide attempt.

So what am I doing? Am I really going to risk my house for this man? I am very grateful for the £40K raised, but about £25K of that has been spent just to get this far, combined costs of a meaning hearing are likely to be in the region of £150K.

I now have some issues to sort out before issuing, for example, further investigation of an insurance policy to try and mitigate the costs risks, but at the time of writing I want to proceed.

My resolve was strengthened by the final paragraph of the letter; a not so veiled threat to issue proceedings in defamation against me. The letter states:

Your client will also be aware of the many defamatory statements she has published about our client and what she believes she understands about his family, in relation to which our client’s rights and those of his family are fully reserved

If Mr Maugham believes I have published defamatory statements about him, I am very happy to review those statements and consider deletion and apology if he can show me where I have gone wrong. With regard to what I have said about his family, I have repeated that at least one of his three daughters now believes she is his son. This is all in the public domain. In June 2013 for example he had ‘three young daughters’. By 2022 the eldest daughter was now his son.

And that this is very relevant when considering Mr Maugham’s inflexible aggression and hostility to those like me, who consider childhood medical transition a serious abuse. No doubt he is motivated by a father’s love. But that love has cost him his reason and has put many other people’s children at risk of harm. He doesn’t simply wish to champion his daughters and promote what he believes (misguidedly) is in their best interests, as any father would. He will use his power and influence to attempt to silence those who challenge him and seems to have done very little due diligence on those individuals and groups that he champions. Or worse - perhaps he has.

For example, a link to the initial Good Law Project article was reposted by the group ‘Bash Back’ on various social media platforms, when announcing their criminal hack of the Free Speech Union website and disclosure of personal data in January 2026.

This group promotes criminal action in support of ‘trans rights’ and has claimed responsibility for criminal damage to various venues, including the offices of Wes Streeting MP.

Those posts are now deleted following the FSU’s successful application for injunctive relief but such material was online for at least a week, and I was named and described as an ‘anti trans campaigner’.

I am concerned to note that at the time of writing Mr Maugham and ‘Bash Back’ follow each other on the social media site ‘Bluesky’. All of this adds to the air of threat and menace to those who would speak out against gender identity ideology and my personal concerns that Mr Maugham acts unreasonably.

I suggest that if Mr Maugham genuinely believed that I was harassing Mr Weddell, to the extent that he sought to kill himself, then he would have directed the funds of the GLP to seeking an injunction against me under the Protection from Harassment Act. He has not done so. Because he would not have succeeded. Maugham has instead weaponised the regulatory process as an easy and cost free way (for him) of causing me reputational and emotional harm and then casually defamed me to many thousands.

So why do I think this is worth my house? Because just a few minutes today scrolling my social media feed throws up examples of how people have been threatened and coerced into silence and their silence then used to give licence to unlawful action - well, nobody’s complained so it must be ok then! I can read about the Darlington nurses and female prisoners in Scottish prisons. If they dare complain about trans identifying men in female spaces, they will be punished.

Those who are not cowed into silence are subject to determined attempts to ruin their reputation or hurt them physically.

Or a horrific three minutes here of the various threats and insults committed to carboard signs by mostly angry men. If they aren’t threatening to kill us, they are inviting us to suck their dicks. Such is the Right Side of History! Who needs argument, when you have a penis.

It is easy to think that my proposed legal spat with Maugham is a ‘nothing burger’ - when set against the Sudan, Trump, Gaza, Afghanistan and the bodies piling up in Iran etc, etc, etc, etc

But these images and these stories I post above remind me that what I have been fighting for over 7 years now is the truth and the right to speak it. That the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and what is being done to women in Afghanistan may not be a million miles away from where women in the UK will find themselves if we do not continue to resist a corrupted ideology that is actively dangerous to the rights and safety of women and children.

I have fought and will continue to fight to ensure that any fetters placed on my right to speak are fairly imposed by due process and the rule of law, not by whim, threat or the vindictive spite of captured ideologues.

I think Maugham is the tip of a very nasty iceberg. Standing up to him is something that I can do, that is within my sphere of influence and I am very grateful that so far 1,072 people agree with me, and have put their money where their mouth is.

I hope that I do not let you down. I will certainly keep you informed.