Julie Bindel

Julie Bindel (born 20 July 1962) is an English radical feminist writer.

She is also co-founder of the law reform group Justice for Women, which has aimed to help women who have been prosecuted for assaulting or killing violent male partners.

She attended Branksome Comprehensive School from 1973 to 1978, leaving a year early without anyone noticing, she wrote.

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was still at large; mainly in the Leeds and Bradford area from 1975 to 1980, he is known to have murdered 13 women, some working as prostitutes, and attacked seven more, leaving them for dead.

It was Bindel's anger about the Sutcliffe murders that drove her to campaign to end sexual violence against women.

She came out as a lesbian in 1977 when she was 15.

She was also angered by the police's assertions that prostitutes were the killer's target, although from May 1978 none of the victims had fitted that profile, and by police advice that women stay indoors.

Bindel describes being followed home one night in November 1980 by a man of medium height with a dark beard and wiry hair.

She ran into a pub to escape from him and reported what had happened to the police, who either asked her to complete a photofit or dismissed her account because her pursuer had a Yorkshire accent.

One officer, because her accent resembled the north-eastern man, later found to be a hoaxer, made light of Bindel's evidence by claiming she "was just trying to cover up for my dad".

The following day or following week the body of Sutcliffe's final victim, a 20-year-old student, Jacqueline Hill, was found less than 1/2 mi from where the man had followed Bindel.

When Sutcliffe's photograph was published after his arrest the following year, Bindel realised the photofit she had assisted in compiling looked almost exactly like him as well as resembling the version provided by Marilyn Moore, one of Sutcliffe's victims who survived.

Bindel took part in feminist protests against the killings, including flyposting fake police posters in Leeds advising men to stay off the streets:

Humphreys had been convicted of murder after killing her violent pimp boyfriend in 1985 when she was 17.

JFW was launched in solidarity with Southall Black Sisters, who were campaigning for the release of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, convicted in 1989 of murdering her husband.

One of JFW's earliest cases was that of Emma Humphreys.

Bindel has served as the assistant director of the Research Centre on Violence, Abuse and Gender Relations at Leeds Metropolitan University (1990s), researcher at the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University (2000s), Visiting Journalist at Brunel University London (2013–2014), and Visiting Researcher at the University of Lincoln (2014–2017).

Bindel's research into violence against women in domestic and personal relationships has been a central feature of her work.

Together with her partner, Harriet Wistrich, a solicitor, and Hilary McCollum, Bindel co-founded Justice for Women (JFW), a feminist law-reform group that campaigns against laws that discriminate against women in cases involving male violence against partners.

JFW was created in 1991, initially as the Free Sara Thornton campaign, to secure the release of Sara Thornton, who had been convicted the previous year of murdering her violent husband.

In September 1992, she wrote to JFW from prison asking for help.

With their support she successfully appealed the conviction, claiming long-term provocation, a significant decision at the time.

E. Jane Dickson wrote in The Independent in 1995 that the group was being run by Bindel, Wistrich and their dog, Peggy, out of their North London home; Peggy did "her bit for the cause by snarling like Cerberus at the approach of a male footfall".

News reports from 7 July 1995 show Humphreys, Bindel and Wistrich holding hands on the steps of the Old Bailey after the judges ordered that Humphreys be released.

Humphreys died three years later of a drug overdose.

Bindel, Wistrich and Humphreys had become friends, and it was Bindel and Wistrich who found her dead in bed at her home.

She is also the editor, with her partner Harriet Wistrich, of The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys (2003).

She has written regularly for The Guardian, the New Statesman, The Spectator, The Sunday Telegraph magazine, and Standpoint.

Bindel and her two brothers (one older, one younger) grew up on a council estate in Darlington, north east England, after moving there from a terraced house that had coal fires and no indoor toilet.

She is of mixed Catholic and Jewish heritage.

They co-edited a book based on her notes about her life, The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys (2003).

They also award the annual Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize to women and groups that raise awareness about violence against women and children.

She wrote in 2005 that the police investigation only became focused when the first "non-prostitute" was murdered.

During late 2006 when the perpetrator of the Ipswich serial murders was still active, Bindel again found the police were advising women to "stay off the streets. If you are out alone at night, you are putting yourself in danger".

In 2008, an issue Bindel had campaigned on for over a decade became the focus of government legislation.

JFW and Southall Black Sisters had sought to change a law that protected men and penalised women.

While growing up, Bindel wrote in 2009, the thought of heterosexual conformity was totally unappealing.

When she was 17, Bindel moved to Leeds and joined the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group, which was campaigning against pornography.

A former visiting researcher at the University of Lincoln (2014–2017), and former assistant director of the Research Centre on Violence, Abuse and Gender Relations at Leeds Metropolitan University, much of Bindel's work concerns male violence against women and children, particularly with regard to prostitution, stalking, religious fundamentalism, and human trafficking.

Bindel has written or co-written over 30 book chapters and five books, including Straight Expectations (2014) and The Pimping of Prostitution (2017).