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When I think of The Avengers, what comes to mind is not the bloated comic-book franchise in which overpaid actors cavort in front of a greenscreen for the masturbatory pleasure of nerds. No, to me, there is and will always be only one Avengers, and that’s the 1960s British crime and espionage TV series. As a kid, it was my favorite show, and I have fond memories of rushing home from elementary school every day to catch Emma Peel (my favorite of John Steed’s female partners) in action.

Among Avengers superfans, there is one episode that is generally considered the worst. Indeed, the episode is outright despised, because in a series lauded (and properly so) for being a trailblazer when it came to presenting strong, intelligent, and independent action heroines, the episode “How to Succeed…at Murder” is seen as a giant chauvinistic step backward. It’s known as the “anti-feminist” episode, the one that took the show’s message of female empowerment and stood it on its head. “How to Succeed…at Murder” was first broadcast in March 1966. The setup is typical Avengers-style mystery. Prominent businessmen are being murdered by unknown assailants, and it’s up to Steed and Peel to get to the bottom of it. It turns out, a group of sexy female ballet students have created a secret society dedicated to the destruction of powerful men. They use their feminine charms to get hired as secretaries, only to quickly begin taking control of the business to the point that when they murder the boss, ownership falls to them. The society’s motto is “Ruination to all men.”

Mrs. Peel infiltrates the group and learns that the girls take their orders from a female marionette, which seems to speak and move on its own. In a voice somewhat resembling that of a drag queen, the marionette explains the group’s mission: “To take woman out of the secretary’s chair and put her behind the executive desk. To bring men to heel and put women at the pinnacle of power.”

The marionette’s “helper” is Henry, the clumsy, doughy owner of the ballet school where the secret society meets.

Emma is soon exposed as an infiltrator, and it’s up to Steed to confront the evil ballerinas on their home turf. “No man will dominate us again,” the girls crow as they hold Steed at gunpoint. However, the unflappable Steed quickly deduces that the marionette is actually being controlled remotely by…Henry. Yep, these women had a male boss all along! Revealed as the mastermind, Henry tearfully explains that following the loss of his late wife’s ballet company at the hands of greedy investors, he vowed vengeance against powerful businessmen (it’s also revealed that the marionette is crafted in his wife’s image, and Henry, his mind bent by grief, actually believes he’s his dead wife when he gives the puppet voice). To achieve his revenge against the business world, Henry took advantage of the anti-male sentiments of his students. “No man will ever dominate you?” Steed mockingly asks the girls. “You’ve been taking orders from a man all this time!” As the murderous dancers stand crestfallen, their mouths agape, their boastfulness sapped, Emma disarms the lead girl and beats the living crap out of each and every one of them.

You cannot read a review of this episode on any Avengers fansite without encountering the words “sexist,” “reactionary,” or “misogynistic.” The vitriol stems from the fact that the man-hating feminists turn out to be gullible morons. In their fanatical crusade against male domination, they inadvertently allowed a weak, delusional man-who-believes-he’s-a-woman to dominate and control them.

Women allowing themselves to be dominated by emotionally troubled men who think they’re women? These days, the episode packs a punch for reasons I’m sure its creators could not have foreseen. As those who call themselves “trans women” (while the rest of us call them “dudes who think they’re chicks”) continue to gain influence on the left, shielded from opposition (lest one be called “transphobic”) and protected from criticism (because did you know that in the U.S. a trans person commits suicide every ten seconds? It’s true; I read it on HuffPost!), many feminists are starting to have the same “wake up” moment that the ballerinas had after Steed opened their eyes to an obvious truth.

In the past month, brewing clouds of war between feminists and trannies have darkened the skies above England (ironically, the home of The Avengers). Britain’s loony Labour Party employs something called the “all women shortlist” (AWS) to ensure the election of female candidates. The AWS mandates all-female tickets in safe races. If a particular seat is a guaranteed Labour win, the party will run only women. A few weeks ago, word got out that Labour was going to be opening its AWS to dudes in dresses. Any guy in a wig who says, “Blimey, I’m a bird,” will be included along with actual women. As you might assume, this has created a firestorm of controversy, but—as you might not have guessed—the combatants are not conservatives vs. trannies, but rather feminists vs. trannies. This is a fight taking place entirely on the left; the right’s sitting this one out. Nigerian Jewish lesbian radical feminist (whew!) Linda Bellos, who just a few months ago threatened to “thump” any tranny blokes who try to use women’s restrooms (she also declared the tranny agenda nothing more than an attempt to “piss on women”), is dead set against opening the AWS to biological males. The point of the AWS, she argues, is to guarantee the election of women, not dudes in drag.

And check this out: The Guardian is actually allowing debate in its pages over the AWS controversy! Debate…in the bloody Guardian! Christ, that’s like Stalin installing a suggestion box at the Kremlin and not killing the people who leave notes. Regarding Labour’s AWS tranny scheme, Guardian deputy opinion editor Susanna Rustin dared to write, “Female anatomy is not irrelevant,” adding, “It cannot simply be enough to say: ‘I am a woman.’ Apart from anything else, such a non-system would be an invitation to cheats.”

As the AWS debate rages on, a new skirmish has broken out. Two weeks ago, the charity organization Women’s Aid, England’s largest overseer of battered women’s shelters, announced that it might abandon its female-only employment policy, so that biological men who claim to be women would be allowed to work in the shelters. Prominent British feminists have slammed the proposed change, and even The Sunday Times has somewhat weighed in on the side of trans exclusion. When trans politician Sarah Brown dismissed as “hypothetical” the notion that the new rules could allow an abuser to “infiltrate” a women’s shelter, the Times editors contradicted her by pointing out, “In Canada, a sex offender, Christopher Hambrook, posed as trans to obtain entry to shelters and commit attacks.”

Newspaper editors using their dreaded “power of the last word” to heckle and humiliate a leftist tranny by negating “her” central claim? I thought only right-wingers got treated that way. I don’t understand this crazy new world!

And there’s more! Just last week, the City of London Corporation decided to let dudes with dicks use the Hampstead Heath women-only swimming pond and changing facilities. This brought the radical feminist group Mayday 4 Women out into the streets in protest! According to The Guardian, one feminist protester told the crowd, “Personally, I don’t see a difference between a man who says he’s a man or a man who says he’s a woman.” Julie Bindel, a radical feminist and founder of the legal advocacy group Justice for Women, told The Guardian, “This self-identification nonsense means there’s nothing at all you can do if a person with a penis and a beard comes to the pool and starts getting his kit off—it’s just mad…. We can’t say ‘ok, you say you are a woman, so you are a woman.’”