Berns, a lesbian radical feminist , produced a series of YouTube vlogs in the late s focusing on topics such as women's rights [2] [8] and gender identity. After leaving Hampstead School, Berns worked as a sound engineer until attending the University of Edinburgh in her thirties. Berns was active in Scottish amateur boxing.
From to , she was a member of the Edinburgh-based Leith Victoria amateur boxing club. In , Berns expressed opposition to the Edinburgh University Students' Association "LGBT Liberation" group, issuing a statement of support for the decision to exclude drag acts from participating in that year's Pride Glasgow event. In April , Berns began her series of "irreverent" [10] YouTube vlogs where she published her views on gender identity. Her first and subsequent vlogs criticised the idea that an unwillingness on the part of cisgender lesbians to have sex with trans women who have penises an instance of what has been referred to by gender critical feminists as the " cotton ceiling " is due to transphobia, bigotry, or prejudice, rather than sexual orientation.
Speaking on the subject of sex, gender, and sexuality , Berns stated: "You don't get 'assigned' reproductive organs Likewise, homosexuals are people who are attracted to the same biological sex. In May , Berns was among the signatories of an open letter to the Morning Star newspaper that lauded it for "giving a platform for a sex-class based analysis of women's position, in the face of the convergence of neoliberal individualism and alienation from class consciousness ".
In , Berns co-founded the Scottish campaign group For Women Scotland, [65] [66] which the following year Deborah Lavin Berns' mother and Susan Chynoweth described as the largest women's rights group in Scotland. In June , British author J. Rowling was criticised for bringing more visibility to Berns by following her on Twitter. Berns's opinions attracted both criticism and acclaim. She was described as "one of the most hateful and aggressive anti-trans radical feminists on Twitter" by blogger Phaylen Fairchild; [11] as a " TERF " trans-exclusionary radical feminist by Vice writer Lewis Gordon; [12] and as a " transphobe " in the Trans Advocate Twitter account, [54] as well as " whorephobic " by members of the Edinburgh University Students' Association.
Ivy said such celebrations are "ethically justified when the person dying has engaged in extreme harassment of a marginalised group". Writing in the Morning Star , Susan Chynoweth and Deborah Lavin Berns' mother praised Berns' "determined defence of women's sex-based rights and the rights of lesbians to assert their sexuality in the face of relentless demands to redefine sex as gender", and said she was "one of the best-known feminist speakers of her generation".
