Hadley Freeman, a long-time Guardian staffer, is departing the newspaper for The Sunday Times.
Freeman, who joined The Guardian in 2000, currently serves as a columnist and features writer for the paper.
At The Sunday Times she will contribute weekly columns for the paper’s comment page and will also be “writing features and interviews across the paper,” she told Press Gazette.
Freeman ends her tenure at The Guardian at the end of November and starts at News UK at the beginning of 2023.
Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner said: “We are sorry to see Hadley Freeman leave.
“She is a wonderful writer and has been a fantastic Guardian colleague for many years. We wish her all the best.”
Freeman spent the early part of her Guardian career on the fashion team, before moving on to more general column and feature-writing duties.
In 2013 she was one of several female journalists targeted by anonymous bomb threats. She has been a vocal commentator on feminism and misogyny, telling Amnesty in 2018: “I think there is a connection between the misogyny women face offline and the abuse they face online. ”
In recent years Freeman has argued against trans women sharing women’s single-sex spaces and criticised the NHS service that deals with child gender identity issues.
Tensions between Guardian journalists holding different views on trans issues have repeatedly spilled into public view.
In 2020, 338 members of The Guardian staff signed a letter to editor Viner criticising the paper’s “repeated decision to publish anti-trans views,” which they said had “cemented our reputation as a publication hostile to trans rights and trans employees”.
Suzanne Moore, another Guardian columnist who had written repeatedly on gender critical themes, left the paper months later, accusing the letter’s signatories of “basically bull[ying]” her.
In an article for Unherd in February, Freeman wrote that “there was a period, about three years ago, when I honestly thought about quitting my job. I felt so hated for saying things — things that are scientifically, biologically and factually true — and so unsupported by people who I know secretly agree with me”.
Another Guardian contributor with similar views on trans issues, Sarah Ditum, said she was joining The Sunday Times last week.
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