Magdalen Berns

Communist newspaper the Morning Star praised Berns's "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 named her "one of the best-known feminist speakers of her generation". The conservative American publication National Review called her videos a "great source of inspiration and clarity for those trying to resist gender extremism". Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan voiced vocal support for Berns on Twitter and other platforms. Berns's death was noted by two members of the Scottish Parliament: Joan McAlpine MSP described her as a "clever and uncompromising" young woman, while Ruth Maguire MSP described her as a "courageous young feminist, who inspired others". In October 2019, Berns was posthumously shortlisted for the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize, which the organisation awards to women it deems to have "raised awareness of violence against women and children"; in November 2019, she received a special award from the organisation.

Berns died from glioblastoma on 13 September 2019, in Edinburgh.

In 2018, she co-founded Scottish campaign group Forwomen.Scot, which grew to become the largest organisation of its kind in Scotland. The group, which opposes reform of the Gender Recognition Act, has been called anti-trans, which the group themselves deny.

In May 2018, Berns stated that she had been assaulted on the street by an unidentified assailant, and that a passer-by had intervened to defend her.

In April 2017, Berns informed her YouTube subscribers that she had been diagnosed with a brain tumor that was affecting her left frontal lobe, which she later clarified to actually be centered in her left parietal lobe. In July, she announced that she had an astrocytoma that could not be completely removed surgically. She was diagnosed with glioblastoma in October 2018. In palliative care she was visited by Graham Linehan, radical feminist Julie Bindel and sex trafficking survivor Rachel Moran.

In April 2016, Berns began her series of "irreverent" YouTube vlogs where she published her views on gender identity. In July 2016, Berns spoke at Thinking Differently: Feminists Questioning Gender Politics, a conference in London focusing on "the implications of transgenderism for women's rights". The conference was described by one attendee as "the first full-day public conference that we know of on the topic of how gender identity politics harm women and girls". Berns addressed her experiences with no platforming as a university student. In June 2019, British author J.K. Rowling followed Berns on Twitter, bringing her more visibility and prompting criticism towards Rowling from Berns's critics. By the autumn of 2019, Berns had produced 64 vlogs and amassed approximately 30,000 followers.

In 2015, 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 2016, Berns was banned from the University of Edinburgh's Feminist Society for opposing the decriminalization of sex work.

The daughter of Gustavo Berns and the socialist historian Deborah Lavern, Berns originated from Camden, London where she attended Hampstead School. As a teenager, she participated in campaigns against Huntingdon Life Sciences and anti-war marches, distributed election leaflets for the Socialist Labour Party, and joined a socialist choir. After leaving school, she worked as a sound engineer until attending the University of Edinburgh in her thirties. She initially studied engineering, receiving a Doris Gray Scholarship—an award for underprivileged women studying engineering in Scotland—from the Women's Engineering Society. In her second year she switched to physics, graduating in 2016. She was a self-taught computer programmer, and between 2013 and 2015 participated in the Google Summer of Code project, working on implementing the FFTW3 library for Ruby. As part of the Summer of Code, she interned in the Outreach Program for Women of the GNOME Foundation, where she worked on the Java ATK Wrapper, a module to translate Swing events for the Accessibility Toolkit, and on implementing a caret and focus tracking device in GNOME Shell.

Berns expressed views that included criticism of the concept of the "cotton ceiling", as featured in her first vlog—the cotton ceiling being the controversial theory that prejudice, rather than inherent sexual orientation, can sometimes be a major factor preventing sexual relationships between cisgender and transgender lesbians. She was also known for arguing against gender self-identification. Speaking on the subject of gender and sexuality, Berns stated: "You don't get 'assigned' reproductive organs...males are defined by their biological sex organs. Likewise, homosexuals are people who are attracted to the same biological sex. She described trans women as "blackface actors" and "men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women", said that "trans women are men", and that she'd "rather be rude than a fucking liar".

Berns was active in Scottish amateur boxing. In 2009, she competed in the Scottish University Boxing Championships in the bantamweight division, losing in the final to Sinead Sheehan. In 2010, she became the first Scottish boxer to win at the Haringey Box Cup, arguably the biggest and the most prestigious amateur tournament in Europe. In 2011, she became the first Scottish boxer to win at the Golden Girl Championship (one of the largest all-female tournaments in the world); won the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) Boxing Championship in the novice women's 54kg class; and competed in the Scottish National Championships in the 51kg (flyweight) category, losing in the finals to Stephanie Kernachan. She was a member of Scotland's first female boxing squad. Berns continued to act as a boxing coach for the University of Edinburgh. She was posthumously described by Boxing Scotland as "a pioneer for both women's boxing and university boxing in Scotland".

Magdalen Berns (6 May 1983 – 13 September 2019) was a British YouTuber, boxer and software developer. Berns, a lesbian radical feminist, came to prominence as a result of a series of YouTube vlogs focusing on lesbian politics, free speech, and gender identity. Berns's views attracted controversy, leading to her being described as anti-trans. Berns also co-founded the group For Women Scotland (Forwomen.Scot), which opposes proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004.