- Why? Women are oppressed on account of their female biology, not gender.
- Why can’t men accept transwomen into their spaces and not threaten them?
- If men are allowed to identify as women in order to gain access to women’s spaces, they will have possibly predatory men in them – so how are transwomen safe in them?
This comes down to “The McDonnell Question”. If women aren’t allowed to keep transwomen out because they don’t need female-only spaces to keep them safe from men, how come transwomen need to access those spaces to keep them safe from men? As soon as you allow men who claim to identify as women to get into women’s spaces, they aren’t women’s spaces. They are mixed-sex. Allowing males to enter those spaces would destroy them.
It is crucial to remember that women WON their rights to segregated spaces from men in a long, hard fight; they weren’t given to us, and they are not a privilege but a protection from the 49% of the population who have a pattern of beating and raping and killing us (*NOT ALL MEN – BUT ENOUGH*). The onus on anyone claiming to share those rights is on them. Male violence against other males is not a women’s problem to sort.
Women are not raped because they are wearing girly clothes or looking too sexy. They are not oppressed because they wear skirts. The oppression isn’t something that we can identify out of because it isn’t dependent on gender but on sex.
Remember too that women are entitled to privacy, and many women from religious communities CANNOT be in the presence of a man. So, where is the consideration of those women? In the case of public authorities, where is their Equalities Impact Assessment?
Third spaces are an obvious solution – and many women would support this. This would not satisfy the AGPs, though: they want to colonise our spaces and existence. If you want proof: gay, disabled, neurodiverse and Asian men are likely victims of male violence, but no one suggests THEY get to use women’s spaces to keep them safe from men, do they? This is not about safety – it is about feelings. And the feelings of transwomen do NOT trump women’s safety.
Forward to “Women get raped in prison anyway/ are violent/ are sex offenders too.”
Back to introduction