Women and girls have lost control of our spaces to men. Not all men will support this, but some will revel in it.

 Opinion: There’s been some fairly explosive news in the last week around the WPATH files, and England’s NHS announcement, eh?  At grassroots level, and as is probably very evident by now, I believe it’s vital for women and girls to retain, or regain, our single-sex spaces. This applies to any space, either indoors or outdoors, and whether or not individual changing cubicles and toilets are also provided. I have written previously about why there are good reasons for women and girls to have single-sex spaces.

No man (or older boy) has the right to be in women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces. This includes men who say they’re women, irrespective of their appearance or character. As soon as one man who says he’s a woman is permitted entry into a women’s and girls’ space, how do we stop any man at all who says he’s a woman? Do we make the decision based on whether he’s ‘woman-looking’ enough? If just one man gets through the door of a women’s and girls’ space purely upon his say-so that he’s a woman, and there are policies in place which allow him to do just that, we open the door to all men. They may not all come in, but the control is put in their hands, and taken away from women and girls. Our privacy, safety, and dignity are now in the hands of men, due to these policies, and we are at the mercy of whether they are good men, or pricks.

There was a time I was more casual about the odd man being in women’s spaces. As a younger woman, I encountered men who identified as a woman, mostly in clubs and bars, and didn’t think much of it. They were just who they were, and if they used women’s toilets none of us cared very much. After all, there was only a relatively small number of them any one city, and women’s and girls’ spaces remained in the control of women and girls. If we didn’t want a man in our space, we had the authority to order him out, and the service provider, security, or police, would back us up. Now, we get ordered out, if we don’t like having a man in our space.

Since then, the number of men who say they’re women has increased enormously. It's nonsense to claim the reason for this is due to them feeling socially freer to “be themselves”. That claim is flying diarrhoea. What is closer to the truth is that because trans’ rights activists, and their willing bureaucratic stooges, put policies in place which allow any man who says he’s a woman to be considered one, certain men spotted the opportunities for deviancy in a nanosecond. The policies allow them to freely express their transvestic and/or autogynephilic fetishes publicly, or serve as a cover to be predatory in women’s and girls’ spaces under the guise of being ‘transgender’– i.e. someone who claims to identify as the opposite sex to that which they were born.

When I talk to people, including local council or government bureaucrats, about the travesty of allowing men in women’s and girls’ spaces, those who are reluctant to acknowledge that it’s an issue, or can’t be bothered doing so, commonly come back with two questions –

1)      Is there any evidence to show it’s a problem?

Clearly, the whole history of humankind and police records as far back as they go isn’t enough evidence for them. A newly created situation of allowing men who say they’re women into women’s and girls’ spaces does not change the nature of men. The men who will take advantage of the situation to be deviant and predatory are the same men who have always taken advantage of any opportunity to be deviant and predatory. How they might identify does not change that. Here in New Zealand, we have no official agency who will collect data, either anecdotal or documented, to ascertain how women and girls are affected by policies and regulations which incorporate trans ideology. To ask for evidence knowing this, and disregarding police records for male crimes against women and girls, is disingenuous and dishonest.

2)      How often is it likely to be a problem?

In other words, can’t we spare some women and girls to be collateral damage, so that the men who want to get into our spaces aren’t made sad, or inconvenienced? No woman or girl should ever have to use a female space wondering if there will be a man in there this time. There is no acceptable number of women and girls forced to be on hyper-alert, hurt, distressed, angry, or self-exclude from using female public facilities because of policies which allow men who say they’re women to also be in there. I’ve devised an experiment in relation to this; one day I will ask one of these male-prioritisers if they’re aware of a new policy which allows any man to stare, leer, and wank for as long as he likes at any boy getting dressed or undressed, if he identifies as another boy. There is no such policy, of course, but I’m interested to see how different the reaction might be when it’s a boy involved, and not just a girl who is expected to take a few ‘hits’ from pervs during her life.

I have the utmost contempt for the anti-women policies which allow men who say they’re women to have free and unfettered entry into all women’s and girls’ spaces, and for those who intentionally and determinedly implemented them. A day of reckoning will come for those who did that, as well as for those who went along with it through cowardice, laziness, or dismissiveness of the concerns presented to them - if they haven’t all seen the writing on the wall and scarpered by then.