It’s a normal survival instinct to be aware of our surroundings – so why would anyone tell women and girls they mustn’t exercise it?

 What kind of creepy self-serving individual tells women and girls that being aware of our surroundings, who’s around us, and judging what might look and feel off, is “creepy”?

Everything we’ve learned tells us to view the above attempted shaming of women and girls with justified deep suspicion. It’s natural for us to constantly scan our surroundings, either consciously or subconsciously, because to not do so isn’t great for our survival. To know who or what doesn’t look right in the environment we’re in, is to enhance the chance of that survival. Hence, we’re constantly using our eyes and ears, to either a greater or lesser degree, to scope out our surroundings. We don’t have those senses just for decoration.

Women and girls, especially, grow up being taught how to be very aware of where we go and who’s in our periphery. Boys do, too, of course, but as boys grow into men, the need to retain that acute awareness becomes less necessary than it remains for women. We don’t want to have to be like that, but to not be doesn’t serve us well. Whilst we may still take chances and risks, particularly as younger women, because we balk at living entirely in a social prison, our antenna for what might be ‘off’ in our surroundings never turns off.

Although not all physical assaults, nor overt or covert intimidation, comes from men, the majority of that which we’re obliged to fear the most does. When it comes to men we don’t know, and sometimes men we do know, we have no idea who might be a threat to our safety and wellbeing on any given day, given the opportunity. This means that some female single-sex spaces, mostly for our more manifold personal requirements, are hugely beneficial for women and girls to help us thrive in public life. They remove the burden of having to second-guess the motives of men in the same intimate spaces as us. Unlike unisex spaces – and I recognise the need to have some – any man in a female single-sex space, or lurking near it, raises an immediate red flag.

Just one wee sign on the door of a single-sex space conveys that an enforceable policy is in place, and there are consequences for breaching it. Well, it used to be like that. For the most part we didn’t need to police our spaces too hard, as the understanding of the social contract of trust which went along with those signs, meant that breaches were extremely rare.

I know this is a simplified precis, and the ‘whatabout-ers’ will be champing at the bit to jump in with their “whatabouts”. I’ve heard all those ‘whatabouts’, and they’re all addressable, but I’m not going to give them oxygen here. The blanket rule that some single-sex spaces for women and girls are the best option for us, remains true.

It was working well, although improvements could always be made, of course. Then the TQ+ movement came along and messed with it. They wanted any man who said he was a woman to be accommodated in female spaces, no questions asked. Our politicians, councils, ministries, and educators were got to first, and, with barely a backward glance, sold out women and girls to the entirely self-centred requests of the TQ+. We were told we had to drop all our boundaries and reservations, and deny all our survival instincts for this one special class of men. Neither should we look at any of them if they were in our spaces with us, because it was “creepy” – but, strangely, it was okay for them to leer at us, or take photos and videos of themselves whilst in there.

The person who made the post on X at the top of this blog, who called women “creepy” for looking at men in female spaces, is a woman who says she’s a man. I have no idea whether she uses men’s or women’s toilets and changing rooms, but the twisted shaming tactic she tries to use is common amongst the TQ+ and transactivists. For whatever reason, this woman’s mind is futterly ucked, and she and the men she shills for are trying to do that to our minds, as well.

They want to shame and demoralise us into being confused and uncertain about the boundaries which keep us safe. Don’t let them. We know what kind of people have tried to do that since the dawn of time, don’t we? Hint: it’s never been anyone good for us. It sure as heck ain’t terfs, who are only trying to save those boundaries for ourselves and our kids, who are the “creepy” ones.