Proud to be, stand with, do not police
And how are we defining equality exactly?
What does it mean to “police” who is a woman? It doesn’t seem like something anyone can police. Either you are or you aren’t. It’s commonplace to police things like who is a citizen, who is a lawyer, who is a doctor, who is an Olympic medalist – that is, there are criteria for all those things, which can be lied about or faked. You don’t want a pretend dentist messing with your teeth.
But who is a woman and who is a man aren’t like that. There are criteria in a sense, but they’re built in. It’s almost always obvious, and it used to be taken for granted. Now suddenly it’s a matter of “policing,” and women are ordered to accept anyone who claims to be a woman as a sister, especially when the person doing the claiming is a man.
What does that have to do with equality?
I’m a female animal (Homo sapiens, peculiar low-hair Aftican simians with novel communication skills) and I’m also a flightless animal. I can identify as a flying animal all I like but if I launch out of an upstairs window, gravity will make a shattered fool out of me. I still don’t see why it would be ridiculous for me to identify as a flying animal but stunning and brave for me to identify as a male animal.
The Patriarchy ”policed” women, meaning that they tried to control what women could and couldn’t do, creating gender standards of masculine authority and feminine submissiveness. The Patriarchy wasn’t responsible for deciding who was or wasn’t a woman. No feminist thought that there was a group of females free from male patriarchal oppression because somehow they escaped from being classified as “women.”
This entire framework of “policing” looks to me like it was imported from the anguish felt by boys and men bullied by other boys and men. “Oh, look who’s a girl — sissy boy is a girl. You don’t belong here, it’s for us guys. Go sit with the women.” The macho bullies are policing who’s a boy. And girls and women might do similar to those who are unfeminine. It’s not to be taken literally. It’s reinforcing gender standards, not sex classifications. Blurring that distinction while claiming to be making that distinction is part of what drives the modern interpretation of trans rights.
So when women say they don’t want dudes in skirts in their bathrooms, they’re being the patriarchy?
Sorry, honey, I’m going to punch a hole in your feminist card. You’re part of the patriarchy now.
How on Earth can it be possible to protect a particular group against another group without the ability to distinguish the two?
Anyone?
Bueller?
“Policing” only becomes necessary when men insist they are women, and choose to force their way into single sex spaces intended for women and girls. But “policing” sounds so much more”unfair”, “oppressive”, “marginalizing”, and “exclusive” than safeguarding does.