Ignore the women

The Guardian tells us women just don’t matter at all.

parliamentary debate last week had a series of backbenchers questioning how the ruling that “woman” in the Equality Act refers only to a biological woman, and the subsequent advice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) that in the light of this, transgender people should not be allowed to use toilets of the gender they live as, squares with the rights of trans constituents.

What rights? There is no such thing as a “right” to use the toilets of the sex you are not. Toilets are divided by sex for reasons of safety. Who is more in need of safety in toilets, men or women? Obviously women; women don’t prey on men in toilets, but some men do prey on women in toilets, especially if doing so is made extremely easy.

(It’s depressing that women don’t but some men do. It’s depressing because of why some men do. It’s because some men are turned on by acts of forcing sex or pseudo-sex on unwilling women. It’s depressing, if you think about it, that some men find that a turn-on. It’s depressing that for some men sex is inextricably tangled up with cruelty and contempt and hatred.)

One senior Labour MP, Meg Hillier, highlighted the plight of a person who has long lived as a woman, uses women’s changing rooms in her job with the ambulance service, and now fears being forced to tell colleagues she is transgender. The supreme court ruling, Hillier argued, “creates a real mess that needs sorting out”.

Why? Why does Meg Hillier do that? Why does this implausible person matter more than women? Why does she think there is such a thing as “living as a woman” and that it is much the same as being a woman and is a reason to let men help themselves to women’s rights? Why does she argue that women’s rights create a real mess?

In private, a number of MPs go further. While they accept the issue is complex, involving the sometimes overlapping and competing rights and needs of trans people and those who require single-sex spaces, they are increasingly frustrated with the way it has been handled.

Wrong. The issue is not complex, or not all that complex. People’s weird fantasies about themselves should not be seen or presented as reasonable rivals of the rights of women. People’s weird fantasies about themselves are their problem, not anyone else’s. Nobody else is obliged to take them seriously, much less destroy women’s rights because of them.

Most cited as a worry is the practical issue of whether transgender people, or even those whose appearance does not conform to gender norms, will now have toilets they can use in many public spaces without being challenged.

Why is that most cited? Why isn’t women’s fear of men in women’s toilets most cited? Why do trans people matter more than women? Why can we not get out of this loop where we keep trampling women’s rights underfoot so that a man who likes to wear dresses feels “validated”?

Roz Savage, the Liberal Democrat MP who organised last week’s debate, has urged ministers to act to prevent what she called “shrinking people’s lives”. She said: “If you don’t have a clear idea how you can go to the toilet without potentially getting into a confrontational situation then you’ll just avoid the situation, which is incredibly limiting.”

Women. Remember women? Women don’t want men in our toilets. That’s incredibly limiting. Why do men who want to be in our toilets matter more than we do? Please explain.

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