I sometimes feel conflicted too. Not because of who agrees with me, but I sometimes wonder whether I am wrong and at some point society will reach a stable position where men are accepted as women and despite the negative effects on some women, it will be accepted as the new societal norm, and those who objected will be seen as having been over the top.
I was listening to Germaine Greer the other day and though she continues to believe men are not women, she said she’s not really interested as it isn’t that important. I wondered whether she meant that there were other more pressing feminist problems (I think that’s what she was implying) or whether she thought the fad would pass, it would more or less sort itself out, and we’d settle into a new pattern like the one I mentioned above.
But deep inside, I continue to think there is something very wrong. I don’t think it can work for men to simply be able to choose whether they should have women’s rights. I think, if the fad does continue, we need to be looking at alternative separate spaces, and I argue for those wherever possible.
I am also very worried about the effect on children. I genuinely don’t think any child has the mental capacity to understand the consequences of puberty blockers. Nor do I believe an 18 year old can understand the consequences of unnecessary mastectomy, or taking drugs that will permanently affect whether they can ever use female spaces without making the women in those spaces uncomfortable. Given their female socialisation, I suspect that will weigh more heavily on them than the men who use our spaces without a second thought.
So painful though it is that we have to pay lawyers to defend our current legal situation and our right to speak out, I think we have to persevere with the court cases and judicial reviews. Every time the judges agree with us, I am reassured that we are ultimately right and something is already far wrong. I hope that with all the appeals, that things will continue to go in what I see as the right direction.
So that’s where I’m at. It worries me how many people I previously would have respected believe I’m a bigot, but I don’t believe I am. I can justify my position and given I’ve always considered myself a reasonable person who can see nuance, I don’t think it’s me that’s suddenly changed. I think the situation has changed slowly, but that it has been done under the radar, hence the feeling that something has suddenly shifted a long way and everything feels out of place.
That makes me uncomfortable, but when I see the reach that Stonewall has, that’s another little jerk that tells me that something is wrong. Children as young as twelve having mastectomies. The police recording male crimes as female. Those things have to be wrong. Women in court having to pretend that their male assailants are women can’t be right. Men in women’s prisons: definitively wrong.
When I look at those things, I can tell it isn’t just me having this out of proportion. And if those things are wrong, then the rest is likely wrong too. We’re not imagining this and we’re not wrong to object and that is the conclusion I keep reaching any time I feel that doubt.