What’s in it for women, RobinMoiraWhite?
I mean, many of us know why many women apparently support the inclusion of male people in women only spaces, services and set asides. It’s often fuelled by blissful ignorance, thinking that “transwoman” automatically means a same-sex attracted male with acute gender dysphoria who commits to all the surgery etc possible in order to blend in with women as fully as possible and live a quiet life.
And in the case of virtually all women, it’s the end result of that dratted female socialisation, drummed into us from birth and backed up by the weight of thousands of years of patriarchy, ie male domination and the female need to do whatever it takes to survive. That female socialisation which you had the great privilege of not being subjected to, and consequently no experience of how deep and toxic (and usually unconscious) it is.
So we know why there are apparently a lot of women eager to do what we’ve been taught from infancy we should do to survive: be kind, put the feelings and wishes of others (especially male others) first, abnegate ourselves. Squeeze ourselves into the smallest possible space, bend ourselves to accommodate those male people whose wishes, unlike ours, are entitled to be validated and supported.
But my question to you is: what do women actually get out of this? What do we gain for ourselves, apart from the sense that we’re doing what good, nice, kind, virtuous, self sacrificing women ought to do, behaving as men have always told us we ought to behave, and women who wanted to survive have told us too, which we hope will keep us safe in this misogynistic world we have the misfortune to inhabit? What do we get for us as individuals, as human beings in our own right?
How does all this opening up the things that have been set aside for us specifically as a way of redressing the injustices and abuses that we suffer and have suffered at the hands of the male sex to any members of the male sex who wish to have access to them as long as those male people utter the magic words that they now identify as women or girls - how does that benefit us?
How does it enhance our lives, increase our still relatively limited opportunities, give us increased protection from the endemic male VAWG we still live with? How does it help us find solidarity, solace and inspiration with each other, with other women who may have experienced similar things to us, who have suffered the same damaging effects of female socialisation and endured the same challenges of navigating our way through the world in a female body, the world designed by and for those with a male body?
How does it help us talk to each other, find our own voice, take up our own place in the world, take up the space that is owing to us, that has been stolen from us by men for generation upon generation, that is still being stolen from us now? When our spaces now include male people with an entirely different history, who are accustomed to their voices being heard in a way ours aren’t, who are more than happy to speak over us and silence us just as so many other male people have done for so long?
How does it help us feel good about ourselves as women in a world where being female has been consistently devalued throughout time and space, in every culture worldwide, where we have been and live with the legacy of being always the second sex, when even the word “woman” itself no longer belongs to us exclusively, but must be shared with those members of the first sex who wish to claim it, must be emptied of its original meaning to become instead a container for a male idea of what a woman is rather than the material reality of what we are?
How does any of that help or benefit us in any way?
What’s in it for us, Robin?