Most women want women-only, female-sex only, facilities. Please tell me why women do not...

[CloudsAndLightDrizzle]

Most women need spaces free of males for, e,g, hospital wards, prisons, rape counselling, social groups. No male prisoners in women's prisons. I would think that's an obvious one, but no. Currently, if male offenders say that they are women, then they are waved into the women's prison estate. Questions have been asked, but apparently, male rapists' feels that they are "women" will always overridden actual women's rights.

Why are women's voices and women's preferences for single-sex women's spaces, and for child safeguarding, so fiercely opposed?;

Because all theses politicians etc who ‘can’t define what a woman is’ do know exactly what a woman is and trans ideology is a mens rights movement.

I know that in Scotland, women’s groups receive funding on the basis that they are trans inclusive. So they have to go along with the TRA stance. Additionally some of these groups are led by proper swivel eyed TWAW handmaidens who care not a jot about women except for the ones with penises.

There are also an awful lot of women who, luckily for them, have never been on the receiving end of male violence and simply do not understand the issue. It’s never happened to them so it’s not a problem and anyone who says it is is a hateful bigot,

I have come to believe that at this point in time anyone who says they don’t get it is either thick, lying, or they do get it but just don’t care.

What @Happylittlechicken said.

Oh and Stonewall have been 'teaching' rainbow unicorn nonsense to many institutions.

Gender Ideology has been knowingly marketed to the Western world as a civil rights movement (even though trans identifying people have the same rights as the rest of us). So some women have absorbed the idea that to show how much they care about equality and minority groups, that OF COURSE those identifying as trans should get access to any space they feel most comfortable in.

They haven’t thought about the ultimate consequences for ALL women and because they don’t believe that changing boundary lines affects them, they have a lack of imagination as how this could affect other women.

They are also encouraged to see trans identifying people as the downtrodden and the disadvantaged in need of protection, special consideration and championing. They lack empathy to give women the same courtesy. They are even actively hostile to other women with a different opinion, not understanding that they are actively undermining their own interests.

And history has been used - some people didn’t want to accept non-white people or Irish people into their spaces in the 70’s. They were hateful bigots. Now women don’t want to accept TW into their spaces, so they must be hateful bigots. (Right side of history argument). Nobody wants to feel they are a hateful bigot.

Of course, this argument rather falls apart because TW are male, and the reason women’s spaces exist is to give them privacy, dignity and safety away from males. Many TW openly maintain a sexual interest in women, and on average their behaviour is (at least) no less predatory than other males. Plus, women are at a physical and sociological disadvantage when defending themselves against males. So it really isn’t the same at all, even before you get to trauma victims and religious requirements.

Alongside this, some men don’t want to accept effeminate men and are very happy to reclassify them as women - removing the threat to their own sense of masculinity. This often seems to run alongside deep seated misogyny, so supporting TW’s shift out of men’s spaces into women’s has the ‘added bonus’ of making women feel uncomfortable and defensive (see the ‘black pampers’ behaviour)

Who is going to challenge men dressed as women in women only spaces though ? It’s not going to happen, and it’s depressing.

And a further point from personal experience…

Some men, often effeminate, often gay, often young (so not yet confident in their own identity) have felt rejected by adult male society. Gender identity ideology tells them that they are actually women & it is their right to be fully accepted as such by adult women. Having swallowed the cool aid, and often done their bodies irreparable harm, they then find many adult women actually don’t buy into the fantasy and do not accept them as women. Hence, as you say OP, the response is often highly emotional, entitled and aggressive (both towards women and towards detransitioners)

Trans ideology is deeply, profoundly misogynistic. It is all about men, their rights, their ‘entitlement’. It’s also incredibly homophobic. But mainly towards lesbians who are far more impacted than gay men ever, ever will be.

I've been told (by a brash young woman) that female only spaces reinforce the patriarchy by convincing women that they are lesser than men and should be afraid of them. She said this to me after I did a talk about my personal experiences of MVAWG. I'd said that female only spaces were important to women who had experienced male violence because you can be left with a terrible fear of men which makes navigating public spaces (where men are everywhere) extremely difficult. I hadn't gone into detail much - I didn't mention the self harm, the issues with food, the anxiety that gave me almost constant diarrhoea, the selective mutism, the panic attacks. But she was so quick to shut me down. In the main, women who haven't seen it don't really believe me. They don't openly say it, because of course believing women is now seen as the socially acceptable thing to do. They hear me, but they don't listen.

I think TBH that a lot of younger women who haven't experienced MVAWG are desperately uncomfortable with the reality of male behaviour because it's a hard thing to acknowledge when you want to climb into bed with them. If you accept that single sex spaces are necessary then you're tugging on a thread they don't want to tug.

Most you say? I have 3 young women in my house and they are not bothered by shared spaces. It's definitely a generational thing. One dd for instance has chosen to share with 1 woman and 2 men (bunks) rather than all female because the banter is better! They all have trans friends and can't see why we struggle a bit.

I don't understand why social groups should be segregated, I think male only rules for clubs should be banned too!

Lots of women who have never experienced MVAWG or don't consider casual misogyny or persistent botherers, wolf whistles, commenteering to be anything other than 'play' will say "I am alright with that" as though their stance is, should be global and any woman disagreeing must be [insert character flaw here - usually overly sensitive, scared, man hating etc]

They don't ever consider other women as individual's with other experiences, as valid voices, opinions. Because they are so entrenched in the female = lesser than lie. Yes some deluded women spouted such crap. Whilst others were shouting "Fuck off we are less physically strong, fast etc, There are sex based differences and we cannot ignore that"

And look. The women who chose to close their eyes to reality have, as seems usual, been given the loudest voices, more column inches, a ore valid opinion, Presumably because it supports the patriarchal idea of Little Women.

If you are one of those women I'd ask you to consider why you feel you must mouth those lies?

Because every human being on the planet has experienced the very real differences n male strength and speed - from opening jars of food to running for a bus! We ALL know those differences exist. We don't need to be a physiologist to understand that!

And she will be absolutely fine. Most women manage those relationships with little issue. The worst that will probably happen to her with those people is that maybe one will push the boundaries a little, the 'bants' will get a little bit blue. She may have vaguely reluctant 'friends sex' and think that is normal too.

It isn't that they are braver than we used to be - I am sure we all did similarly relaxed stuff in our youth. It's that we lived through the unpleasantness we blithely ignored back then and have reframed it as we got older and wiser. We can't protect them from themselves. We can only hope that their rude awakening is relatively benign.

Good question OP. Mixed sex changing, showers, hospital wards, prisons etc are forced on women and girls. We're never consulted as there's a level of male entitlement / supremacy baked into our society.
It's why sexual violence against women is so rarely prosecuted, why maternity care is so spectacularly awful. The evidence is all there to see.

I think that sometimes the pain of experience and knowing what happens to girls and women at the hands of men is too painful to acknowledge..it makes our life harder when we have to change our ways because of it. There is a certain defiance in carrying on believing that you, personally cannot and will not be harmed and ignoring the glaringly obvious. But at the bottom of it we know, and must protect all of us. That is the priority.

Gogohmm, I don’t think your dd’s position is unreasonable. Many if not most of us live in mixed sex spaces. I’d rather sleep in a room, or even a bed, with a man (friend) I know well, than a woman I’ve just met. Rightly or wrongly, I don’t feel comfortable about the idea of undressing/showering/being locked up with a man I don’t know. I wonder how you dd’s would be with that? What do they think about TW in sports? I suspect there is a line, even with their generation.

I don't understand why social groups should be segregated, I think male only rules for clubs should be banned too!

The vast majority shouldn't be. But there may be a few cases where it should be permissible. Women find the dynamic of a group often changes if a male joins, and maybe something like 'men in sheds' serves its members well. Obviously anything where there's a fundamental physical ability component single sex may make most sense - male voice choir, women's cycling group etc

For most of us the main issues are 'hospital wards, prisons, rape counselling'.

Dd shares her flat with her male friend

doesnt mean that she wants to share a prison cell with some random strange male

ive said before that I don’t have a problem in certain areas when it comes to males sharing spaces but I absolutely have an issue with males in female only spaces, prisons, refuges etc and i also completely support any female who does have an issue with sharing with males

Yes samphire.

I look back now and think of the risky behaviour and the dismissing of abuse from when I was ‘young’ and I have to agree.

It was also hearing my girlfriends in their 30s finally be able to admit to others of their traumas, their rapes and their assaults that made me start to reframe it all too. The trauma they had suppressed or not been able to face. And just how many of my girlfriends had such traumatic incidences that I had not known about.

Women progressed throughout the 20th century, and now I think many women take that for granted and find it impossible to believe that things could move backwards, so they dismiss feminist concerns as scaremongering, outdated views or 'transphobia'. Plus they are often afraid for their jobs or social lives if they step out of line and speak the truth.

"have 3 young women in my house and they are not bothered by shared spaces. It's definitely a generational thing. One dd for instance has chosen to share with 1 woman and 2 men (bunks) rather than all female because the banter is better! They all have trans friends and can't see why we struggle a bit."

As a teenager and young woman I slept in mixed dorms/camping huts/ living room floors/the dried-pony-shit covered floor of a Scottish bothy on a rain drenched windswept mountainside. Bar one unpleasant incident (drunk sleazy uni classmate trying to feel me up) it was all fine and fun....but it's nice to have the option of a single sex dorm, especially when travelling alone. The sister of one of my friendship group was raped and strangled in a youth hostel dorm a year or so before I went travelling alone. It did quite often make me pause and think before I shut my eyes each night "hmm how likely am I to get attacked before morning...according to my half arsed risk assessment, not very, good, I can go to sleep"
If I get a dress stuck over my head in a changing room (wide shoulders) or if I lose the run of myself and get carted off by the cops to a drunk tank (unlikely as no hx of mental health issues but you never know) I want to be with alone or with biological females.

Also, even in the mixed sex places whether by design or accident (like the Scottish downpour where the tents were flooded) it is also nice to have the sort of the unspoken acknowledgement that there are differences. There were two boys in the bothy and about 6 or 8 girls, their little tent had suffered worse than ours, they were a bit tentative and respectful about coming in with us (we were crammed in like sardines). In fact I think one of the boys even chose to stay outside and sleep in the partially collapsed tent alone...which is fine. I think we were a bit eye roll-y amongst ourselves at the time but thinking back, why shouldn't he have that choice.

If I'm physically vulnerable, due to being naked or asleep or drunk or alone or locked in with someone or not able to lock other people out, or even mentally vulnerable (exhausted and asking advice about ravaged boobs at a breastfeeding group) I want to have the safer option of single sex spaces available. Before I had had that single unpleasant experience, or a couple of other nothing-happened-but-it-felt-dodgy-as-fuuuck moments, or met the friends with murdered sister, I suppose I was a bit more cavalier, thinking that shit happens to other people and anyone who wants a single sex dorm is a bit uptight.

Why do people pretend that living with friends is the same as having to stay in a mixed sex prison or psych unit? This is not a generational difference. Its a different situation.

I used to be homeless and for several years I lived in mixed sex insecure accommodation. When it was cold we all slept in the same room. I lived with a group of friends, we did that because it was safer for all of us.
I'm not trying to remove mixed sex facilities because I'm not selfish enough to think what I know is all there is to know, or tell other women how they should feel.

Teens and students luxuriate in being in reasonably large social groups of mostly a similar age so there is a group mentality that polices behaviour and rejects the ‘creeps’ or shares information about dodgy behaviour of whatever kind.
They find it harder to conceive not being able to read people or codes that they haven’t experienced. Somehow they believe they can negotiate every situation and that the group will always exist to hold them in difficult situations.

Being older brings more experience and more atomised groups or situations where you are alone and vulnerable - working with people not the same age, having medical tests being hospitalised etc. I would guess that just one ‘off’ encounter is enough to awake fears that your mother told you about and the chance of that happening increases with age as does friends relating their experiences.

When I was younger I was not at all afraid of any man.
I remember being shocked when the university women's officer refused to work the overnight helpline with a man.
I just couldn't understand her.

Then I did a shift with her and she explained it was because she'd experienced violence at the hands of the man who should have protected her the most.

And as I grew older and wiser I'm very much in favour of single sex spaces where women are vulnerable.
It strikes me as being incredibly naive to imagine a world where all the men have good intentions.

I love men socially and think almost all situations are better mixed. I think toilets confuse the issue slightly. Many women just think it's all about toilets, when it's in fact about changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards.
Would they be happy being naked in front of a male stranger? Some women aren't bothered apparently. Most would be though. Because we know there could be a very real threat there.

Lanadelgray has explained my thoughts much more clearly than I did! In the groping incident, I didn't want to cause a scene (thanks, socialisation!) but at first pretended to be asleep. I was silently horrified when that only encouraged him (oh youthful naïveté) so, not wanting to cause a scene, fake- yawned, rolled over in my "sleep" and settled down fast asleep (actually tense as a board and hyper alert) jammed up against the far wall of the living room floorful of sleeping bodies with my arms clamped tight across my boobs. He gave up and fell asleep. I lay awake for half an hour to be sure, then fell asleep. At least I had the security of knowing that if he didn't stop I could elbow him in the ribs, sit up and roar "Get your filthy hands off me" and my classmates would wake up and agree that sexual assault is not OK. But during the half hour "insurance" being tired but awake, I did ponder that the world is indeed, unequal for the sexes as he snored and farted peacefully less than 18 inches away, not a care in the world.

I can understand their naïveté. Not so much, yours.

I’m nearly 50 and have (touch wood) never experienced male violence first hand. I was raised, and continue to be surrounded, by lovely men.

But I’ve lived in the world, have a working set of eyes, a brain in my head, and of course, have experienced countless examples of low level assaults and threats from men.

Enough to know that I have been very, very lucky, that the threat is real, and that if I were ever to find myself in the presence of a man who didn’t have good intentions, there’s pretty much nothing I could do about it.

This is why women want, and deserve, single sex spaces, and by single sex spaces, I absolutely include sport.