Indeed. The division was always there despite the attempts of Stonewall and the like to emotionally manipulate society into accepting a situation that was harmful to others.
When male people access provisions that they understand to be for female people only, it is that male person showing disrespect for female people. Intentionally or not. They are crossing the boundaries that female people need to function on an equal footing to male people in society (eg in having spaces that provide privacy, usability and safety. and having provisions that support equal opportunity, in accessing opportunities meant for progressing the needs for female people ).
Any male person who ignores those boundaries, who accesses spaces and provisions for female people, is doing it purely for their own benefit.
There has been a false argument used in the past that it was somehow of benefit to female people to have this group of male people in our spaces and provisions. That always remained an amorphous suggestion, because there is no benefit to female people to have this group of male people accessing spaces. The benefit only goes one way as far as I can see.
So therefore we now have a situation also where simply the act of entering a female only single sex space gives some male people positive feedback internally. Even if it is only the positive feeling of ‘I was not questioned’ or the feeling ‘I was not at harm there compared to in the male single sex toilet’. Entering a female single sex sports event has obvious positive benefits.
The act may give a range of other benefits depending on that individual. Obviously, those benefits could be financial, some benefit could be sexual. They could be founded in extreme misogyny such as ‘you don’t have the power to remove me even though I know it causes harm!’ The list is endless.
We also have reached the point in society, that if the male people accessing those provisions are questioned or even noticeably perceived, there is a high chance that this will feed into a initially negative feedback that society has turned into a positive with the mantra of ‘most vulnerable and most marginalised’. Any negative reaction from a female person in that female single sex provision can be said to be hateful and adds to that persecution. For some people, that is also part of the attraction.
When you strip it down to basics, any positive feedback reinforces the action. But there is never any acknowledgement that this access harms female people. Or it is acknowledged, but the person accessing the space or provision demonstrates that in reality, they will simply continue to disrespect female people by continued access.
For this to have reached as far as it did has meant the collective lowering of boundaries of society. It meant that behaviour that should not have been tolerated, was tolerated. There were times that behaviour was celebrated.
It is going to take a huge amount of work to build those boundaries back up again in younger generations. For now, it is important to understand that every time a male person accesses a female only provision they are doing it because being there benefits them .
And it is right to question why any male person would confine to show such disrespect for female people knowing that their actions harm us.