I will start off by prefacing this post with the fact that my title is badly written but I couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it.
This though process was sparked by seeing a post mourning the ‘exclusion’ of trans girls from Girlguiding and seeing a good friend respond with the ‘crying’ emoji.
I can’t help feeling that the invasion of female only spaces, in a way that most likely to pose a threat to mental or physical wellbeing disproportionately effects the most vulnerable women in society and those of ‘lower socio/economic status’.
In my mind the potential for greatest harm is in:
- Prisons
- Rape crisis
- Refuges
- Police custody/searching
- Intimate care spaces ie hospitals/carehomes
- public toilets.
The greatest service users of these spaces are not the ones shouting at everyone to ‘be kind’. They are those who are most vulnerable in society, those who often have fewwer options or a poorer start in life and are therefore more likely to end up as victims of DV, SA, in the prison system, in hospital etc.
I genuinely think that most of the Be Kind brigade view the issue through their own lenses of
- being willing to occasionally be mildly uncomfortable in a public toilet to signal their ‘credentials’
- the TiM
I think they find it easier to empathise with a male of a potentially similar ‘class’ than a woman who is unlike them.
If be intrigued to hear if others think there is an un acknowledged class element to this or if I am barking up the wrong tree/oversimplified this?