Hahahhahahhahaha hahhahahhaha haha ahhh - breathe - ahahahahahahahaha
No.
This is not about "inherent weakness". I would love to be in a world where we could just kick down the barriers with gay abandon.
But you know what?
We tried that. And it didn't work.
Not because there's any inherent baked in reason why it shouldn't but because we were unrealistic about the men and about how socially ingrained sexism is in both sexes.
So right now, women (in the non-debased, pre-genderist sense of people with female bodies) are still being sexually and domestically abused and doemstically exploited, and are still given less default credibility and therefore harder career paths resulting in fewer women in the highest levels of senior leadership, and our bodies are still being brutalised and abused for entertainment.
Do you really think that still happens because some pesky women seem to think we need separate lavatories, and if we just let TW use the loos like they ask it would all go away? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
We got the freedom to do more but we didn't change the way too many men treat us and we didn't change enough of the cuture for enough other men to challenge them, so we just gave them new ways and sometimes even easier ways to exploit us.
We wanted fairness and opportunity.
We got cocklodgers and CSA-dodgers because we were conned into thinking women having the ability to earn their own money meant it's not feminist to hold men accountable for their families.
We got pornhub, only fans and mega-brothels because we were conned into thinking that women not being shamed for haing sex meant men would respect women sexually.
And we got trans women in our sports, prisons, officerships and prizes because we were conned into thinking that saying women should not be limited by their sex meant women can never say that our sex matters.
Bringing about that barrier-free world we both want to see is not a simple matter of refusing to see things that we do not want to believe and thinking that means they will go away.
It is about accepting the hard truth that right now, women (in the non-debased, pre-genderist sense of people with female bodies) do get a shitty end of the stick for reaons that are sometimes baked in our bodies (we will always be the ones who carry children, most of us are physically weaker than most of the men we encounter and none of us are stronger than every man in the world) but mostly baked into our structures and our culture and how people with our bodies are supported or not.
And for that reason, even as we still strive for a world where men do treat us with respect, and don't abuse and sexualise us, and don't take up the air and the space and push us to the margins, we also need places, for now, where the men are not.
Physical spaces of course, but also cultural and linguistic spaces where we can come together as women without men inserting themselves in our conversation and reframing our expereinces to suit themselves, where we can form our own understanding of our lives, our challenges and our needs and to back each other up to fight for true equality.
That is true Feminist insight. To be brave enough to realise women will not be freed with a few slogans, a few mixed sex changing rooms and some You Go Girl corporate events, by pasting on a smile and petending that if we don't ackowledge the sexism we still face it will go away, but with hard work, with being clear eyed about the hidden inequities we face and being brave about talking about these and having the language we need to do so.
Beccause we tried "kicking" down the barriers and it turned out that we only we kicked down the barriers that protected us, because they were only ever very flimsy in the first place. We didn't make a dint in the reasons we needed protection in the first place.
We didn't change the invisible ones stop us having the same opportunities in and power over our lives as men. Those barriers are harder. And they won't come down with kicking, but with patient hard work to demolish them brick by brick.
Now, I'm still an optimist. I do still believe those barriers can come down. But as long as they exist not just because, as you believe is the only reason and I accept is partly the reason, women wrongly see ourselves as needing them, but also as an entirely rational response to the current behaviour of men, we can't just kick them down by ourselves. We need to bring men on the journey with us, or at least enough of them that social pressure between men keeps the rest in check.
Before the barriers come down we need to get to a place were the barriers don't make any sense. And we are sadly no where near that place today.