This nuanced examination of the take-over of women's rights gains by non-women is truthful and honest. Barbara Key demonstrates the crux of several of the matters.. As the ex-wife of a man who believes he was "born in the wrong body" and went into stealth mode with the help of a non-certified practitioner and a PhD "sexologist' affirmer in the early 1990s,, I pose that some of the missing pieces of this puzzle happen to be the chronicles of women like me, who were told "your failure to accept your husband's identity is what broke up your family." This was literally submitted in a sworn affidavit during the custody case, after I became aware of the 26 months of deceit my then husband and his practitioners engaged in, for his "true life test."
The idea that a 36 year old man with three Ivy League graduate degrees, a wife and 2 young sons, is engaging in anything remotely "true life" as he's sitting on a barstool, make-up and mini-skirt on, in The Village, cadging a blanc de blanc from a curious man drinking at a "cultured" watering hole, is also to deny women our lives. True life for a woman involves blood, birth and death, to quote Nora Ephron.
The fact that girls are now taking testosterone and finasteride at the same time, and the very real, documented dangers of the latter are not being shouted from the rooftops, is a crime. Alienating parents and children is a crime. Telling a man to lie to his wife and they justifying 26 months of that with the phrase "true life test," is a crime. These actions just happen not to be illegal. There is so much that the average person does not know about the synthetic sex identity, to use a phrase Jennifer Bilek recently coined. My memoir, In the Curated Woods, True Tales of a Grass Widow (iuniverse) is one of only three published narratives of the women (a growing battalion, see at transwidowsvoices.org) whose marriages and self-esteem were crushed by this political misinterpretation of a mental illness called body dissociative disorder.
It's hard to feel sorry for feminists who continue to scream "patriarchy" and demand even more privileges for themselves while degrading men at every turn. Write a post refuting the hypocrisies and excesses of feminism and express some concern for actual men and maybe I'll give a damn. Meanwhile, enjoy the shit show intersectional liberals and feminists have created.
“they have enlisted children—too often their own children—as foot soldiers in the campaign to criminalize as hate speech the public defense of binary sex norms.”
Without binary sex norms, you get sex abuse without the capacity to call it out as such. What they’re seeking to criminalize is any opposition to the violation of sexual boundaries. Normalizing & creating legal protections for sexually abusive behaviors is one of the goals.
Excellent article. My eyes are finally opened to the excesses of feminism and how that got us to this regressive ideology. Spread and retweet far and wide!
Re Julie Jaman, something hot of the press, courtesy of GC News:
"Livestream today at 5:30 PST/8:30 EST to support Julie Jaman, 80 year old woman banned from the YMCA for life for telling a man to leave the woman's locker room."
One additional comment…in the 80’s I used to wear a t-shirt that said “If we can put one man on the moon why not all of them?” I thought it was hilarious at the time. Had probably just been through a bad break-up or something but I was also fully immersed in the man-hating feminism of the day. Have so many regrets…and it’s ironic because I love men…but have not married or had children. I regret my abortion too!! Biggest regret of my life is that abortion. Now I’m in my 60’s single, no kids and very lonely 😞 If I could sue Gloria Steinem and feminism into oblivion now I would! Any other women boomers up for a class-action suit? Any pro bono lawyers willing to help us? Semi serious.
Thank you for this very thoughtful essay. I think it adds both information and a rational voice to this issue. As a Biological Psychologist, I do not think that this issue is driven primarily by sexual identity, per se, except in the very minuscule proportion of cases that actually represent true dysphoria. I think it’s driven more by the quest for social power and/or status (and, perhaps, by some darker motivations). A number of people have written about the behavioral issues and violence that have become part and parcel of the trans movement, e.g., “The New Misogynists” by Christine Rosen (Commentary Magazine), and so many more. It seems more than ironic (and very sad) that people who identify as women so easily victimize women.
Again, as a psychologist, it’s telling that both male and female people attempting to identify as the opposite sex often don’t act the way we would expect them to act if they actually were the opposite sex. That is, they play out a (sometimes unrealistic) caricature the sex they want to be. Again, this suggests to me that actually being a person of the opposite sex is fundamentally beyond their reach. (I am trying to be diplomatic, here.) You read a number of such stories on the SubStack Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT)…. The caricatures of men acted out by young females are completely unlike the men that I know; the caricatures of women acted out by young males are unlike any women that I know. This, alone, should give one pause to reconsider this entire phenomenon.
I also tried to make this point in an accessible, non-inflammatory way in the essay, “What’s a Woman, What’s a Man, What’s an Alien to Do?”
Untangling this issue is going to take more than reiterating and re-analyzing what’s going on, or debating the details of molecular biology (although both help). It’s going to take a profound rethinking — a paradigm shift — to re frame this entire movement in rational terms.
Thank you again for your wonderful essay. Sincerely, Frederick
What was particularly gratifying to see was Barbara's critique of feminism and the argument that feminism in general has to take some responsibility for the whole transgender clusterfuck - excuse my French. Really great to see Tavistock and their "hand-maidens" and "useful idiots" getting cut-off at the knees, but that really doesn't address the rot in much of feminism which will continue to have its pernicious and problematic consequences.
Of particular note in that regard is Barbara's succinct summation of that problem:
"Only an intellectual could believe that there are no innate, biology-driven differences between men and women."
Amen to that. "Barking (mad)" as feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock put it recently:
Somewhat more to the point is UK philosopher Amia Srinivasan who argued that:
“The objection I have in mind is that feminist philosophy rests on a mistake: namely, a conflation of epistemology and politics. Philosophy, at least on the conventional understanding, is an epistemic project, a project oriented toward truth or knowledge, and thus committed to the kind of unfettered inquiry that is conducive to the acquisition of truth and knowledge. Feminism meanwhile is a political project, a project oriented toward the emancipation of women and the dissolution of patriarchy.”
Hard not to conclude that "feminism" may well encompass something of a worthwhile "political project". But also some justification to suggest, and to follow Barbara's suit, that it bears some resemblance to other such "political projects" - like the French and Russian revolutions ...
Some further elaborations on those themes in my own Substack post on "Wikipedia's Lysenkoism" - the latter term referring to another "political project" that has garnered the pejorative connotation of "any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable"; lotta that goin' round these days, a sign of the times:
I started to get the inkling when I was in college and my instructors strongly implied that to achieve the best I could achieve as a female artist, I had to make feminist art.
Well, I found feminist art to be disgusting, as it is incredibly preoccupied with menstrual fluid, and that was the beginning of the end of my faith in feminism.
Thank you, Barbara. You’ve found the words to express what I’ve long felt about the state of modern feminism, where it seems that it fractured into two camps, one that insists men are to blame for all the worlds ails, and one that insists that men cease to exist, so long as they self identify as women.
I wonder how you reconcile this belief with those that we would most closely ally with, mainly radical feminists, who I staunchly support in their advocacy for protection of same sex spaces, while simultaneously cringing when no man can ever escape their ire?
This article was so good, only to arrive at a bewildering end!
I don’t mean this to be rude or dismissive, as the article was quite good, and I honestly believed it was building to a good point. It instead petered out, blamed feminism, and went into unsubstantiated bias territory about feminism having become misandric, and accusing feminism of laying the groundwork for gender ideology. I see this situation completely differently.
No radical feminists or radfem-aligned feminists (Marxist feminists, difference or equity feminists) have ever believed that the third wave (liberal feminism) is anything but a backlash against the gains of the first and second waves. It isn’t feminism at all, but a patriarchal practice itself, which is, as the author states, entirely incoherent. It also isn’t at all misandric, though it pretends to be.
Liberal feminism champions “sex work,” polyamory, sadomasochism, sex role stereotypes (which they lovingly call “gender identity”), consumer culture, “lean in,” “equality” feminism in which equality is conceived of as women acting more like patriarchal men, and on and on, ad nauseum, all of which are extremely male-centering practices, so hardly misandric. Liberal feminism represents the corporate arm of female brainwashing, replete with empty “girlboss” slogans and buzzwords like “empowerment” and “self-actualization.” It’s extremely narcissistic and self-centered, while teaching young women to submissively center men if that’s their “choice”—one of the only choices afforded to women in society, a fact which it’s verboten to point out, lest you criticize an individual woman’s vacuum-sealed “choice”—leading to generations of young women who are sexually used, raped, and abused by men who know how to spout the right slogans. Many of the women of my generation and under have been really traumatized.
Now, I understand liberal feminism (again, this is a misnomer; how about I call it “liberal anti-feminism?” That will be more accurate, and avoid confusing people about the idea that it constitutes any sort of feminism) may seem misandric. They spend a lot of time making token statements about toxic masculinity and rape culture, and even more time harping on very unimportant points, such as mansplaining and manspreading. That’s because this movement must pretend to have feminist bonafides of some sort, so it needs virtue signaling; liberal anti-feminism was probably the first movement to cave entirely to virtue signaling rather than radical activism, and I’d say that when you see that happening—as has happened with discussions surrounding race, gender and sexual orientation recently—that’s when you know that this social justice movement has been bought, and is no longer the grassroots liberation movement it once was; and liberal anti-feminism was the first to go down this route. Between the girl power slogans and the performative man-hating, it certainly loudly proclaims to be feminism, and seems misandric, which for some reason people believe (!!), despite the fact that liberal feminism persuades young women to turn themselves into, if you’ll pardon my French, f*** dolls for men. Liberal feminism is in fact an abuser’s paradise, which is why the “male feminist,” which is to say, the rapist or abuser who takes on the mantle of feminist, has become a well-known figure. Hook-up and “sex positivity” culture has traumatized young women and made a whole bunch of vulnerable women cannon fodder for predators. A movement which actively caters to male sexual narcissists and actual sadists—it promotes BDSM as a part of a feminist’s healthy sex life, remember—cannot be said to be “misandric” (unless you’re arguing that it’s misandric for women to center abusive men, which is an argument that could be made). I’d agree that liberal feminism is performatively misandric, but that’s about all.
Radical and Marxist feminism are also not misandric at all. Sure, there are plenty of individual women who hate men after a lifetime of abuse (women hating men mainly just means staying away from them and complaining on the internet; men hating women means rape and other worse forms of violence, including murder). I don’t hate men, and that’s a minor miracle, considering the sheer number of times I’ve been raped, including by men I should have been able to trust, such as my partners. Radical and Marxist feminism are *honest* about patriarchy, male dominance, and male violence against women, and how it’s a problem; we don’t lie about statistics, and rape, for example, is at an all-time high in Western nations right now, according to experts likely because of the public health crisis of ubiquitous streaming pornography which depicts the graphic sexual and other physical abuse of women. That women’s spaces are being taken away by the same liberal left which champions misogynistic and frankly criminal pornography, and the entire globally exploitative sex industry, is not an accident.
Third wave anti-feminism certainly contributed to the rise of the ideology that has caused the removal of so many of the gains of the first and second waves, including, during a time in which rape is at an all time high, the removal of safe rape crisis groups and shelters for women across the Western world, and of safe DV shelters and prisons as well. It’s been an enabler, in the same way that women will enable their abusive boyfriends to commit sexual crimes against other women. However, the real culprit, intellectually speaking, is Queer Theory, which is solidly patriarchal and has absolutely no credible claim whatsoever to feminist theory, whatever Judith Butler may say to the contrary. (I’m not sure she can even claim to be a feminist, as someone who’s not a woman anymore, can she?)
This is an excellent piece but one statement jumped out at me: "(I obviously make no judgment about the staffer in the Mountain View Pool instance.)" Why should you be afraid to make such a judgment that there is something inherently wrong with the staffer needing or wanting to be in the women's changing room? I find it ironic that so many have been cowed into not making judgments regarding the incoherence of the Gender Ideology movement when its raison d'etre appears to be more about harshly and punitively judging anyone who disagrees with them than trying to actually help those suffering from gender dysphoria (GD) to find and achieve positive outcomes.
It is important to distinguish between those suffering from GD and the trans advocates (including Big Pharma, the medical establishment, and the expanding universe of grifting NGO's and non-profits). For those who suffer from GD or now think they do, this is a serious mental health issue that should be treated with caring and compassion but not as a physical ailment (i.e. there is something wrong with the person's body). The very phrase that "I feel like a woman (man) trapped in a man's (woman's) body is a statement of profound dis-integration between the mind and body. The problem is very real but what ethical medical professional would advocate excising healthy tissue and destroying perfectly healthy reproductive organs to satisfy a patient's inability to accept their body, as if the mind and body were separate?
The only reason that anyone today even entertains the idea that the body is the cause of the non-conformity and not the mind is the fact that we now have the drugs, the medical technology, and the profit motive to advocate cutting people up so that they can have the appearance but not the reality of being the opposite sex. It is a cruel lie being sold to a suffering and vulnerable population.
I have no doubt that in the not too distant future, this will be viewed with the same horror and disdain with which we currently view phrenology and eugenics. Sadly, how many lives will be ruined before enough people will wake up to the absurdity of an ideology that is so damaging to individuals and society.
This nuanced examination of the take-over of women's rights gains by non-women is truthful and honest. Barbara Key demonstrates the crux of several of the matters.. As the ex-wife of a man who believes he was "born in the wrong body" and went into stealth mode with the help of a non-certified practitioner and a PhD "sexologist' affirmer in the early 1990s,, I pose that some of the missing pieces of this puzzle happen to be the chronicles of women like me, who were told "your failure to accept your husband's identity is what broke up your family." This was literally submitted in a sworn affidavit during the custody case, after I became aware of the 26 months of deceit my then husband and his practitioners engaged in, for his "true life test."
The idea that a 36 year old man with three Ivy League graduate degrees, a wife and 2 young sons, is engaging in anything remotely "true life" as he's sitting on a barstool, make-up and mini-skirt on, in The Village, cadging a blanc de blanc from a curious man drinking at a "cultured" watering hole, is also to deny women our lives. True life for a woman involves blood, birth and death, to quote Nora Ephron.
The fact that girls are now taking testosterone and finasteride at the same time, and the very real, documented dangers of the latter are not being shouted from the rooftops, is a crime. Alienating parents and children is a crime. Telling a man to lie to his wife and they justifying 26 months of that with the phrase "true life test," is a crime. These actions just happen not to be illegal. There is so much that the average person does not know about the synthetic sex identity, to use a phrase Jennifer Bilek recently coined. My memoir, In the Curated Woods, True Tales of a Grass Widow (iuniverse) is one of only three published narratives of the women (a growing battalion, see at transwidowsvoices.org) whose marriages and self-esteem were crushed by this political misinterpretation of a mental illness called body dissociative disorder.
Ute Heggen uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
"Only an intellectual could believe that there are no innate, biology-driven differences between men and women."
Brilliant!
It's hard to feel sorry for feminists who continue to scream "patriarchy" and demand even more privileges for themselves while degrading men at every turn. Write a post refuting the hypocrisies and excesses of feminism and express some concern for actual men and maybe I'll give a damn. Meanwhile, enjoy the shit show intersectional liberals and feminists have created.
Great post. Testimonial illustrating a huge crime against humanity.
I posted the following today as a partial way out of this mess we parents and grandparents are in:
https://kwnorton.substack.com/p/rewilding-childhood?r=boqs0&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“they have enlisted children—too often their own children—as foot soldiers in the campaign to criminalize as hate speech the public defense of binary sex norms.”
Without binary sex norms, you get sex abuse without the capacity to call it out as such. What they’re seeking to criminalize is any opposition to the violation of sexual boundaries. Normalizing & creating legal protections for sexually abusive behaviors is one of the goals.
Excellent article. My eyes are finally opened to the excesses of feminism and how that got us to this regressive ideology. Spread and retweet far and wide!
Re Julie Jaman, something hot of the press, courtesy of GC News:
"Livestream today at 5:30 PST/8:30 EST to support Julie Jaman, 80 year old woman banned from the YMCA for life for telling a man to leave the woman's locker room."
https://gcnews.substack.com/p/letjulieswim-press-conference-today
One additional comment…in the 80’s I used to wear a t-shirt that said “If we can put one man on the moon why not all of them?” I thought it was hilarious at the time. Had probably just been through a bad break-up or something but I was also fully immersed in the man-hating feminism of the day. Have so many regrets…and it’s ironic because I love men…but have not married or had children. I regret my abortion too!! Biggest regret of my life is that abortion. Now I’m in my 60’s single, no kids and very lonely 😞 If I could sue Gloria Steinem and feminism into oblivion now I would! Any other women boomers up for a class-action suit? Any pro bono lawyers willing to help us? Semi serious.
Good piece!
Thank you for this very thoughtful essay. I think it adds both information and a rational voice to this issue. As a Biological Psychologist, I do not think that this issue is driven primarily by sexual identity, per se, except in the very minuscule proportion of cases that actually represent true dysphoria. I think it’s driven more by the quest for social power and/or status (and, perhaps, by some darker motivations). A number of people have written about the behavioral issues and violence that have become part and parcel of the trans movement, e.g., “The New Misogynists” by Christine Rosen (Commentary Magazine), and so many more. It seems more than ironic (and very sad) that people who identify as women so easily victimize women.
Again, as a psychologist, it’s telling that both male and female people attempting to identify as the opposite sex often don’t act the way we would expect them to act if they actually were the opposite sex. That is, they play out a (sometimes unrealistic) caricature the sex they want to be. Again, this suggests to me that actually being a person of the opposite sex is fundamentally beyond their reach. (I am trying to be diplomatic, here.) You read a number of such stories on the SubStack Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT)…. The caricatures of men acted out by young females are completely unlike the men that I know; the caricatures of women acted out by young males are unlike any women that I know. This, alone, should give one pause to reconsider this entire phenomenon.
I also tried to make this point in an accessible, non-inflammatory way in the essay, “What’s a Woman, What’s a Man, What’s an Alien to Do?”
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/whats-a-woman-whats-a-man-whats-an?utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2
Untangling this issue is going to take more than reiterating and re-analyzing what’s going on, or debating the details of molecular biology (although both help). It’s going to take a profound rethinking — a paradigm shift — to re frame this entire movement in rational terms.
Thank you again for your wonderful essay. Sincerely, Frederick
EverythingIsBiology.substack.com
Excellent essay; well-written, hard-hitting, cogent, topical, and trenchant. Classic "Barbara Kay". 👍🙂
What was particularly gratifying to see was Barbara's critique of feminism and the argument that feminism in general has to take some responsibility for the whole transgender clusterfuck - excuse my French. Really great to see Tavistock and their "hand-maidens" and "useful idiots" getting cut-off at the knees, but that really doesn't address the rot in much of feminism which will continue to have its pernicious and problematic consequences.
Of particular note in that regard is Barbara's succinct summation of that problem:
"Only an intellectual could believe that there are no innate, biology-driven differences between men and women."
Amen to that. "Barking (mad)" as feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock put it recently:
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/lets-abolish-the-dream-of-gender
Great deal of "ideological bias in the psychology of sex and gender" as Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico put it:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
Somewhat more to the point is UK philosopher Amia Srinivasan who argued that:
“The objection I have in mind is that feminist philosophy rests on a mistake: namely, a conflation of epistemology and politics. Philosophy, at least on the conventional understanding, is an epistemic project, a project oriented toward truth or knowledge, and thus committed to the kind of unfettered inquiry that is conducive to the acquisition of truth and knowledge. Feminism meanwhile is a political project, a project oriented toward the emancipation of women and the dissolution of patriarchy.”
https://users.ox.ac.uk/~corp1468/Research_files/Does%20Feminist%20Philosophy_KCL%20talk.pdf
Hard not to conclude that "feminism" may well encompass something of a worthwhile "political project". But also some justification to suggest, and to follow Barbara's suit, that it bears some resemblance to other such "political projects" - like the French and Russian revolutions ...
Some further elaborations on those themes in my own Substack post on "Wikipedia's Lysenkoism" - the latter term referring to another "political project" that has garnered the pejorative connotation of "any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable"; lotta that goin' round these days, a sign of the times:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism
I started to get the inkling when I was in college and my instructors strongly implied that to achieve the best I could achieve as a female artist, I had to make feminist art.
Well, I found feminist art to be disgusting, as it is incredibly preoccupied with menstrual fluid, and that was the beginning of the end of my faith in feminism.
Thank you, Barbara. You’ve found the words to express what I’ve long felt about the state of modern feminism, where it seems that it fractured into two camps, one that insists men are to blame for all the worlds ails, and one that insists that men cease to exist, so long as they self identify as women.
I wonder how you reconcile this belief with those that we would most closely ally with, mainly radical feminists, who I staunchly support in their advocacy for protection of same sex spaces, while simultaneously cringing when no man can ever escape their ire?
This article was so good, only to arrive at a bewildering end!
I don’t mean this to be rude or dismissive, as the article was quite good, and I honestly believed it was building to a good point. It instead petered out, blamed feminism, and went into unsubstantiated bias territory about feminism having become misandric, and accusing feminism of laying the groundwork for gender ideology. I see this situation completely differently.
No radical feminists or radfem-aligned feminists (Marxist feminists, difference or equity feminists) have ever believed that the third wave (liberal feminism) is anything but a backlash against the gains of the first and second waves. It isn’t feminism at all, but a patriarchal practice itself, which is, as the author states, entirely incoherent. It also isn’t at all misandric, though it pretends to be.
Liberal feminism champions “sex work,” polyamory, sadomasochism, sex role stereotypes (which they lovingly call “gender identity”), consumer culture, “lean in,” “equality” feminism in which equality is conceived of as women acting more like patriarchal men, and on and on, ad nauseum, all of which are extremely male-centering practices, so hardly misandric. Liberal feminism represents the corporate arm of female brainwashing, replete with empty “girlboss” slogans and buzzwords like “empowerment” and “self-actualization.” It’s extremely narcissistic and self-centered, while teaching young women to submissively center men if that’s their “choice”—one of the only choices afforded to women in society, a fact which it’s verboten to point out, lest you criticize an individual woman’s vacuum-sealed “choice”—leading to generations of young women who are sexually used, raped, and abused by men who know how to spout the right slogans. Many of the women of my generation and under have been really traumatized.
Now, I understand liberal feminism (again, this is a misnomer; how about I call it “liberal anti-feminism?” That will be more accurate, and avoid confusing people about the idea that it constitutes any sort of feminism) may seem misandric. They spend a lot of time making token statements about toxic masculinity and rape culture, and even more time harping on very unimportant points, such as mansplaining and manspreading. That’s because this movement must pretend to have feminist bonafides of some sort, so it needs virtue signaling; liberal anti-feminism was probably the first movement to cave entirely to virtue signaling rather than radical activism, and I’d say that when you see that happening—as has happened with discussions surrounding race, gender and sexual orientation recently—that’s when you know that this social justice movement has been bought, and is no longer the grassroots liberation movement it once was; and liberal anti-feminism was the first to go down this route. Between the girl power slogans and the performative man-hating, it certainly loudly proclaims to be feminism, and seems misandric, which for some reason people believe (!!), despite the fact that liberal feminism persuades young women to turn themselves into, if you’ll pardon my French, f*** dolls for men. Liberal feminism is in fact an abuser’s paradise, which is why the “male feminist,” which is to say, the rapist or abuser who takes on the mantle of feminist, has become a well-known figure. Hook-up and “sex positivity” culture has traumatized young women and made a whole bunch of vulnerable women cannon fodder for predators. A movement which actively caters to male sexual narcissists and actual sadists—it promotes BDSM as a part of a feminist’s healthy sex life, remember—cannot be said to be “misandric” (unless you’re arguing that it’s misandric for women to center abusive men, which is an argument that could be made). I’d agree that liberal feminism is performatively misandric, but that’s about all.
Radical and Marxist feminism are also not misandric at all. Sure, there are plenty of individual women who hate men after a lifetime of abuse (women hating men mainly just means staying away from them and complaining on the internet; men hating women means rape and other worse forms of violence, including murder). I don’t hate men, and that’s a minor miracle, considering the sheer number of times I’ve been raped, including by men I should have been able to trust, such as my partners. Radical and Marxist feminism are *honest* about patriarchy, male dominance, and male violence against women, and how it’s a problem; we don’t lie about statistics, and rape, for example, is at an all-time high in Western nations right now, according to experts likely because of the public health crisis of ubiquitous streaming pornography which depicts the graphic sexual and other physical abuse of women. That women’s spaces are being taken away by the same liberal left which champions misogynistic and frankly criminal pornography, and the entire globally exploitative sex industry, is not an accident.
Third wave anti-feminism certainly contributed to the rise of the ideology that has caused the removal of so many of the gains of the first and second waves, including, during a time in which rape is at an all time high, the removal of safe rape crisis groups and shelters for women across the Western world, and of safe DV shelters and prisons as well. It’s been an enabler, in the same way that women will enable their abusive boyfriends to commit sexual crimes against other women. However, the real culprit, intellectually speaking, is Queer Theory, which is solidly patriarchal and has absolutely no credible claim whatsoever to feminist theory, whatever Judith Butler may say to the contrary. (I’m not sure she can even claim to be a feminist, as someone who’s not a woman anymore, can she?)
This is an excellent piece but one statement jumped out at me: "(I obviously make no judgment about the staffer in the Mountain View Pool instance.)" Why should you be afraid to make such a judgment that there is something inherently wrong with the staffer needing or wanting to be in the women's changing room? I find it ironic that so many have been cowed into not making judgments regarding the incoherence of the Gender Ideology movement when its raison d'etre appears to be more about harshly and punitively judging anyone who disagrees with them than trying to actually help those suffering from gender dysphoria (GD) to find and achieve positive outcomes.
It is important to distinguish between those suffering from GD and the trans advocates (including Big Pharma, the medical establishment, and the expanding universe of grifting NGO's and non-profits). For those who suffer from GD or now think they do, this is a serious mental health issue that should be treated with caring and compassion but not as a physical ailment (i.e. there is something wrong with the person's body). The very phrase that "I feel like a woman (man) trapped in a man's (woman's) body is a statement of profound dis-integration between the mind and body. The problem is very real but what ethical medical professional would advocate excising healthy tissue and destroying perfectly healthy reproductive organs to satisfy a patient's inability to accept their body, as if the mind and body were separate?
The only reason that anyone today even entertains the idea that the body is the cause of the non-conformity and not the mind is the fact that we now have the drugs, the medical technology, and the profit motive to advocate cutting people up so that they can have the appearance but not the reality of being the opposite sex. It is a cruel lie being sold to a suffering and vulnerable population.
I have no doubt that in the not too distant future, this will be viewed with the same horror and disdain with which we currently view phrenology and eugenics. Sadly, how many lives will be ruined before enough people will wake up to the absurdity of an ideology that is so damaging to individuals and society.
You make no judgement about a man who chooses to make his living invading female-only spaces a d helping little girls undress???