Protecting Women's Spaces?

Why the political narrative of protection is clearly a grift.

Most people already know that trans rights are being targeted at an increasingly high rate. Because of this, there have been a lot of people talking about why targeting trans people goes against science, medicine, anthropology, and even religious beliefs. However, I want to take a moment to address the fact that one of the most used (if not THE most used) narratives that anti-trans politicians are using is both broken and reveals that their true motives are not what they say they are.

Photo by Aiden Craver on Unsplash

The Narrative – Protecting Women’s Spaces

A current narrative being used by politicians is that they need to protect women’s spaces, especially places like bathrooms, from people assigned male at birth.

Without addressing the fact that this premise is already broken because it assumes masculinity is prone toward sexual assault when given the chance and that people assigned female at birth should hide from people assigned male at birth instead of changing our cultural acceptance of male violence, we need to assess this narrative as it’s being presented.

Under this narrative, “all a man would need to do is pretend to be a woman and they would gain access to women’s spaces” and, thus, there needs to be protections from men doing that by creating laws/rules that require people to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their assigned gender. However, creating laws forcing people to use the space that aligns with their assigned gender actually makes women’s spaces less safe under their narrative.

Here’s why:

• If everyone is forced to use the space that aligns with their assigned gender, then trans women would be forced to use men’s spaces and trans men would be forced to use women’s spaces.

• Under these laws, men who fit the full stereotype of what masculinity looks like would be forced to use women’s spaces. The only difference would be their genitals.

• If a hypothetical man wanted to enter a women’s space, which the narrative says is/would be happening, all they would have to do is claim to be a trans man. No one (hopefully) would ask to see their genitals.

• A predator (again in their narrative) wouldn’t even need to pretend to be a woman, they could just be a man in a women’s restroom.

• So, it actually would make women’s spaces less safe since it would be easier for predators to enter since they wouldn’t even need to try to hide.

Why is this important

Let's be honest, our culture does equate masculinity with the propensity of sexual abuse and assault (although this is not necessarily unfounded since men make up 93.6% of all sexual assaults charges) and, because of this, protecting the vulnerable is something that people should and do care about. This narrative works because people do actually want to keep others safe from predators

However, it is also equally important to understand that these laws do the exact opposite even within the narratives that they are pushing, which highlights the fact that protecting people is not actually the goal.

The goal for anti-trans bills has always been about spreading fear around a marginalized group for the purpose of giving people an enemy to “fight.” It was never about protecting anyone. It was always about controlling the people who can give them power and use that to slowly take away rights and protections as fascism takes hold. Every time there is a conservative “win” against trans rights, they are giving the government more power over the individuals.

For instance, gender affirming care bans and bans on reproductive rights are systematically making precedents about the fact that individuals do not have a right to their medical decisions, the government now does.¹ These are all steps designed (even if the people putting them forward are doing it unintentionally) to take rights away from the individual and give them it to the state.

At the end of the day, it was never about protection, it has always been about power through oppression by growing state oversight against the individual.

1. It is important to remember that the “we gave it back to the states to make these decisions” implies that it was a federal law, which is incorrect. Rulings like Roe v. Wade decided that no government, neither federal nor state, could infringe on the individual’s rights. The overturning of Roe took it decision from the individual and gave it to the government.