Tilting at Trans Women

In the epic Spanish novel Don Quixote, the title character seeks to become a noble knight-errant and embarks on a series of adventures to prove himself. However, he is a naive character whose knowledge of the world is largely draw from chivalric romance stories. Thus, on encountering a field of windmills he mistakes them for giants and attacks them. This story has provided us with the phrase "tilting at windmills" to describe an attack on imaginary enemies.

It strikes me that the ongoing debate regarding transwomen using women's toilets is very much an exercise in tilting at windmills. I would be very surprised if many of those arguing against trans women using women's toilets have ever spoken to a trans woman in any meaningful way. Rather I suspect, just like Don Quixote's romance novels, their only source of information is anti-trans propaganda which provides very little reflection of the real world.

While we are preoccupied with trans women and their use of women's toilets the very real giants in our world that are no doubt enjoying this misdirection. The vast majority of those who are harming women and girls are men, who gain access to women not in toilets, but through churches, youth groups, government departments and in their own homes. It may be easier to scapegoat an already marginalised group, but if we really care about protect women and children we need to turn our attention to the real giants and stop tilting at trans women.