Women must defend their single-sex spaces

Edie Wyatt?3 February 2023?The Spectator Australia

A woman who works for the Australian Defence Force (ADF), has been asked by the Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response Office (SeMPRO) to find an alternate bathroom to the female toilet if she finds the presence of a male in the facility unsafe.?The only other bathroom in her office is for males.

SeMPRO was set up in response to the recommendation of a review into the treatment of women in the ADF and provides advisory services around sexual misconduct in the workplace to staff and service personnel. ?The review found that sexual harassment and assault existed in the ADF and that there was ‘significant under-reporting?of sexually based incidents from victims because of fear of victimisation; concerns about negative impact on career progression; and personal trauma’.

SeMPRO is meant to ‘coordinate timely responses, victim support, education, policy, practice and reporting for any misconduct of a sexual nature’. ?SeMPRO considers the violence ‘gender based’, but evidence strongly suggests sexual violence is based largely in sex. ?The key error in government bodies and structures that considers gender to be behaviourally significantly dominant to sex, is causing a cascading list of problems for progressive and conservative politicians alike.

Nicola Sturgeon this week was so?tongue tied?over the previously simple question of whether ‘trans women are women’, she looked as if she might overheat in the midst of a bitter Scottish winter. ?Sturgeon had been forced by public outcry to intervene and place a trans identifying man into the male prison. ?To me, it felt like press were rebelling from draconian editorial guidelines by reporting the man had allegedly raped women with ‘her penis’, echoing Ricky Gervais’ latest?controversial?Netflix special.

Does Scotland’s First Minister believe all trans women are women?

Scottish Gov has just implemented an effective ban on trans prisoners who’ve committed sexual & violent crimes against women being moved to a women-only prison.?@itvnews?pic.twitter.com/DRbvItHZ3i?— Peter A Smith (@PeterAdamSmith)?January 30, 2023

When the ADF employee, (I’ll call her Jane) contacted SeMPRO to seek assistance, she told them that a male was utilising the female toilet facility she had been provided and he was making her feel unsafe in her work environment. ?SeMPRO allegedly replied with a warning to Jane, that if the male person identifies as a ‘transgender woman’ it would be ‘discrimination’ to deny them access to the female facility. ?The social worker from SeMPRO, with she\her pronouns, apparently went on to suggest that Jane ‘utilise a different bathroom’.

‘Female’ is now an identity category throughout the Australian government. ?All males who identify into the category of female, which they can do with a simple declaration, are given the assumption that they are free of male pattern violence.

According to the Australian Bureau of statistics, 97 per cent of all?sex offenders?are male. ?Under the doctrine adopted by all our government departments, it is theologically impossible for a male with a ‘trans’ declaration to exhibit male pattern sexual behaviour. ?Women, however, are doomed to inhabit the mortal world where physical bodies still matter a great deal in interactions.

The?ADF?is a ‘principal partner’ of ACON’s Pride Inclusion Program, gaining a ranking of ‘bronze’ in their latest Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) publication, having fallen from the dizzy heights of ‘silver’ in previous years. ?According to ACON the Pride programs:

‘Help make?the places where our community members live, work, study and play more inclusive of LGBTQ people, improving the mental health and wellbeing of our community through the reduction of stigma, discrimination and social exclusion.’

The higher your employer is in the AWEI ranking, the less likely they will be to have any accommodations at all for the special needs of female bodies, and certainly not with the security, privacy, and dignity of a facility that is separate from males. ?The AWEI has a 43 question ‘scoring guide’ for employers to gain ranking toward equity greatness. Item 15 in the ‘advanced’ section of the guide is the question: ‘We have (or are working towards) having “gender neutral” or “all gender” bathrooms.’

The AWEI will not give equity points to a Unisex facility because it ‘reinforces a binary’. ?Disability facilities are not to gain points for being ‘gender neutral’ because people with disabilities have specific bodily needs. ??Catering to the needs of female bodies is also without any points benefits in the AWEI, only feminine gender stereotypes are respected, the stereotypes feminist have long been critiquing.

When told to use another facility, Jane asked the social worker from SeMPRO if she should use the male facility or go home to use her own bathroom, to which she was given no response. ?Jane further inquired as to how serving female soldiers and officers will fare in the field when they are expected to shower and undress in a common facility. ??Will women be expected to shower naked in front of males? ?She was allegedly not given a response, although it is a fair question given the history of the ADF in failing to safeguard women from sexual assault and harassment.

A woman like Jane has no way to make her concerns heard about a trans identified male without the accusation of transphobia. ?Given that SeMPRO already know that under-reporting occurs because of ‘fear of victimisation; concerns about negative impact on career progression; and personal trauma’, it’s a wonder that they appear to continue the same patterns of silencing and shaming women for speaking up.

Sexual coercion, intimidation, and assault of women by trans identified males is impossible in gender identity theology, in the same way that it once was for a sexual predator to be in the priesthood. ?This is a religious belief, not a factual one. Not all priests were sex offenders, but the assumption that none of them could be, led to more harm than our society was ultimately able to bear.

The logical extension of trans activism and indeed the constant demand on women and their facilities, is that we should normalise the sight of the penis in a female-assigned public space where one might typically expect female nudity. ?Women and their children must become comfortable with the presence of males in facilities where they attend to personal bodily needs, of which they have many.

Last year, the?Wi Spa controversy, saw a man in the women’s section of a Korean Spa, sport a?semi erect penis in front of a naked female child. In response, prominent British trans activist Laurie Penny replied to a mother on Twitter asking what a she might tell a girl child to in such a situation by saying she should tell her daughter, to ‘not to stare at other people’s genitals without their permission,?because it’s rude’. This advice aims at shaming the girl child for being uncomfortable around a grown man’s semi-erect genitalia.

The trans identified man in the Wi Spa incident was later confirmed to be a registered sex offender and was charged for indecent exposure, even though he had every legal right under California law to be in the facility. ?The woman who brought the story to the public’s attention, by confronting the staff on video, was vilified in the press and roundly accused of lying and transphobia.

Women are being forcefully recruited into a project of cultural re-engineering that requires women and girls to bury natural instincts and natural trauma responses in the presence of adult males, even if the men are exposing their genitalia.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that 1 in 6 women have been sexually assaulted as adults and more than twice that as children. ?So, if any given female facility is being used by more than five or so people we can safely assume it is being accessed by a survivor of male pattern violence and specifically sexual assault.

Women have a disproportionate need for facilities in the workplace, not just because of the complexities of the female protective instincts and trauma responses, but because of menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and the kind of problems that can be caused by birth injuries.

Not many women want to talk to their boss about sexual trauma, incontinence, or heavy bleeding. The dignity of attending to our issues in a single sex environment is a luxury we are being forced to abandon along with our knowledge that humans don’t change sex.

The mental health comfort and ongoing safety of women and girls is never a consideration in any modern equity bench-marking or progressive policy. ?The policies that now dominate the management of women’s facilities, stand in stark contrast to the reality of sex that women face in workplaces every day. ?Sexual abuse survivors are given no consideration as to their feelings about having males in female spaces, and no impact studies are being done on the mental health of women who are self-excluding from facilities, services and events that now include males.

What we are being asked for, instead, is to present evidence that Self ID is negatively impacting the lives of women and girls with rising cases of sexual assault. ?What they want to see is the bodies of raped women and children, and that in vast number, and that peer reviewed, before they will even consider reversing harmful loss of sex-based rights and protections for women and girls.

Girls between 10 and 14 are the most vulnerable individuals in our society to?sexual assault, and that is just on conviction statistics. ?These girls are being told by ‘progressive’ government funded sexuality education that their instincts are discriminatory, and that they have no natural or legal right to seek a space that excludes males. ?Girls are being told that they must trust the word of a male if they tell you they are a female ‘inside’, and to trust self-declared ‘women’ in the same way they trust a woman.

Government funded groups like ACON, who dominate workplace bathroom policy, should be legally held to account, in my opinion, for the experience of women at work and the lies they teach our daughters. ?Women need to make political trouble for these organisations. Ask your union if they guarantee single sex facilities, and remember, any shame they place on you for asking for a boundary between you and a male is rape culture and the shame belongs to them.

Edie Wyatt has a BA Hons from the Institute of Cultural Policy Studies and writes on culture, politics and feminism. She tweets at @msediewyatt and blogs on?substack