Do they get it, now?
For decades, feminists have been resolutely colonising what were once men’s spaces. They’re still at it. Every few months, it seems, another story crops up of a men-only club being relentlessly pressured to admit women. Or an unholy row because male sportsmen profess to be unhappy about allowing women journalists into their locker room.
Now, though, we’re seeing the opposite: men relentlessly pressuring women to admit them into what were once women’s spaces. Everything from clubs, even online ones like the app Giggle, or changing rooms.
And women aren’t happy. Not happy at all.
Do they get it, now?
Some women’s campaigners claim that the trans phenomenon constitutes an attack on womanhood itself, an attempt to ‘erase’ women and replace them with men who perform womanhood. Some even call it a new form of patriarchy.
That these men profess to be women is immaterial: they’re men, and everyone knows it. So, I guess at least one thing in the girls’ favour is that they rarely pretended to be anything else. But the fact remains: long before women were being “erased”, men were copping the same.
Beginning in the 1970s, men’s spaces were usurped, their maleness was denigrated, and policies and laws forced changes in male behaviour that turned many workplaces into feminised fiefdoms in which men held their jobs only so long as women allowed them to.
Indeed, we even see feminists arguing that air conditioning in offices is “sexist”, because male resting body temperatures tend to be higher, hence men prefer different colder aircon settings. That it is no less fair to expect men to sweat through a warmer workspace than for women to shiver in a colder one, that it’s far easier for women to just put on a cardy rather than men strip down, is never up for debate.
The very idea of an exclusively male workspace or club – especially if it was a space for socialising (not so much if it was a sewer, oil field, or shop floor in which men did unpleasant, dangerous work) – came to be seen as dangerous.
If men complained — heaven help them. The wrath of the feminist harpy was no less screeching and bullying than a man in a dress screaming to “Stomp TERFs”.
Like the women being bullied by tranny activists today, men were told to just shut up and get on the right side of history.
The story of women’s appropriation of male space has almost always been presented as an unqualified good. Implicit in the story is the assumption that male spaces did not offer anything positive: on the contrary, they were alleged to be harmful by their nature to both women and men, though especially to women. If men’s needs were mentioned, which they usually weren’t, it was alleged that men would only benefit through contact with women’s much-touted superior empathy, team-building, and communication skills […]
If any men were made uncomfortable by the presence of women in their change rooms, their concerns were not even entertained. No women’s group or feminist advocate seems to have objected either.
Even from the youngest age, boys were banished from having male-only spaces. Feminists relentlessly lobbied to allow girls into what was once the Boy Scouts.
Interviewed about whether the Girl Scouts of America had changed in the wake of the opening of Boy Scouts, the CEO of the Girl Scouts expressed her conviction that, ‘There are very few opportunities for girls to be in a single-gender space where they can rely on one another, build relationships with one another, be themselves, not have to compete for space, not have to show off in any kind of different way.’
Spectator Australia
Yes, she said that with a straight face, completely oblivious to the beam in her own feminist eye.
Well, now trannies have successfully lobbied to allow males into the Girl Guides. As well as every other woman’s space, from childbirth to the local swimming pool.
And men — suddenly, “real men” again — are being asked to rise up in defence of female spaces.
It would be entirely understandable if men simply shrugged and told their mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, and daughters to suck it up. “We had to. Deal with it.”
But men, real men (yes, there is still such a thing left, despite all the best efforts of feminism) aren’t like that. A fundamental male urge is to protect physically weaker females. Call it patriarchal if you wish, but when the creepy man is waving his penis at little girls in the locker room, even the staunchest feminist would surely hope her father or brother would charge in and take care of the matter in true male fashion.
Pointing out that women are only now experiencing what feminism inflicted on men for decades might not be entirely free of a whiff of schadenfreude, but it’s not an argument for revenge. It’s not about “getting back” at women.
It’s about hoping, finally, for some understanding that single-sex spaces are necessary. For both sexes.
So, we’ll stand by women as they ask to defend their spaces — and hope that maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally get a bit of respect back.
