Where Do We Go From Here?

 

When For Women Scotland won the appeal against the Scottish Government which in turn, cemented and clarified in law what we already knew, that women were and have always been biological women; I innocently thought that the fight had, not been won, but that we could move forward on the basis that the ruling would be adhered to.

Oh sweet summer child.

Some organisations have capitulated, the Transit Police for example rolling back their ridiculous decision to give biological men the power to strip search women. 

Crimes will no longer recorded as chosen sex, but the person’s actual sex (although I note some crimes go reported with no sex at all listed).

Many sport associations are no longer allowing men into women’s sports.

What has become apparently however, is that the powers that be simply don’t care about the ruling.

Unison, the country’s biggest union recently allowed a biological man to run for a female seat.  The Labour Women’s Conference has been postponed.   Some NHS Trusts and Local Councils are blatantly ignoring the ruling, still allowing men into women’s toilets and changing rooms, claiming that they need “further guidance”.

What further guidance is needed I ask?  Men cannot ever become biological women or be acknowledged as being so.  So says the Supreme Court.  They therefore do not belong in women’s spaces.

What these organisations are telling us, what the Labour Government is telling us (see also the text messages spread around by MPs after the ruling) is that they do not care.  The ruling means nothing to them and they intend to carry on as they wish.

For Women Scotland went through two judicial reviews and an appeal at the Supreme Court, expending over two hundred thousand pounds in the process to get there, not to mention hundreds of hours of time; only for us now to effectively be told that it doesn’t matter.

So what does this mean for women’s rights? When we win in the highest Court in the land, yet that ruling is simply ignored by those who wish to.

I think in some places the ruling was welcome.  I do not believe that many sport associations wanted a crossover of men in women’s sports, effectively ruining every sport that they entered.  But for many other organisations, Trusts, Councils, the Government; it clearly was not.

The trans agenda brings profit.  It allows control.  It brings a distraction when needed for the Government to wield. 

The trans agenda was welcomed, encouraged, assisted and promoted by those in power because it is useful to them.  Because they have their own agenda.  Why else let organisations mutilate children’s bodies with drugs that stem their growth and reduce their bone density.  Why else tell children that they can be born into the wrong body and that there is a quick fix to all their problems.   Why else wave through women’s bathrooms being made into gender neutral, allow men in our changing rooms and our rape crisis centres, removing our safety and safe spaces in the process.

What do we do now in the question?  Someone brings a Court case for each time the Supreme Court is ignored?  They know that this is going to be an impossible feat, not just from a financial point of view, or the time involved; but also because we now have to wonder, is there any point?

If the Supreme Court are to be ignored which it appears in many cases that they are being, how can we fight this?  Especially when our own Government clearly did not want the ruling and by “postponing” the Women’s Conference, they have made their stance quite clear. 

What I fear is that this will now escalate.  I fear that they will do away with the Equality Act all together, rewriting it so as to make the rights of men who pose and cos play as women, front and centre.

What I see is that the Government allowed this ruling to change the situation in things like sports, but had no intention of following through with anything else.  Which poses the question. 

How far down this rabbit hole of hell are we going to go?

The Moment You Turn From Child To Prey

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus according to the book by John Gray.  We may not be Martians or Venusians, but while men and women are both human beings, we are wildly different. I do not know how a man thinks. What he feels, how he feels and how he expresses those feelings.  A man cannot know that about a woman either.

Our bodies, our hormones, our way of thinking, the experiences that we have growing up; these all form what it is to be a man or woman.  Society has always had expectations and presumptions of both sexes.  But for women, it is our bodies that puts us at an lifelong disadvantage.

In a normal childhood, a girl enjoys the first years of her life being safe. You are looked at and treated as the child you are.  We are innocent and are allowed to be in that cocoon of safety.  Most of the time.  Until that one day arrives.  That day comes at different times for all of us, but we all feel the same when it arrives.  We want to go back to the cocoon where it is safe.

I was an early developer.  At the age of ten I started my periods.  My breasts started to develop.  I didn't know then that the world would change.  But it did.  It felt like overnight.  I was a child, but the way I was treated immediately became different.

The way that some adult men interacted with me changed.  The way that they spoke to me.  There was a change in their voices, an intonation that I did not understand.  A unfamilar expression on their faces.  A smile, but with a strange leer.  I did not understand back then these men were flirting with me; a ten year old girl.

What I did understand was that feeling that I got when they did it.  That uneasy "danger, danger" feeling that comes upon you.  You know that something is not right, even if you do not understand why.   Those are the first lessons a girl learns, a child learns in my case, how to extract yourself from an uncomfortable situation without letting them know that you are scared.  How to remain polite when inside, you want to run.

There used to be a playground near my old house that I sometimes used to frequent.  The street where I lived was full of old people, with no other children to play with and as a result, I often used to make my own entertainment.

I remember being around 11 when I went up to the nearby playground to read my book on the swings and have a go at the merry go round.   It was only around the corner and I felt safe there.  My mum had no qualms in letting me go.  Whilst sat on the merry go round slowly spinning around, I remember a group of boys approaching me.  14, maybe 15 years old.  They surrounded me.  Talking about how I was young to get "titties" and asking if they could touch them.  

I didn't understand.  I was a child.  But I felt the danger.  I took advantage of one of the boys saying "leave her alone she's a kid" and ran.

When I got home I told my mum what had happened.  She told me that it probably wasn't a good idea to go to that playground alone again.  That we maybe should throw away that jumper.  That was the first time I truly understood that the world I lived in had changed.  

The change in your reality that you realise that you have suddenly become prey, in a world where half the population are men and as a result, the way that you look at, not just men, but the boys around you; changes too.  It is inevitable.

You shouldn't have to feel that way at 11.  But for me, that was the day that the world changed.  My growing female body was now restricting me from going to places because of what may happen to me.  Because I was female.  Even though I was still a child, that label no longer meant that I was safe.

I learned too that it was my job to protect myself.  Don't go places on your own.  Don't wear that jumper, it will attract the wrong attention.

I remember being so excited when I was a little girl about becoming "a lady".  I remember watching my mum getting ready on a Saturday night with her pretty dresses, makeup and lovely hair.  How her womanly shape looked so amazing and how much I wanted to look like her.  How my dad admired and complimented her.  It all looked so exciting.  What could be better?  

Except now my growing body was something I no longer wanted.  I wanted to still be a child.  I didn't want boys leering at me in a playground, intimating things that I did not understand.  I didn't want grown men speaking to me in a way that I knew wasn't right, but again I didn't understand quite why.  I didn't want the breasts that attracted more and more attention.

I remember being in my first year in high school and an older boy telling me that because I already had "tits", it meant I was going to be a slag.  I didn't know what that was.  But it didn't sound good.  Also, he was leering at me the way that adult men did.

The problems, as I called my breasts at that time had started growing early and as a result, I was a C cup by the the time I was 14.  Any woman reading that will probably have the same reaction.  Closing your eyes.  Oh god.  Because every woman knows that that is not a good thing.

By 14, the rest of my body was also catching up and I no longer looked like an early developing child.  I looked like a woman.   With a pretty dress, hair done and make up applied I could have looked similar to my own mum who I used to aspire to be when I saw her getting ready on a Saturday night.  But I did not want that anymore.

But I was stuck in this body and as every girl learns, you have to just, deal with it.  You learn how to build your defences.  You learn the right responses.  How to remove yourself from situations you don't want to be in.  

As time goes on, you realise that your womanly shape, your curves, your breasts hold a power.  A power that you understand that you have and try to weld; yet you do not fully understand how dangerous that power is.   And that is isn't really power at all. 

I'm reminded of the famous line from The Breakfast Club.  If you don't, you're a prude.  If you do, you're a whore.  My growing body earned me many forms of the latter insult, despite having not even yet kissed a boy.

I raged against the injustice of it all.  I had to be careful where I went, what I said, what I wore, how I acted.  Boys were not held to the same standard.  Although they were going through their own experiences of puberty and teenage years, which as I have said, I cannot understand as a woman as it is their experience alone, they were allowed to get away with so much under the clause that infuriated me beyond all else (and still does).  Boys will be boys.

Boys will be boys I was told when I told a teacher about the name calling.  Boys will be boys I was told by another teacher when two boys frequently tried to grab at my breasts.  It's their hormones!  I was told.  Wear a larger shirt, they said.  My shirt was not tight.  But no shirt could have made my breasts disappear. 

Looking back now, my mind boggles that these excuses were used to justify and allow this kind of behaviour.  If you were to report a sexual assault to the police, I don't think a "he just couldn't help himself" would wash in a Court of law.  

But would it? Because now I recall a case in Hull where the Defendant was found guilty of raping a sleeping woman and the Judge told him "She was a pretty girl and you fancied her.  You simply could not resist".

Most women have stories similar to mine.  The truth is that from the time a girl hits puberty to the day she dies, she is prey.  The lifelong game we play is how to avoid the carnivores that would hurt us.

It is a game of life that we never signed up for.  But has also prepared us, has strengthened us and has bonded us together.  It is why we fight for our rights.  For our single sex spaces.  Why we hold on so strongly to the word woman.  Because we know what it means.  And what it takes to be one.