Women-Only Spaces

AN ARGUMENT AGAINST GENDER IDENTITY

P1. If anyone can self-classify as a woman, then biological women no longer have their own spaces

P2. Anyone can self-classify as a woman

C. Therefore biological women no longer have their own spaces

CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY

Sky News Australia – Women-only spaces interview

This argument is not necessarily concerned with transgender individuals, but is instead concerned with any men in women’s spaces, including men who are not transgender.

Women-only spaces which are part of the debate are:

  • Abuse shelters
  • Restrooms
  • Locker rooms
  • Prisons
  • Treatment facilities (such as beauty salons)
  • Hospital wards
  • Awards/Opportunities
  • Support groups

Alessandra Asteriti and Rebecca Bull comment:

We regard it as a fundamental human right that a private female citizen, when confronted by a demand to share intimate services or spaces made by an individual whom she perceives as a male, is able to assert her right to withhold consent and not be victimised for doing so. This is a fundamental sex-based demand, on human rights and feminist grounds.

…A fortiori, it could be hypothesised that transwomen who have undergone no significant procedure to approximate the female sex would present patterns of offending typical of their sex.

…We argue that self-ID creates a presumption of access to female spaces, instead of a presumption of exclusion, even for evidently male individuals. It creates an unverifiable legal mechanism impervious to objective interrogation dependent upon an individual’s subjective apprehension of their gender identity, removing objective scrutiny. This creates a legal loophole exploitable by predators, fetishists, exhibitionists and voyeurs. Determining how the temporary assumption of false identity as well as longer-term false declaration can be assessed is crucial to the prevention of structural harm to women’s rights

https://www.modernlawreview.co.uk/asteriti-bull-sharpe/

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