The Price Women Pay in the Gender Wars

The latest onslaught in the gender wars, and another final straw in this world full of final straws, comes from the NHS Confederation in their new trans and non-binary guidance for healthcare staff. Published in partnership with the LGBT Foundation, the guidance suggests that no patient is entitled to know the trans status of their carer, that in effect the sex of the health professional can be hidden from the patient if the staff member wishes it.

Patients with dementia are not exempt and ‘should still be challenged’ if they express ‘discriminatory views’, according to the guide – thus fully completing the cycle of female subordination to the trans project between the ages of birth and death. From young girls being told by school trans toolkits that boys in their changing rooms are really girls if they say so, to elderly women with dementia being called discriminatory if they recognise something as familiar as a man standing in front of them, there is something for every stage of life in this new progressive era of female oppression.

From the cradle to the grave there now exists a hydra-like sex-based assault on women’s rights which is increasingly difficult to avoid. You may be setting out on a sporting career, or have worked hard to become an elite athlete, only to find there is a man next to you on the starting line, and you will be told to adjust your sense of reality. Adjust! Adjust your perceptions to view this man, with his puberty-induced advantage, as a woman. You might be in politics, publishing, academia, the arts, science: professional careers full of lists and prizes and incentives for women and girls, and these lists may start to include men and you will be asked to adjust. Adjust! See these men, with the advantages of their male socialisation, as women, or pretend you haven’t noticed.

You might be a victim of rape or a survivor of male violence, and cruelly you will be expected to adjust to a man in your women-only counselling group or refuge. Adjust! Pretend your heightened antennae for maleness does not (should not) exist and if you’re finding that difficult, work harder at ‘reframing your trauma’. You might be in prison, locked up and lacking any means of escape and there might suddenly be a male locked up with you and you will be expected to adjust. Call him a woman and pretend there is no difference between him and the other inmates, it’s what everyone else is doing. There are sanctions if you don’t, and you have no power. Adjust!

You might be an expectant mother and your healthcare provider has started to use language which you find dehumanising, such as birthing parent or lactator. You might be eligible for screening or medical tests but the word ‘woman’ is never used any more so you’re not sure if it includes you or not. You might find yourself in a single-sex hospital ward where suddenly a man is put in the bed next to you. You might prefer a female nurse to do your mammogram, you might have a disability and require female intimate carers. If the female nurse or carer turns out to be a man, you must pretend it doesn’t affect you. It’s normal, your perceptions are wrong, it’s a small thing, it helps other people. Adjust! It is more kind and ‘inclusive’ after all, and anyway if you don’t comply you will be called a bigoted transphobe.

Any situation in day-to-day life where previously there has been an assumption of single-sex provision now requires women to adjust their expectations. Public toilets and changing rooms in shops and leisure centres will now be ‘single-sex’ in a ‘both sexes’ kind of way and you must adjust your feelings accordingly to accommodate any man who says he’s a woman, and increasingly, any man who says he’s non-binary. A natural instinct to mistrust any man who breaks the social code to enter a female space must be repressed. Adjust those natural instincts! Female knowledge and experience of male predatory behaviour needs to be unlearned. Only adjust!

As women, we are very good at recognising a male when we see one, but this ability is now routinely questioned by those intent on blurring the boundaries. The accuracy of our perception (it’s very accurate) is not the point though – the point is that every time we do correctly identify a male, we can now be told we are wrong, on the basis of his inner feelings. We must change our perception and tell his truth rather than our own. Adjust! Adopt his beliefs, not yours.

If you refuse to adjust, or you cannot adjust due to dementia, neurodivergence, a strong sense of material reality, religious beliefs or radical feminism, then the adjustment will be made for you. You will lose friends, jobs, funding, reputation, opportunities, prizes, records, scholarships, careers, and finally the words to say all this. You will probably lose your peace of mind and in extreme cases, your sanity. Women must change themselves or watch their worlds being forcibly changed for them.

This is a wholesale act of discrimination against women. In a society where sex is still an axis of inequality, it was predictable (and predicted) that allowing sex to be a choice would have an adverse effect on the oppressed class. For men the effects are piecemeal, experienced by individuals or smaller sub-groups such as gay men, in individual circumstances. But for women it is structural, it is built in and it exacerbates existing inequalities. The half of the hub of humanity which is female is being slowly turned, cog by cog, further away from equality, further away from safety, further away from fairness, dignity, privacy and comfort, in order to appease a tiny subset of men who wish to be seen as women. They are pulling the lever time and again, ratcheting a bit more, notch by notch, shifting us over, clicking the whole female demographic into a new unwanted, uncomfortable adjustment which we do not like and we did not choose.

We should know by now that when a trans advocacy group writes guidance or gives evidence for legislative change, the rights of women and girls will be ignored. With the passage of time, the lack of will from the authorities to protect women’s rights has become established, and with it, confidence has grown amongst those who would ride roughshod over every piece of legislation designed to level the playing field and promote equality and safety for women and girls.

The great adjustment is demanded of women, not men. The men who benefit from the promotion of ‘progressive’ values know they will not be the ones to pay the price: the consequences will always fall squarely and disproportionately on women.