In recent years, there has been an ever-growing focus on ‘transgender rights’ in the media. Although it has made those who identify as trans feel validated and accepted where they once felt invisible, the mainstreaming of transgenderism into our social consciousness has also resulted in women’s concerns about male access to female spaces (bathrooms, changing rooms, showers, domestic abuse shelters, and prisons) to be dismissed, ridiculed, labeled hateful, or otherwise ignored by many on the left.
Parents are rightfully concerned for their children being fast tracked into high risk procedures, such as, being put on puberty blockers, sterilization, and double mastectomies, because they got the idea in their head they’re born in the wrong body. Parents are also protective of their girls being forced to share intimate spaces and compete with the opposite sex in sports, leading to serious injuries. Yet any concerns are met with apathetic, self-righteousness to promote ‘equality’ by those claiming to be progressive. It has become clear that any questioning and critical thinking of transgender ideology, populated on internet forums in recent years, is discouraged if not censored.
Even when there are legitimate privacy and safety concerns for women and girls in spaces that can be easily accessed by predators on the basis of simply declaring themselves the opposite sex, we are told only trans people are entitled to concern and a right to safety and privacy. We are told that biology is a social construct, but gender identity is legitimate, when there is no evidence to back this up. Because trans awareness has been so popularized by the media and well financed, private interest groups, as the “new oppressed group fighting for equal rights”; women, homosexuals, and racial minorities, are believed to have already been granted such equal rights; therefore, are no longer considered oppressed groups in need of legal protection anymore. This also allows for feminist voices on the issue to be silenced as bigotry.
Transgender bathroom policies and bills were pushed as an LGBT issue, though many lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, including myself, profoundly disagree. There are men who may or may not experience gender dysphoria, were socialized male growing up, primarily sexually attracted to females, and desire to gain access to female private spaces to target women and girls. So, to accuse anyone who disagrees with that and finds this to be a privacy violation, of being “anti-LGBT”, is extremely inaccurate and unfairly attempts to force team groups of people with different needs. It actually denies homosexuality, by telling gays and lesbians that not wanting sexual relations with the opposite sex is transphobic and they should rethink their sexuality. As evidenced by the term cotton ceiling, and many exchanges between gender critical lesbians and transactivists online. Accusations of transphobia are commonly made when someone disagrees with transgender ideological ideas which deny biological material reality, though many people who have gone through transition due to severe gender dysphoria acknowledge their biological sex. These accusations are merely being used as a political card to silence dissidents of an irrational ideology like cult behavior.
The main concern for most women, is about maintaining our boundaries, to protect our right to compete and live safely away from male bodies, male violence, and the type of harassment and sexual violations we’re largely targeted for. It is not about subscribing to a hateful ideology against “trans people”. However, the tactics against women and girls on the left does not mean right-wing ideologues aren’t using women and children’s safety as a means to promote their conservative agendas and to justify discrimination against gender non-conformity in the name of religious values. Trans-identified people deserve human rights and respect just as everyone else, those who have chosen to transition also don’t deserve hate. Though, ignoring voices from women on the left who are critical of this ideology making its way into our government and institutions with no debate, leaves a many of us politically homeless.
Our problem is with people on the left who refuse to listen to any disagreement or critical analyses of post-modernist ideas under queer theory and are apathetic to women and girls’ privacy and security, accusing our rights as simply being based on the discrimination of trans people. Even though these sex-based protections were fought for by women for females, so we can fully participate in a patriarchal society. How is this fair to half of the population? It tells us that we, as a sex class, cannot speak about our own struggles and rights, that we don’t matter in politics. Female victims of misogynistic based trauma like myself, feel as though our experiences and legitimate fears are being invalidated and washed over. Let alone the statistics and the vast number of reports about trans identified male violence and sex offenses toward women and girls, which are widely covered up, and instead recorded as crimes perpetrated by women.
I am one of these, child sexual abuse, rape, and domestic abuse survivors being called a bigot for believing women have a right to protect our sex specific spaces. Whatever people may think about me, I know deep down that this is wrong and is actually rooted in society’s deep-rooted, collective misogyny. Here I will make my case that transgender policies are dangerous and when forcibly mandated, could be compared to condoning institutionalized sexual abuse.
I struggle with C-PTSD every day from multiple crimes that happened to me because I grew up female in a misogynistic culture. It started out with me being sexually abused by my older brother as a child. He groomed me when my parents were away and coerced me into silence by using emotional blackmail against me. He used my sexuality against me when I was very young and forced me to do things with abusive bullying. As a child who developed a lot of anxiety, I feared “my little secret” getting out, reducing my social standing in public eye. We were not a highly religious family, yet I still feared people viewing me as a ‘whore’ if any details came out. A part of me also wanted to protect my brother and I did not want to be blamed for participating in his abuse. He continued to threaten to tell people “my little secret” whenever I refused to do what he wanted.
Once, when I was getting ready to shower, I noticed something shiny at the bottom of the bathroom door, which was my brother trying to peep on me undressing and taking a shower by using a knife to see me in the reflection, as well as to intimidate me, he used to chase me around with a knife thinking it was funny. I was furious at him, screaming at him to leave me alone, but that was not my life. My life consisted of a male having control over my body, refusing me boundaries, privacy, and bodily integrity by having my most intimate parts violated. I felt as though I was powerless to stop it. Until he became increasingly worse when I got older and I finally loudly refused. My refusal was met with violence from him and I screamed my pain at top of my lungs at him. This was the last time I remember him preying me in this way, though continued to verbally abuse me into adulthood.
This was ‘normal’ life for me as a girl, my consent did not matter, it was not even considered. It was all about me being a sexual object for him, along with large amounts of sexually objectifying media of women surrounding me. I know I internalized messages that this was how women were supposed to behave and be treated, contributing to being groomed. I knew that if I were born a boy, society would be set up for the benefit of me, that I would not be viewed as an inferior sex object. It actually sounded good to me as a bisexual, gender rejecter to be a boy. In this way, I can understand how trauma leads to people identifying out of their sex.
From then on after catching him spying on me during shower, I constantly feared he was trying to look. It should be common sense that there’s horny boys who watch pornography desperate to spy on women and girls undressing and would find any means to do it and get away with it too. As an abused girl, I knew this was a thing some boys wanted to do. In a society that disbelieves and blames women and girls when they come forward about sexual abuse, that says “boys will be boys”, many do get away with it. Transgender ideology tries to erase this lived experience of being female. It focuses on gender being an innate experience, instead of being an oppressive, social role that has been forced on females for centuries, and therefore, males who believe their gender is female, also experience life as females.
If this were the case, they would be more sympathetic and understanding about their female peers in schools who are going through puberty, trauma, sexism, or simply don’t want to change and shower around males and see their penis. But even when trans-identified males are accommodated with single, unisex rooms, they turn them down claiming it makes them feel “othered” and discriminated against, even when the school puts in the effort to recognize their gender identity, uses their preferred pronouns, and includes them as girls in extracurricular activities.
This example shows that forced validation is more important to them than actual security. Whereas our concerns are about the safety and privacy of women and girls. There have not been any cases that prove they are at a significantly higher risk of danger in male bathrooms or changing rooms, but all the demands for the burden of proof are on violations committed by ‘transwomen’ or ‘transgirls’ preying on women and girls, of which there are believed to be none, or very rare, exaggerated instances. But even when trans identified male attacks are brought up, they claim the offenders must not be ‘truly trans’ ignoring the consequences of self-identity.
Girls are told that if something does happen to them, it is already illegal, so then why can’t the same argument be applied to transgender identifying males within male spaces? If there are problems with abuse and harassment, it should absolutely be addressed and eliminated, without having to force women or girls to sacrifice their sense of security for a tiny minority of males. It only takes one boy to abuse gender identity policy and scar the lives of multiple female students. Title IX was created to protect young women and girls by setting up sex-segregated facilities and athletic activities separate from males, so women and girls can achieve academic equality. These protections help women and girls because our bodies are more vulnerable to males. Gender identity policies will make it easier for predators to prey on vulnerable women and girls and out-compete them in achievements intended for females, this will only set us back in progress toward liberation.
I know for a fact there are trans-identified males who prey on females because I was in a relationship with one. Growing into a teenager, at age 15 I met a boy online that I became infatuated with. I wanted a boyfriend and didn’t feel comfortable being with another girl yet. I also lived in a very small town and had crippling anxiety. Because of my trauma, I was desperate to feel loved and receive attention from a boy. This unusual, online relationship quickly became an abusive situation for me because an abnormal situation was already normalized in my life. Through my teenage years he cheated on me and was interested in multiple girls, he and my best friend were even talking behind my back. But he would always defend himself by saying that he loved me the most, that these girls that he met before were just good friends, and that he liked having girls as friends more than boys, though he grew up with a group of close guy friends. Of course, these were excuses to cover up his many lies and deceit.
Having my best friend since childhood, and a boy who I thought was my soulmate hurt me in that way was soul-crushing. I became severely depressed, self-harmed, and started having more suicidal thoughts. In an effort to get him to understand my pain, I decided to open up to him that I was sexually abused by my brother as a child and felt as though I’ve been treated like trash by the people closest to me, when all I wanted was their love. His first reaction was thinking I was lying to get sympathy, his other reactions were that of disgust for me, jealousy, and anger at my brother. He still wanted to be with me, made fake apologies, and we continued talking.
Fighting was always bad with him, he became increasingly controlling, verbally and emotionally abusive. Calling me ugly, stupid, using my insecurities against me, insulting parts of my body, and saying other horribly misogynistic and violent things against me. It became worse when I stopped interacting with him during bad arguments, usually to escape his anger and abuse. He did this as a way to punish me and get me to give in to his demands, then later claiming he did not mean the things that he said and actually really loved me. Later, he decided to use what I told him against me, mocking that I was sexual abused, saying that I liked it, and threatening to call my mom and tell her about it. I would eventually excuse this behavior, because I believed he was one of my only friends and he would act madly in love with me when he wasn’t being abusive to me. We played video games together, listened to same music, shared mutual goals about our future and living together. It is difficult for me to explain to people why I stayed with someone like that so long over the internet when I could have walked away from the computer, but I was an isolated, traumatized teen and convinced he was my soulmate. He had a contradicting dynamic with me, switching between extremes of love and hatred and I didn’t understand the extent of his abusive side until too late.
Throughout the relationship, he became very aggressive and hostile when angry, or distant, depressed, hypersensitive, paranoid, and moody. He knew he had mental health issues and said that he might have bipolar disorder. He and his mother fought frequently, there were some bad ones that I don’t know details of, only that the cops were called on him. He told me he also believed she had bipolar disorder. Gender dysphoria is found to be comorbid with borderline personality disorder, narcissism, bipolar disorder, PTSD, psychotic disorder, or people on the autistic spectrum. Whatever the case, from my experience with him, he had problems with his mood and disordered, delusional thinking. He expressed mostly male oriented, dominating behavior, interests, and desires. This was not an act either, he was genuinely interested in things most other males are. Nothing ever indicated to me that he was all that different from other men out there besides having more of a creative side.
After my graduation, I had forgiven him for past “mistakes” and wanted to finally meet him in real life. I moved in with him at his mom’s house in another state at the age of 20, far away from my small town. Here I was physically abused by him multiple times. I sometimes reacted in anger to his verbal abuse by pushing or hitting as a trauma reaction and he used this as an excuse to hit me harder. One time I pushed him away when he aggressively got up close to my face to intimate me when he felt he couldn’t control me and to try and make me submit to his domination and when I tried to get away from him. Every time he yelled at me when I tried to escape into the bathroom, I was left speechless and motionless, fearing his terrifying rage, but this only made him angrier. I didn’t know what to do, I felt hopeless.
When he was cornering me, sometimes the only thing I felt that I could do was to try to push him away from me. He reacted by shoving me down hard onto the floor or into something hard that was behind me. When I wanted to get away from him during an argument, I went into the bathroom next to his room. One time he barged in aggressively pushing me down into the tub, holding me down, smacking and screaming at me, all because I wanted to go in the other room away from him. Another time he started shouting out loud that I “sucked my brother’s dick,” this made me freak out because I felt powerless to make him stop psychologically torturing me.
Eventually, I laid there crying on the floor, he then went into a rage and kicked me in my ribs and back while I was laying down in the fetal position, sobbing. A few times he would cry after beating me while remaining cold and unsympathetic. One time he threatened to kill me, chop me up, and bury me in his yard if I would not stop trying to escape from him in the bathroom and crying. This was after I found out he was using pornography behind my back. Sexually, he rarely ever pleasured me, it was mostly about me pleasuring him, and thankfully, no penetration, as we had no protection. But he still subjected me to sexual coercion. Even online, he would pressure me to show myself in sexual positions on webcam.
After I moved back home from living with him for almost a year, I was in a traumatized state. Because I was not thinking straight, I never told my parents, and still had hope that we could fix our issues together. It was difficult for me to let him go because I had dedicated so much of my life to him, but everything started coming back to me, I was struggling with flashbacks and insomnia. I started demanding apologies and explanations from him. He acted like I was in the wrong for being upset at him for his abuse, which he would deny or claim I was just as bad. I told him how it made me feel that he had used my sexual abuse as a child against me and he used the excuse that he thought I was lying. This made me feel even worse and I expressed to him how that feels like as a female who’s been hurt by males all her life. His response was to turn the attention onto himself, saying it has been a struggle for him hiding that he sometimes feels like a woman.
He told me he believes he is transgender, that he feels like both a man and a woman on the inside, and that is why he was so depressed when I was with him. This was his excuse for his misogynistic abuse of me. He then acted like I was in the wrong for not sympathizing with him. When I asked him, what makes him feel like a ‘woman’, one example he gave to me, is that he was good at finding nice-looking women’s clothing for me. Another was that he isn’t disgusted by transwomen as he is with men and gets off to penetrating himself. That taking drugs made him feel more girly. When I was living with him, I found women’s panties in his closet and he said it was his mothers. I believe he wore these to act out an autogynephilic fantasy. After this conversation,I was left in a more traumatized state than before. I was left extremely distressed and was stuck living with my brother at my mom’s house. I had nowhere else to live, which is one of the reasons I wanted to move away. This was my reward for staying loyal to him for up to 6 years.
My experience with him was that of mental/emotional torment and annihilation, like he was trying to destroy every part of me and leave me as a shell of who I once was. It felt like the erasure of my experience as a woman because he didn’t even allow me to express my lived experience as one, since he can just identify as one based on his idea of women in relation to sexist, sexually objectifying stereotypes. There is no way he could be partly female, since there is no way he could understand the female experience. He severely abused me after my brother did, and I was treated as a sex object again by multiple men after him because I was so traumatized and easy to victimize. He was a misogynist, and I was fooled into thinking I was his equal counterpart. I would never feel safe around any man who treats women like this, whatever they identify as. I get a totally different experience of feeling safe and understood when relating to other women and our shared experience of oppression.
To then be told by transgender ideology and defenders, or the Biden Administration, that my abuser is actually innately female, or otherwise, non-male, because he says so, or because he has experienced gender dysphoria before, is psychological and emotional abuse all over again. Some opponents I told my story to said he is not really transgender because he was an abusive man to me, as they say with other trans-identified males who commit crimes against women and girls. Through my research and observations, it happens all the time. There are many female abuse victims of men, who were once called transvestites, displaying the same type of male supremacist and entitled, fetishistic behavior in their relationships, look up trans widows‘s stories. Even if my abuser did act more ‘feminine’ or wanted to be a woman, that should not mean he is any more of a woman compared to other men. That is a stereotypical, regressive way of thinking in a highly gendered society. A man having a delusion of being a woman does not make them anymore like a woman, especially when they associate moods, personality traits, stereotypical feminine traits, pornographic fantasies, or presentation of a woman, with being an actual woman.
A man who identifies as a woman, non-binary, or gender fluid, who grew up and was socialized as a boy by a patriarchal culture in a male body, could not know what growing up as a female is like, and in many instances is not something to be desired.
‘Transphobic” crimes are committed by the same types of violent male perpetrators that target women, but they are usually done for homophobic reasons, prostitution, or an abusive relationship, not for the sole reason that they’re perceived as women. That is why the term ‘transmisogyny’ does not make sense. Especially if they are born into privileged classes of being light-skinned, heterosexual, or wealthy. Their issues are totally alien from homosexual issues, which does not make transgender rights a fight for civil rights or the homosexual community. Otherwise, it is saying rights for heterosexual, white men are a part of homosexual and minority rights.
As a liberal-minded young person, I would have thought no predatory, heterosexual man would go through the lengths of humiliating himself by wearing a dress and wig and calling himself a woman to prey on them, but my experience shows otherwise. And I know as a child sexual abuse survivor, that it is wrong to disregard women and girls’ boundaries in any context. Anyone who identifies as transgender or transsexual is not automatically predatory, and that shouldn’t automatically be assumed, but many of those fighting for trans rights do not care about women or girls’ boundaries. The fact that women and girls are expected to share their traumas to prove why we need protected spaces should be evidenced enough. It took abusive situations for me to realize this, and I fear it will take many more until we are finally believed. Autogynephilia is a well researched paraphilia and those with one paraphilia usually develop more, making them a danger to women, girls, and society. Not every transgender-identified male transitions or even desires to. My message is not to label all trans identified men as predatory based on my personal experience, but their record definitely is not as clean as their side proclaims it to be. Males make up around 90-99% of sexual and violent offenders, and the statistics do not change with transgender identified males. In fact, they make up the majority of sexual offenders compared to any other group.
People experience gender dysphoria in different ways, for some, it is more extreme, where they are convinced the only way they can feel comfortable in their own skin is to go through full transitional surgery. Whereas for others, it is only experienced mildly or occasionally, which can be compared to anyone who grows up not fitting into society’s gender norms and expectations. This is because gender dysphoria is a symptom of the larger problem of rigid gender expectations. When you take a look at transgender ideology’s “gender identity spectrum”, you see many different vaguely defined genders listed that only further reinforces gender stereotypes. How does it make any sense for women and girls to be forced to share their spaces with males claiming to be non-binary, genderless, or gender fluid?
How are women and young girls supposed to be expected to know whether a person they perceive as male is ‘truly transgender’ or not a threat? Would it be considered discriminatory if women are uncomfortable around them even if they look exactly like men because their belief of being female is more protected? Why are women and girls not allowed to question their presence or kick them out if they feel threatened under a transgender policy? Why don’t more people consider those with a history of abuse and or rape of women and girls being allowed in? And what about predators who try to hide their past crimes with a new identity? Many of these things are not even considered by those who think of themselves as compassionate people.
I have been taught all my life that I must always put others before myself, that I come last. Part of female gender socialization is to teach girls that becoming a good woman requires caring for others’ wants and needs and always being polite. This results in other people’s priorities, thoughts, and feelings being treated with more importance than our own. Mothers are left doing most of the care work, men then grow up relying on women to cater to their desires, because they are not socialized in the same way. This allows men to put more interest into themselves. Because of these high expectations placed on women and girls, and not men, our needs are often neglected, and we are left without female solidarity. It also makes it difficult for us to feel like we can say ‘no’ or to fight for better treatment. Many women live in a constant hyper-vigilant state and struggle finding spaces where we can feel secure without the sense of possible violence from men. After being pushed around and walked over, when we finally stand up for ourselves, we are considered crazy, even evil. Now, transphobic, is another label that can be put on silenced women and girls.
We are told since we are very young how to stay safe from predatory men, that men are naturally violent, but then are told our fears around male-bodied people are unfounded and irrational. We are told men intruding on women and girls’ safe spaces is not enough of a problem to worry about. We are told even if a male has a history of rape, abuse, and other sex offenses against females, or makes women and girls feel afraid or harassed, we still have no right to question their identity or compare them to the male abusers and misogyny experienced in our own lives. We are told transwomen are women, end of discussion. It does not matter that most do not go through full transitional surgery to remove their penis, or that sexual-dimorphism will always make them larger and physically stronger than females and hormone therapy doesn’t change that. Outside of our Western culture wars, women and girls across the globe are still fighting for safer, female-only spaces.
It should come as no surprise, that trans policy has been implemented without question, where the most vulnerable women and girls reside; in domestic abuse shelters, feminist organizations, women’s support groups, and prisons. Why are the rights, dignity, and feelings of the most vulnerable women of society not even acknowledged, while the validation of dangerous predators’ gender identity is? Since male prisons in the U.S. are overcrowded, the prison industry is more than willing to accommodate high-risk prisoners by letting them be housed with females. Instead of stomping down on sexual assaults that frequently occur in their prisons, the problem is left with a large population of victims of sexual abuse. And since our society lacks safe shelters for men, women’s shelters are being sacrificed when it’s women who are in most demand for services, especially during a pandemic.
Dysphoria means discomfort and unhappiness with one’s self or situation. In our society, it is no wonder that many girls and young lesbians grow up wanting to be male. We are treated as sub-human, subservient, lesser than our male counterparts. Lesbians are treated like freaks or otherwise fetishized for their sexuality. We’re taught it is wrong to step outside of socialized gender and heteronormative norms and demands. It is extremely common for girls to experience body dysmorphia during puberty and after because of the messages we internalize about beauty and the female body. On the contrary, the male perspective is given more focus than a female one, and boys are taught to be logical, scientific, political, take up space, and be dominant. Transgender ideology does not serve solutions to fix these problems, it makes them worse in many instances.
Joe Biden’s executive orders and the Equality Act in his first weeks in office, redefines biological sex with gender identity in the law. Completing what the Obama Administration tried to achieve in 2016, when Obama used his federal powers to force all public-school districts to adopt a transgender policy in bathrooms and locker rooms or lose federal funding. Recognizing gender identity in the place of biology, is complete reversal of what Title IX was created for.
This is just another instance of people in positions of power using their authority to rule over women and girls’ lives, equating sex with gender, without a clear definition of gender identity. Obscuring the definition of ‘woman’ and ‘girl’, who are the victims of misogynistic abuse. This makes us feel powerless all over again and invisible in society. Our voices and experiences as girls are silenced like we do not matter compared to boys with gender dysphoria. The whole debate is set up as a partisan issue, leaving the issue of women and girls’ safety, and the right to say no, in the back, and turned into a defense for homophobia, or anti-abortion, by the right-wing. What is happening in politics is female erasure, which is already present in male-dominated politics.
The only allyship feminists can find in the conservative and religious right, particularly on this issue, is with other women on feminist specific issues. Which despite what trans dogma says, an allyship between party lines that benefits women and girls can and does exist. Please take the time to read the examples below, these are other testimonies of sexual assault survivors against transgender bathroom policies.
Sexual Assault Victims Speak Out Against Washington’s Transgender Bathroom Policies
A Rape Survivor Speaks Out About Transgender Bathrooms
These policies, which are not based on science and lack definition, are being introduced and forced onto school-aged girls by our representatives and senators when the normalization of sexual violations are so commonplace and being spread online.
Wolf Woman of the Northern Woods 