Post #2839674

https://thecritic.co.uk/women-should-not-have-to-apologise-for-their-rights/ The battle has been won, now let the shaming of the victors begin. Over a year after the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of sex, the EHRC’s guidance on single-sex spaces has finally been updated to make it clear that “sex” means “biological sex”. Feminists — or indeed anyone who thinks women are people, too — can rejoice! Only don’t rejoice too much. Actually, don’t rejoice at all. Maybe mutter something about the law being the law, and what can you do about it, perhaps throwing in some platitudes about kindness and empathy, and how women having rights shouldn’t be an excuse to lord it over the people who really deserve them. It says much about the status of adult human females that news that we get to have anything of our own has come with a massive side order of admonishments not to get above ourselves. Rather than, say, thank the grass roots campaigners who did her job for her, a source close to Bridget Philipson claims that the minister for women and equalities “has ignored the frothing on both sides of the culture war and encouraged EHRC to focus on what matters: the dignity of everyone in our country. She will take no lectures on the rights of women just as she will never punch down on any minority”. Rather than apologise for his 2022 dismissal of “supposed feminists” who had the temerity to want single-sex spaces, Andy Burnham has decided not to object to the current guidance on the basis that to do so would be inconvenient, rather than out of any new-found respect for women. Over the past few days, I have been outraged at calls for women to be sad-faced and apologetic about having our own toilets. I refuse to be sorry or sad, not least because the status of rights, and how much they are respected, relates to how morally justified they are perceived to be. Contrary to the fantasies of certain “progressive” men, access to female-only spaces will not be policed by genital inspections. This is not because we think the law alone is enough. The law is not enough to preserve women’s safety and dignity in private spaces, either. Laws prohibiting domestic abuse do not stop men from getting away with it, but few would argue that such laws might as well not exist on the basis some men will do it anyways, or even that some will be unhappy if they can’t. We rely on a shared awareness of right and wrong, and an understanding that making potential transgressors feel emboldened or aggrieved puts women at greater risk. By stoking a sense of grievance in those “excluded” from women’s spaces, politicians imply that even if legally one should respect women’s boundaries, morally one doesn’t have to. So some men just won’t. If women’s rights matter, they are not a thing to be apologised for. If the likes of Andy Burnham and Bridget Philipson are really, truly weary of that which they pompously call “the culture wars”, then they would not perpetuate them by implying For Women Scotland, Kishwer Faulkner and others might have been technically right, but remain guilty of some terrible moral wrong. https://archive.ph/x9nsv