I care because I’ve experienced decades of male harassment and abuse so I understand fully the need for safe spaces for women and girls. I am also deeply concerned about children’s natural explorations of their world and themselves being medicalised to the extent of preventing puberty, having dangerous surgeries, and potentially shortening their lives.
Telling anyone, especially a child, that their body is wrong is incredibly cruel.
I care because women and girls have our lives so restricted and policed as it is without what few rights we do have being erased or curtailed.
I care because women of certain religious beliefs are finding their ability to participate in public life restricted by their right to privacy being eroded.
I care because women and girls who’ve been abused (and those who haven’t) are being bullied into sharing spaces with men no matter how vulnerable and/or terrified they might be by this. I care because women are being hounded, gaslit and silenced, deprived of their careers and incomes, bullied in real life as well as online.
I care because men’s rights activists and fetishists are running the trans rights campaigns and damaging not only women and girls but trans men and women too.
I care because young women are asking whether they should date a trans woman even though they don’t want to because if they don’t they’ll be bullied and harassed. And I care because gay people’s, especially lesbian women’s, rights to set boundaries in their sex lives are being eroded. It’s rape culture writ large.
I have responded to posts and shared information on social media. I have built a database of relevant articles to share to back up the women’s rights case and I follow gender critical accounts and people. I have challenged companies like M&S and organisations like HeForShe with regard to their TWAW rhetoric and associated abandoning of women’s rights. I have helped fund various campaigns to challenge the dismantling of women’s and girls’ rights. And I participated in the government’s GRA survey to stand up for women’s rights being retained while promoting additional safe spaces for trans people who need them.
I have been gaslit, bullied and blocked. I’ve also been stalked by TRAs and put on TERF lists. In real life I’m unable to work so have suffered no consequences there, while the very few people I have discussed the issues with have been understanding.
Maat, Human and animal rights activist