In the town I used to live in, Highland Park, New Jersey, the schools decided unilaterally, without consulting parents, to make all of the bathrooms “all gender” to appease students identifying as transgender. According to the local parents’ Facebook group, parents discovered this when their kids — mostly their daughters — came home from school, not having gone to the bathroom all day.

It’s a notoriously woke town, but nevertheless, enough parents complained that the bathrooms were switched back, and in a compromise, a few single-stall bathrooms were designated as all gender instead. It was an ideal solution: Young girls were comfortable, and transgender students still had access to gender-neutral bathrooms.

This battle is being fought in schools across the country. The latest battleground is in the suburbs of Chicago, where a school board recently voted to eliminate sex-segregated spaces in schools. A heartbreaking interview with one Chicago student has gone viral, giving voice to countless girls who will now feel unsafe in their school bathrooms and locker rooms:

A great deal of ink has been spilled on how unjust the ramifications of the transgender movement are for women, for instance, women-only sporting competitions and records now being dominated by biological men. The very essence of womanhood has been subverted by men who claim femininity is solely defined by outward appearance and self-identification. But the transgender movement isn’t just unfair for women; its policies are dangerous, too.

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An entire generation of young women is being told by the adults in their lives to push down and ignore their natural warning system. Women are born with a sixth sense for danger, and that alarm system can save lives. It’s a funny feeling, an unease with a man in the street or in their lives; something tells us things aren’t quite right. Young women around the country are expressing that unease about men coming into their bathrooms and locker rooms, and in return, they are being labeled bigots.

It isn’t hard to imagine how that internalized denial of the female early warning system could spell disaster for a generation of young girls. They are told their feelings of danger don’t matter because someone else, a biological male with more strength, matters more.

They may be young, but teenage girls understand the essence of teenage boys. A decade ago, a comedy similar to Mrs. Doubtfire could have been produced about a boy who dressed like a girl at a new school just to get access to the girl’s locker room. It would have been funny because we all know, or once knew, the lengths many teenage boys would go to in order to see a naked girl in person. Now, for young women and their level-headed parents across the country, the idea is no laughing matter. In many cases, biological males now have access to their private places, and they have no recourse, no avenues for appeal.

Young women know their bathrooms and locker rooms have become unsafe, but they are told to be quiet because the feelings of biological males and transgender students matter more. Their protests to those in power will fall on deaf ears. It’s an astounding message to send in the midst of a societal #MeToo movement focused on keeping women safe from sexual violence, but that’s exactly what young women are being told. Then again, for progressivism, such inconsistency is nothing new.

Bethany Mandel (@bethanyshondark) is a stay-at-home and homeschooling mother of four and a freelance writer. She is an editor at Ricochet.com, a columnist at the Forward, and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.