There is a much more insidious side to this issue as well. It isn’t just about expecting women to shut up, although of course that isn’t acceptable regardless. Men are not only expecting women to remain silent, but some individuals that are “trans identifying” — which can mean anything from somebody who has lived as their preferred sex for years, takes hormones and has had SRS, to simply a man with a penis and a beard who “identifies” as a woman — and their allies are threatening women and expecting them to bend to their will.

For example; if the correct pronouns aren’t used, whether intentionally or not, the accusation that this is “literal violence” is often levelled at women. Despite women being the demographic most at risk of many types of “literal violence”, this accusation is thrown out with no sense of self-awareness. Often those in positions of privilege and power, such as Danielle Muscato, use their platform to publicly shame minimum wage workers and threaten their livelihoods because they used the wrong pronoun. Call me old fashioned, but it seems more regressive to assume that wearing high heels means a bald person with a beard is a woman, compared to assuming they’re just challenging gender stereotypes.

It doesn’t stop there either. Lesbians are particularly at risk of having their thoughts and indeed their very sexuality policed by advocates of this ideology.

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece how the debate has shifted into the absurd, and this is it. A prime example of this is the phrase “girl dick” (seriously). There is an important distinction that should be noted here; this is not referencing a pre-operative transsexual person may still have their penis but is waiting for surgery, or indeed somebody that simply embraces femininity or masculinity to ease their dysphoria without the desire and/or need to pursue further medical changes; this is a specific individual that is expecting and demanding a wholesale rewrite of biology and history to conform to their expectations, at the expense of women as a sex class. Take this video by Riley J. Dennis for instance:

“No”

I’ll transcribe the pertinent pieces:

I’m not telling lesbians they can’t be lesbians…

Thanks

If you’re a woman that only likes women…

So far, so good

Go ahead, identify as a lesbian

Hmm…

But some women have penises

That was some leap. Riley has very carefully argued that lesbian does mean a woman attracted to another women. Had it been a case of trying to explicitly argue that lesbians can be attracted to men, this would have been a much more difficult sell. However, what then happens is a not so subtle redefining of “woman”, to actually include people with penises — i.e. men. Riley bats off accusations of lesbophobia by implying “It’s not lesbophobia because I’m acknowledging lesbians are women attracted to women”, but this comes with the caveat that “Woman can mean a person with a penis”.

The Suffragettes salute you

This is the crux of the whole issue. What’s happening here is a form of exceedingly misogynist gaslighting.

By forcefully trying to redefine what the social categories of “woman” and “lesbian” (to name just two) means to include a separate, biological category at the expense of said women is misogyny at its core - the erasure of the fundamental definition and reality of “female” and “lesbian” so it also includes those that belong to the category of “male”. It is the starkest example male entitlement. You will believe what I’m saying, even if it goes against the fabric of reality and everything you otherwise know to be true. It is the final frontier for men that want and need to possess women. Controlling your income, relationships, education, political and social status is not enough — there must be an invasion and erasure of the very concept of “woman”, “lesbian” and “female” to make way for men.

I’m not a lesbian but I don’t think it works like that. Or who knows? Maybe I am.

To put this in lay terms with regards to female sexuality specifically; lesbianism is often viewed by men as an obstacle, as opposed to a legitimate sexual orientation, and fetishised as something that we could eventually “change” within the woman, if only she could experience the “right dick”. It is an utterly vile and abhorrent mentality that is rooted in entitlement and ownership, while being reinforced by wider rape-culture and the sexualisation of lesbianism within pornography and the media at large. As Ella, a young lesbian I interviewed for this piece says:

I have experienced numerous men just assuming lesbianism is an obstacle that they can “convince” me out of. A lot of men have issues with respecting women’s boundaries, and they seem to have an even bigger issue with it when you reject the entirety of the group. Some men deny the existence of lesbians and believe that they “just haven’t met the right man yet.” Some will acknowledge it but continue with their advances anyway. In some situations, men become visibly angry or threatening, or act as if you have offended them personally. There’s some real misogynistic entitlement there, and I think that entitlement is still very present in transgender cotton ceiling rhetoric. Many trans activists and individuals I’ve spoken to have said; “Nobody is forcing you to engage romantically or sexually with transwomen”, but that really isn’t the point. The point is that lesbians have a right to exist as homosexual females without having to constantly defend their boundaries. The point is that these boundaries shouldn’t be up for debate.

It is obvious that there is no difference between the performative progressiveness of saying “I now have a female penis, so I can sleep with lesbians and if they reject me it’s because they’re bigoted”, and saying “This lesbian just doesn’t want to have sex with somebody with a penis because they’ve not found the ‘right somebody’ with a penis”. It ignores and erases the necessary boundaries for somebody to be lesbian. Suggesting otherwise is unbelievably lesbophobic and misogynistic, and cannot be waved away by simply saying “women have penises”, relying solely on the internal logic of “woman can mean somebody with a penis”. The similarities that this attitude has to conversion therapy is harrowing. Ann, a lesbian that has been through conversion therapy, had this to say:

I put myself through conversion therapy for about a year, and there’s no difference at all. What distinction is there between “You should ignore the man’s dick and learn to love him as a person, it’s sinful not to” and “You should ignore a transwoman’s dick and learn to love them as a person, it’s bigoted not to”? People say there’s a difference — but I don’t see one. The undercurrent seems to be that nobody either side of the political spectrum truly believes there exists women who are simply just not interested in male bodies or the almighty dick . I’ve very often seen posts that take me back to those days and at first it caused me a great deal of emotional trauma, but I speak out about this because I don’t want other lesbians to go through what I went through.

At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned that I would mainly be focusing on male transactivists and their ideology, and this is why. I have never seen an example of a transman demanding gay men do away with their sexuality and start “sucking man-pussy”. This doesn’t happen arguably for two reasons. Firstly, the psychology of sexual entitlement simply does not exist in that direction (on a class level). Men are conditioned to be entitled to women on a class scale; the same cannot be said to be true for women to men. Regardless of whether a man transitions or not, he most likely will expect, in some capacity, a woman to conform to his sexual desires. This may be in the form of engaging in something the woman doesn’t want to, or it simply being a one-sided act. Why would this be any different if the person in question started to “identify” as a lesbian and wanted to engage in a sexual relationship with a lesbian?

Similarly, there is something extremely telling about which demographic this psychology is applied to. Firstly, transmen aren’t demanding natal men engage in sexual intercourse with them, whether those natal men are homosexual or not. Secondly, it’s worth noting that people like Riley seem generally to only be demanding that women (specifically lesbians) engage in sexual intercourse with self-identified lesbians, and notably not natal men.

Although Zinnia is going to give it a good go anyway

This is perhaps because modern transactivist ideology recognises its place in the “pecking order” of society behind masculinity. To steal a little from Hobbes, masculinity is nasty, brutish and short. Most (heterosexual) men would likely react violently and adversely to having their sexual boundaries violated, or being forced to believe they were engaging in intercourse with a “lady dick” and not just engaging in homosexual intercourse.

This does not just exist in the ether. The demand for the external world to be complicit in this unreality bridges the gap between thought and consequence. It forces those who otherwise have no recourse to defend a chimera, and if they object, they’re labelled as bigots. Real situations such as women’s protections as a sex-class being rolled back; men “identifying” as women to gain access to the most vulnerable; the reasons for which women suffer under patriarchy being erased in favour of a more abstract explanation focusing on “gender identity”, in contrast to the reality, which is specifically male violence against specifically females of all ages.

Even as I write this I can barely keep up — the Girl Guides have recently expelled two volunteers for objecting to the decision to allow transgender members and leaders. An organisation dedicated to organising private events for a protected sex-class have fired two members because they objected to said organisation…not doing what they explicitly exist to do.

This is the tangible impact of this moral pontification on gender. I got into this recently with a friend. He asked me: “Why do you care about this so much?”.

On the face of it, it seems a fair question for the uninitiated. It seems somewhat niche, so why am I, a man, sticking my oar in. My response was this — As a man that recognises the endemic nature of male supremacy and violence against women, this issue is no longer just an abstract thought experiment. I do not have skin in this game so to speak, at least not compared to the women it does and will continue to affect, but I abhor male violence and entitlement, and wish to see an end to it. This whole issue might seem niche, but that is simply not the case. It has been misrepresented as such to avoid drawing attention to the fact it has become a topic dominated by misogyny and typical male lecturing, and if women are engaging with it then it’s just because they’re being “emotional” or “nagging”.

The elevation into deflective philosophical back and forth is so typically male, and using the cover of wanting to protect trans rights is often just a thin veil for misogyny. I recently journeyed down to the House of Lords to discuss the issue with a Lord who shall remain nameless, but suffice to say, he did not see things from my point of view and has since exercised his democratic right to block me on Twitter. I asked for the meeting because it’s important for men to engage other men on these issues, as unfortunately women are usually not listened to. As we were sitting there rigorously - intellectually, obviously — masturbating (sorry, mum), I was struck by just how far removed from reality this situation was.

There are women who are potentially having their right to single-sex spaces such as domestic violence shelters taken away, and there I was sitting with an actual, literal lord discussing whether mind/brain duality was a concept worthy of intellectual merit, what constitutes the concept of a female mind, and having a good old willy waving contest about who got which degree from which university. I left feeling exceptionally grubby. I had gone to try and engage another man, and to talk about male entitlement in real terms, when I think I probably would have had more luck trying to fold hot gravy.

But this is it, for men. We can elevate these discussions to pseudo-philosophical onanism, because it doesn’t tangibly impact us. There is no consequence if we erase the social category of “woman” — and consequently of “female” — to mean whatever we want, because once again, it’s at our behest. This is why there has been a volatile shift towards trying to debate these issues in an arena of uncertainty and absurdity. How do you respond to somebody arguing that “Not just females give birth”? It’s no longer good enough to simply say “Don’t be ridiculous, literally no male-bodied person has ever birthed a child in the entirety of human existence”. But why not?

A regular go-to for modern transactivist ideology is to ham-fistedly mash together philosophy and biology, and argue that “Sex is a spectrum” in an effort to justify the ludicrous hoops that have to be jumped through to defend their position. This is as asinine as it is plain wrong. As developmental biologist Dr Emma Hilton explains:

Males and females do not represent opposing ends of a spectrum; males and females are qualitatively, not quantitatively, different, from early embryonic development. Advocates of “sex is a spectrum” (very few of whom are biologists) argue that intersex conditions represent a “middle ground” between male and female states and thus, an intrinsically ordered spectrum is formed. There is no such intrinsic ordering. Except for the vanishingly rare and clinically traumatic few, intersex conditions affect either males or females and are categorised within the relevant sex. For example, an intersex female with an enlarged clitoris is not somehow “more male”, nor does she “have a penis”. This is a utterly regressive and male-centred view of biological sex. Regarding the assertion that biological sex is a social construction, the words “male” and “female” have a very clear biological meaning, not up for postmodern deconstruction. They do not refer to social categories, but to the meat, gristle and bones of human anatomy and scientific study. Trying to change what “male” and “female” describe scientifically not only erases female sexed reality but also the tools we use to study that reality. The words I use in my job aren’t assigned “meaning” beyond physical understanding, and they are key to conveying that understanding.

Men are now granted the opportunity to barely disguise their misogyny by propagating the absurd idea that male and female might not mean anything, and then slapping themselves with the label “trans-ally” to appear progressive. For instance, you have people running for public office using it as fodder to get heaped with praise about how “progressive” they are.

No Adam, you don’t.

Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson recently accused feminist group Liverpool ReSisters of intimidating behaviour because they put up some stickers that said “women don’t have penises”.

The world’s worst crossover episode

Anderson went on to state:

“[the council were] united against the behaviour of the ReSisters in defacing public art in what I believe to be, and I am proud to state, that was done in a hateful way".

Pictured: A hate crime

Darling of rabid leftists Owen Jones regularly deploys the phrase “anti-trans” to immediately tar women that are concerned about the issue with his brush of bigotry. The below tweet was a response to columnist Janice Turner, who recently had the absolute audacity to write a piece suggesting male-born sex offenders and serial rapists that still had their reproductive organs intact should perhaps not be placed in prison with women, lest they, y’know, sexually assault and rape them.

Dr Adrian Harrop, an actual qualified doctor that recently said live on TV that “A woman is a person who identifies as a woman” has developed a reputation for aggressively hounding, bullying and interrogating women online that dare to disagree with him.

The face of reason

When I asked Dr Harrop whether it was just a coincidence that hundreds of women all thought he was a misogynist bully, he had this to say:

In terms of me being described as a misogynist… I think that is highly unfair and disingenuous. I am not a misogynist (…) In terms of being labelled as a bully, I would say this is a subjective definition (…) I do not attempt to single individual people out and target them.

Pictured: Not singling somebody out

Dr Harrop’s denial of what is evident to anybody that has ever read his Twitter profile is rooted in abusive masculinity. He denies the experience of the very women he has bullied to convince himself that he’s in the right, and these women are wrong. In our exchange he was actually unnervingly pleasant, I’m sure in part because I’m a man. That being said, there are panes of glass less transparent than him and his justifications for his actions. He spoke of simply being “outspoken” and “opinionated”, and how sometimes this can come across as being brash or intrusive. There was no attempt to take responsibility for his behaviour. He doubled down on his attempt to paint himself as the victim of all this; poor old Adrian, simply defending progressive rights and fighting bigotry. This might wash with a 12 year old Adrian, but I and hundreds of other men and women recognise it for what it is; classic gaslighting and psychologically manipulative drivel.

These men often capitalise and misappropriate the struggles of other marginalised demographics, such as intersex people, to advance their own agenda with seemingly no regard for how the individuals they’re “defending” actually feel about it. For instance, intersex advocate Claire told me:

It’s really hard to put into words what it feels like to have your complex and quite traumatic medical history paraded to validate someone else’s identity. The questions I see being asked; “Which toilets should intersex people use then?”, “If we accept women without wombs as women, then surely someone born male can be?”, “Where do intersex people fit into your regressive binary?”, “How do we know this child molester, with a beard, isn’t intersex?”. The implication being that we’re not real women and that our medical histories can be used like a prize in a game show. It’s like being back in the Victorian era where intersex people were exhibited like freaks in a side show for the edification of others. In answer to those questions; we use the toilet that corresponds with our birth sex; yes, a woman without a womb is female and; no, she isn’t just like a man that was born with a fully functioning male reproductive system. We fit into the binary fine, we’re male or female like everyone else, and to answer the last one; why is it so hard for people to believe that male pattern abuse and criminality exists that they’d rather blame women with a medical condition? To say this is offensive is an understatement. My inbox is full of intersex people talking about how the current debate, and our unwilling place in it, has reopened trauma they have spent years repairing and coming to terms with. The social stigma we have always avoided and feared is now a fun talking point for people that have never met us, never talked to us, never taken the time to learn about us and our conditions. It’s abusive and nasty. Apparently the womanhood of transwomen isn’t up for debate but mine is being put up for sale by people that do not care about me and apparently do not care to learn.

As to the question of why it’s no longer acceptable to oppose these ludicrous behaviours, I know the answer of course — misogyny. The idea is that if you just shout, threaten and scream loud enough, the stupid fucking women that oppose you will finally shut the fuck up. Men grow up knowing they’ll be listened to over women, so why would this situation be any different? Then, pushing the debate into realms where women then have to moralise about the ontological nature of “womanhood” and the underlying metaphysical questions of whether a penis can ever be female intentionally distracts from the real impact this is having on their everyday lives. It’s a technique used to destabilise and cloud the discussion; “If you can’t engage with me on an intellectual and philosophical level about why men can’t give birth, then I’m not going to listen”. But who is listening and engaging? The very men that agree with them in the first place. It’s cyclical reinforcement of pre-existing masculine entitlement and misogyny.

For those of us that wish to see an end to male supremacy and male violence, this new strand of gender ideology has to be opposed. We cannot argue that we want to see an end to patriarchy and the abuse of women and children all across the world, while simultaneously arguing that “woman” doesn’t have a distinct meaning or that “somebody with a penis can be female”. It fundamentally erases the class of humans that need to be recognised as distinct from the other class of humans so you can see exactly who is suffering at the hands of the other. It serves no purpose to say you oppose male violence against women, but then completely do away with the definable parameters of “women” and “female” (and consequently “male”) as well.

If men truly care about recognising and ending violence against women, then it’s time we publicly acknowledge and oppose this new version of misogyny disguised as progressiveness. It is nothing more than an erosion of women and their rights, in an effort to expand and cement male entitlement and supremacy in the last possible place it could be; the very definition of woman.