Men’s feelings continue to be placed before women’s safety – it’s depressing and dangerous

Participants at the 2017 Women's March in Los Angeles
A Trump administration could see women’s reproductive rights fundamentally eroded across the USA - Getty

Oh dear, I saw that terrifying bloke again recently by my local overground train station. At least I think it was him. In fact, I hope it was. The idea that there could be more than one great big beardy man walking around, wearing a “baby on board” badge on his duffle coat lapel, doesn’t bear thinking about.

If you’re laughing aloud you’re probably a man. If you’re glaring at me, all flinty and po-faced, you’re a Gen Z-er. In fact, you’re quite possibly one of my daughters who is about to rant at me for being ridiculous and transphobic.

But here’s the thing. The sight of a man wearing that badge is “triggering”. There now, I’ve said it.

And that word should cue a groupthink response: everyone gathers round me looking deeply concerned, inundating me with “u ok hun” messages (without the question mark for some impenetrable reason) and then launching into a diatribe against the abuse (I just checked social media and that’s what it’s called) and hence my abuser.

But apparently not. Because in the hierarchy of solidarity, a midlife woman ranks far below the beardy man with the provocative badge. Somehow in our insanely woke world, I have no right to call him a man as he may not be. And he has every right to wear it – and demand I give up my seat for him – because if he says he has a baby on board, then that is his lived reality.

I’m genuinely triggered. If it so happened I was in a rail carriage and it was busy and he came along in his enormo-trainers and giant grey joggers and stood wordlessly in front of me, I am scared I would have to stand up or all the young people would shout at me.

It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. I would, of course, look him straight in the eye and insist I was pregnant too. With twins (see how I’ve thought this through) if it came down to the wire.

The bitter truth is that the creeping intolerance for women who refuse to give way to men who demand access to their spaces or rob them of their bodily autonomy is reaching the high sewage mark.

There’s Donald Trump and his Republican cronies putting the screws on abortion rights after he took credit for the Supreme Court overruling Roe v Wade in 2022, thereby ending the precedent that protected termination rights nationwide and paving the way for total bans in 14 states and restrictions elsewhere.

In October this year, the Center for American Progress Action Fund estimated that 134 women become pregnant every single day as a result of sexual assault in states with total abortion bans.

“I was able to kill Roe vs Wade. I did a great service in doing it,” Trump has said with pride. “It took courage to do it.” During campaigning, the president-elect insisted that he would not sign a federal abortion ban and would leave decision-making to individual states.

But with a Republican majority in the Senate and, as seems likely once all the results are in, the House of Representatives, women’s reproductive rights look set to be fundamentally eroded across the country.

Admittedly, Trump has vowed to keep men – including transgender women who are biologically male – out of female sports, a stance that has appeared to be a vote winner among women; one of his final rallies before the election saw a swim team who ousted a transgender athlete appear on stage in Virginia to endorse him.

This will place him on a collision course with the International Olympic Committee when it comes to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. To add to the mix, the “Golden State” is a Democratic stronghold where parents can identify their newborn as X or non-binary instead of female or male and an individual can change gender on official documents without any sort of medical intervention.

Here in Britain the rows over gender rumble on, shamefully. A confused 17-year-old female footballer with suspected autism was this week hit with a six-match ban after asking a “bearded” transgender opponent: “Are you a man?”

The teenager cried as she was found guilty of “discrimination” by a national case panel over remarks made during a match against a trans-inclusive club, including raising concerns about her safety after enduring a number of “overly physical challenges” from a biologically male player who was much larger.

“We’ve always taught our daughter to ask questions… and she’s been effectively sanctioned by the Football Association for doing so,” her angry mother told this paper.

“She asked, ‘Are you a man?’, and she admitted to that. The FA is essentially saying that no woman, when faced with what appears to be a male on the pitch, is entitled to ask a question.”

In sport, it is always female athletes who suffer – and the response from governing bodies is frankly shocking. We have reached the point where far too many of our institutions supinely accept the extremist doctrine of trans ideology, regardless of what is fair or reasonable.

In Scotland, a tribunal has just awarded almost £70,000 to former Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) worker Roz Adams after she was found to have been the victim of harassment and discrimination for her gender-critical views. All she did was stand up for rape victims who wanted counselling from a woman – which the trans woman who ran ERCC construed as “transphobic”. Adams now works for Beira’s Place, a woman’s refuge set up by Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who announced news of the payout to her 14 million followers on X.

A battle won but the war on women’s rights continues to rage. Across in Fife, the health board is seeking to curb all reporting of a landmark case brought about by a nurse who was suspended after she complained about a transgender woman in the female changing room.

The nurse, who believes her right to female-only spaces under the Equality Act 2010 has been breached, wants the tribunal to be heard in public but the board is arguing for anonymity – despite the case being of huge public interest.

How dare any organisation, much less a health board, demand our de facto compliance in perpetuating the lie that transgender women are women? They are not. They can never be. To say so is not discriminatory, it is a biological fact.

Yet again and again men’s feelings are placed before women’s safety. It is not just depressing and dispiriting but downright dangerous. We must not submit, we must not be cowed, we must not allow ourselves to be browbeaten by the transgender bully boys who want to seize our spaces and then intimidate us into silence.