By Josie Hervey
According to “For Women” Scotland, schools “face a Sandie Peggie-style legal dispute” over single-sex spaces. If you wanted proof of their bad faith, look no further.
Our children – all of them – need to be safe in schools. Pretending that only people assumed to have a penis can be guilty of bullying or assault doesn’t help keep anyone safe: spaces that children are going to use need to actually be safe.
Fear of using toilets at school is extremely common, and many young people avoid them all day, at all costs. They report that toilets are dirty and lack soap; that doors don’t provide privacy; that they fear crime there; and that (same-sex) bullying is rife. Almost worse, some report that they are prevented by staff from using toilets, which are often locked. Health concerns such as UTIs and constipation are just some of the miseries this situation causes.
Those with genuine concerns about children’s well-being know and care about this. It’s no good telling vulnerable girls that excluding trans girls will magically make school toilets safe. And, actually, women like me would like their boys to be safe at school, too. For this reason, school leaders across Scotland are investing in tackling the real issues: they are making sure that toilets are no longer unsupervised, hidden corners of the school.
This work, of course, isn’t going to hit the headlines. And “For Women” don’t care about it, because their campaign has nothing to do with making children safe, and everything to do with framing trans children as a threat.
We already know that the campaign to ban trans women from single-sex spaces does nothing to protect women from predatory men.
Bathroom bans or no, there is nothing to stop a man from entering a women-only space – all he needs to do is grab a mop and put on a tabard. In any case, a person willing to break the laws against voyeurism or sexual assault is hardly going to be deterred by additional bathroom rules.
Also, such bans rebound on all women. Feminists have long argued that women should have freedom to look the way they want. A ban on trans women can never be more than a ban on “women who look like they might be trans”. Bathroom bans thus make life more difficult for women who don’t meet an arbitrary standard of “femininity”. They imply that any woman judged “masculine” is a potential threat and should be thrown out.
We mustn’t be fooled by those who suggest that excluding trans kids can be justified “to be on the safe side”. It’s not an issue where we can sit on the fence either. Banning trans women/girls from women’s spaces has the effect of making life well-nigh impossible for trans folk.
No child, and no adult, must ever be allowed to imply or assume that being transgender is evidence that a child is a sexual predator. All the evidence now available shows that trans children are far, far more likely to be the victims of bullying than the perpetrators of any kind of inappropriate behaviour anywhere, and especially in toilet and changing facilities. And we also know that, when trans children are accepted and included as the people they are, they can grow, flourish and enjoy their childhood.
We all need to be able to go out and feel confident that we can use a toilet when we get there. We need to be able to rely on help from a charity or a hospital when we need it. For our health, we all need to be able to access sports sessions and get changed. When a recent online poll asked trans people what they most wished they could do, a huge number said “go swimming”. It’s heart-breaking that people are excluded from such essential and life-affirming activities because of prejudice. Trans kids deserve more than a life of misery.
“For Women” Scotland, we see you. Like your allies in the far right, and the supporters of Trump’s nightmare theocracy, you have nothing to say about the real problems we face, and you offer no solutions. Your doctrine of hatred and division has no place in Scotland, and no place in our schools.
