Stop asking women to provide ‘evidence’ for why we don’t want men in our spaces.

Stop it right now.

Stop these new demands on women to provide hard evidence which shows that allowing men into our spaces and sports doesn’t go well for us. The reasons for having women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces and sports are the same as they ever were, and don’t change just because a man says he’s a woman. Meanwhile, everyone in the TQ+ category of the LGBTQ+ only has to provide feelings and stories for their requests to be accommodated.

Sex self-ID got unanimously passed into law here in New Zealand in June 2023. It enabled the feelings some people have about themselves to be a good enough reason to change the recorded sex on their birth certificates. From memory, no practical measurable evidence was provided which showed sex self-ID would serve any other purpose than accommodate feelings about being a different sex to that which a person was born, or their feelings of being ‘non-binary’. The main ‘evidence’ produced was how it would help to gain other documents, or admission to places, which further accommodated feelings about who a person felt they were.

I don’t actually discredit a group of peoples’ collective feelings about a certain issue. They often need to be listened to, as they can represent what’s going on for people as a group. Not everyone can express themselves in written form, so we need to be prepared to listen, too. But who’s listening to women’s feelings about the creep of self-ID into policies, which don’t even require an altered birth certificate, but which allow any man at all who says he’s a woman to have free and unfettered entry into women’s spaces and sports?¹

Below is an example from the Christchurch City Council’s women’s session on Wednesdays at Te Pou Toetoe:Linwood Pool, where they write on their website that “people who identify as being a woman are welcome”. So, any man who says he’s a woman will be welcome. And the CCC remains adamant that the feelings of a man who says he’s a woman override the feelings of women who don’t want men in their spaces.

To date, every time women or men want to talk about the wrongness of policies which allow men into women’s and girls’ spaces, we are asked for evidence to prove that it is potentially a physically, mentally, and/or emotionally harmful practice. Apparently, all of humankind’s history, all the police records we have, and all the reasons women have already given from long ago aren’t considered valid as soon as a man says he’s a woman. Where’s the evidence to support that?

When we want to speak about the impacts on women and girls from these policies, we are stonewalled with the request to provide hard evidence. I can only surmise that those who stonewall us mean they require proof of reported and prosecuted physical harm by a man who says he’s a woman in a female space. Not only are our stories not considered evidence enough, we are not given any official avenues to provide our stories as evidence, either anecdotal or documented, to measure this experiment. Yet, as soon as a man says he’s a woman, his feelings and story are not only believed, but accommodated.

In February 2022, the Conversion Practices Prohibition bill was passed into law. Only eight Members of Parliament from the National Party opposed it, because they weren’t happy with a dodgy part of the bill which doesn’t preclude the possibility of parents being prosecuted for preventing their child from taking hormone blockers to stop puberty. Although it’s not difficult to support a law against conversion therapy for same-sex attracted people, it’s also not difficult to see it used as a vehicle to worm the concept of ‘gender’ into law -

Ultimately, the law was passed on the basis of people’s stories, and whilst they were considered to be true stories, there was little to no hard other supporting evidence for them.

As I said before, there are times when people’s stories do need to be listened to. But when we women and girls relate our stories about how we feel and what we experience from allowing any man who says he’s a woman into our spaces and sports, why are those not enough? NZ has passed two laws in recent times primarily based on feelings and stories, stories which were invited to be told and considered a good reason to pass those laws. Yet women’s and girls’ feelings and stories about the impacts of men in our spaces are discounted as insufficient ‘evidence’, whilst at the same time no official avenue is provided for those feelings and stories to be collated as evidence. Then, in an ‘evil genius’ kind of way (although I stop at saying it’s always deliberate), those we implore to listen to us have been known to say there is no evidence which shows that allowing men into our spaces and sports has a negative impact on women and girls, if those men say they’re women.

So, to all of you who acquiesce to allowing men who say they’re women into women’s spaces and sports, all you politicians, all you public servants, all you in our Ministry for Women, and all the councils around the country who have fallen over themselves in their haste to believe the stories and feelings of men who say they’re women without question, don’t you dare tell women and girls that our feelings and stories are not enough for you.

How well do you really think that will inevitably go?

¹ However, men who don’t say they’re women are not allowed into women’s spaces and sports.