Irish Teacher: Feminism is for everyone — regardless of gender, sexuality, race, or creed

'Feminism is about equality. It is often intersectional. It does not pit women against men.'

When I discuss feminism with my students, I stress that feminism is for everyone. It is a social and political ideology intended for all human beings. Feminism is about equality, regardless of gender, sexuality, race, or creed.

I go on to explain that this fight for equality is blighted by male violence. I explain that male violence is also a problem for men, who are attacked by other violent men. But more so for women.

If I don’t make this point clear, the point about equality, I lose half the room. The boys, still children, see me as an aggressor, judged before they get a chance. It is hugely important that this does not happen and that we raise our boys as allies.

There is a brand of feminism now, stuck on an anti-trans argument, that seeks to destroy this alliance, thereby returning us to an unhelpful and overly simplistic ‘us versus them’ gender-focused struggle.

Hayley Freeman wrote in the Sunday Times last week that feminism is becoming a dirty word. Why? Well, according to Freeman, it is becoming a dirty word because it is no longer OK for biologically born women to criticise trans women (born male) accessing female-only spaces. She claims that LGBTQ+ rights are trumping women’s rights.

It is only this version of feminism that is dirty. Feminism is about equality. It is often intersectional. It does not pit women against men. Feminism recognises with compassion, that men and boys can be victims too. It seeks to heal society by recognising the dignity of every human being. It can also acknowledge that violence is predominantly a male problem. There is no contradiction in that.

In recent years Freeman has argued against trans women sharing women’s single-sex spaces; in her debut Sunday Times article, she brings up the hackneyed example of women’s prisons. Many see her article as wonderful. A liberation. It’s anything but. It drags us backwards into assuming all men are enemies and all trans women only become trans women to infiltrate women-only spaces and have their wicked way.

A report published by Fair Play for Women claims a high percentage of transgender women in English and Welsh prisons are sex offenders. Fair Play for Women doesn’t mention how miniscule this group is, or that the chances of a sex-offending trans woman getting into a female prison are remarkably small. The numbers are tiny. And if they do, they are far less likely to be violent than their biologically female-born peers.

In 2020, Richard Keen, the Lords spokesperson for the justice ministry, said: “[Since 2010] There have been no reported incidents of any type of sexual assault against prison officers by transgender prisoners. Since 2010, out of the 122 sexual assaults that occurred in the female estate, a total of five of those were sexual assaults against females in custody perpetrated by transgender individuals.”

The truth is trans women are more likely to be the victims of violence in prisons. The truth is the vast majority of rape occurs in male prisons — male sex offenders raping other male inmates. For these so-called feminist writers, this violence is less newsworthy. Better to attack a small minority than to combat the globally devastating impact of male violence.

Back here in Ireland rest assured, reports confirm that trans women are closed to being locked up in solitary confinement within female prisons. These human beings are not the biggest threat to Irish women.

In truth, these ‘women-only’ problems are not as big as such commentators would have us believe. The numbers are tiny because trans people are a tiny minority. And trans people continue to have no voice in this conversation that reduces them to an invading, insidious group, hellbent on rape and violence.

Do trans women so regularly attack women in bathrooms, changing rooms and rape centres that we need this issue to become an obsession? I don’t believe so. I empathise deeply with women who suffer the trauma of male violence. And if the event were to arise, that such a woman finds herself in a room with a trans woman, to her distress, I would expect the relevant services to act compassionately in that situation.

Like I explain to my students, violent men are the biggest threat to Irish women. Just as they are the biggest threat to non-violent men and trans women.

True feminism, the non-dirty kind, is a coming together, not a tearing apart. Feminists must step forward by creating alliances with all victims of patriarchy and oppression. Sadly, Hadley Freeman and her supporters offer us only a step back.