I can only answer from the perspective of the United Kingdom. The history in other countries may be very different.
In the UK there was something that can be called the ‘urinary leash’.
The urinary leash meant, in practice, that women were restricted to only going a certain radius from their homes, or the homes of their friends and family, due to the lack of publicly available bathrooms for them to use, the majority of existing ones being for men. In their excellent article on the history of this matter, which I recommend having a read through of, Historic UK draws attention to how women were treated as second class citizens during centuries past:
In the mid-19th century, many areas of life were sex-segregated and gendered; the private sphere was for the women, the public sphere was for men. Whilst working-class women did undertake plenty of work, they did not own their own wages, their husbands did. The popular image of a woman was of the ‘Angel in the House’ ideal, a woman who was devoted and submissive to her husband.
What does this tell us about women’s rights today? It means everything we have, women who came before us had to fight for. Including having places where we could go to the bathroom.
This was actually opposed by the men of the time, even for just having a women’s facility next to the men’s ones, that’s how prevalent misogyny of the time was. Women were seen as intruding on men and the lack of public conveniences for women were perhaps best described as a side-effect of the view that woman’s place was in the home.
Do you know the year that it become illegal for workplaces not to ensure facilities for both men and women?
1993.
That was the year which the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 act came into force.
Let that sink in. It has only been just over thirty years since the UK workplace law reflected women’s need for our own public bathrooms.
In practice, women’s bathrooms existed for much longer, thanks to the women who stood up to fight for the right to have them. The law, sadly, hasn’t actually reflected this for long. They are the law now, but just as much social courtesy.
The days of the urinary leash are not yet consigned to history however, including in other parts of the world. India, for example, is a country that still has problems regarding bathroom access for women
while sex-based oppression and control of women is rampant in Afghanistan to the point that a urinary leash is among the least of their worries.Even in the UK of modern times we also face a different battle over bathrooms and other single-sex spaces for women, which is whether transwomen, who are biological males, should be able to access women’s single-sex spaces. Opinions on this differ from accepting it to being vehemently opposed. By law they can, even if they are only making the declaration of proposing to transition.
There are provisions in the law to prevent this, but it is not the default position.I personally feel compelled to state my opposition to this because in the modern day women often rely on the single-sex space not just to have somewhere to pee, but as a sanctuary away from the male gaze. We are not at a point in time where violence against women and sexual harassment has become a thing of the past. With that in mind, it seems crazy to me to be normalising male entry into women’s spaces. Many women are uncomfortable with this and are being presented with the option to accept it or self-exclude…returning to the urinary leash again. For these women when we can tell somebody is male, like from their appearance or their voice, them saying that they are also a woman just isn’t adequate reassurance.
It may seem like ‘nothing’ compared to what women in other countries are facing today, but it’s not. All women’s issue are valid and this isn’t a game of who is the most oppressed. The suggestion that women concerned about this should keep quiet because we could live someone where it is much worse for women is guilt-tripping and misogyny, aimed at silencing women from speaking about the issues which personally affect her.
Oppression and control of women, in whatever form it takes, has always been sex-based. For the ‘crime’ of being female in a man’s world. That is what transgender rights advocates and even our own lawmakers miss the point over, the final irony being that due to our own struggles women are naturally sympathetic to anyone fighting for equality on the basis of being different, or would be if, having got our spaces, there wasn’t another group, a male group, now laying claim to them and calling any women who resist them bigots.
You do not fit in here indeed.
The rights of women, whether legal, social and moral, can easily be taken away, even if some, women included, don’t recognise what is happening. That is why I, as a woman, will continue to advocate for women’s recognition and equality on the basis of sex and do not accept that ‘woman’ is nothing more than a social construct where sex is irrelevant. That’s an insult to the struggles of women across history and still unfolding today, particularly in Afghanistan, who can’t just opt out of their oppression by claiming to have a male gender identity.
Sex-based oppression requires sex-based rights, including for public bathrooms.
The current situation in the UK is that single-sex spaces are written into law, but sex-based access can be overridden by gender identity. Women have little to no recourse to object to this and can be the ones asked to leave for making a complaint. Similar stories have emerged from all around the world, especially in Australia, Canada, Spain and certain US states. There is nothing courteous towards women about this, only towards the men who, for whatever reason which does not have to even be gender dysphoria according to trans rights activists
, say they identify as women. This is happening at the same time as trans right activists are fighting for and in some places getting, the the power of self-identification, which is a threat to women’s rights. Self-ID means anybody can be legally a woman.I’m sorry, but that’s not the same as being one. They are transwomen and I actually do hope that one day they can be fully respected as such and have equality in society, but women’s, that is to say the adult human female’s, hard fought for equality must not be compromised.
Footnotes
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