Seven reasons why women's rights don't matter

In the wake of MeToo, why do women's rights matter less than ever?

A few years ago in the aftermath of MeToo, you – among many, many others - might have thought that there had been a seismic shift in women’s rights.

Fast forward to 2024 and it’s become obvious that the sense of that reckoning could not be further from the truth.

And yes, it’s all to do with ‘gender’, that shifting betrayer of the condition of reality.

Here are seven reasons why we have seen the wake of that movement MeToo, there’s been a sinking of women’s rights to a point where they matter less than ever before:

1 - Men Make Better ‘Female’ Sports Players

From darts to football, female sports around the world is becoming infiltrated by men who claim an identity that is based on female sex stereotypes.

They don’t need to change their physique, or even be on feminising hormones.

The website She Won has catalogued the breadth of the issue:

These are the numbers of women who have lost out, the number of medals/sponsorhips/prizes lost, the number of competitions and the range of sports.

This is a form of sexual discrimination against women and girls – both at an amateur and professional level – where men and boys are being selected and given opportunities on the basis of their sex, and the natural advantage that male levels of testosterone confers on their bodies.

We have seen this at the Paralympics with the inclusion of Valentina Petrillo, a trans-identified man who has won races in Italy in the male category but has competed in female races because his identity documents describe him as female and that is the sole category recognised by the Olympic and Paralympic committees.

Another issue has been men and boys with DSDs such as 5-Alpha Reductase Deficiency, passed off as female.

This was most evident in the case of Caster Semenya.

The details of his condition emerged during his case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which he lost.

The case of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting at the 2024 Paris Olympics reignited this issue.

Both had failed two separate sex-tests, one of which was at an IOC-approved, World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) laboratory.

With the inclusion of such men into female categories, it is obvious to see how this can be gamed by unscrupulous scouts or sporting associations.

If ‘gender identity’ and an ‘F’ on a document is what counts, then, I’m afraid, women lose out because of their female levels of testosterone and pubertal development.

And, no, they can’t take anabolic steroids to match those levels – that’s cheating - and impromptu tests, where athletes have to urinate in full view of WADA personnel to submit their sample, will put pay to that.

2 –  Not Without The Men!

Australia’s Tickle vs Giggle case threw open the absurdity of the country’s amendment of the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013 to include gender identity – which completely undermines women’s sex-based protections.

Brought in by Julia Gillard – she who would ‘not be lectured about sexism and misogyny’ by her political opponent, Tony Abbott. She instead took it upon herself to lecture (or awkwardly ramble) other women about how men can change sex in their ‘mind and soul’ and that ‘what really counts is the openness and spirit of inclusion about the way that you encounter them’.

It is this ‘spirit of inclusion’ that led a judge in Australia’s Federal Court to state that it was sexual discrimination to ban men, like Roxanne ‘Roxy’ Tickle, pictured below, from female-only social media platforms because, legally, Tickle is female.

Grover has been ordered to pay Tickle 10,000 AUD for discriminating against his right to be part of a female-only social media platform but is appealing the decision.

L: Tickle R: Sall Grover

3 – Same Sex Rights For Me But Not For Thee

Staying in Australia… the Lesbian Action Group has gone to tribunal in order to be granted the right to exclude straight men who say they’re women from its public events. But Australia’s Human Rights Commission said that would lead to such men being discriminated against and that it was ‘deliberately provocative’.

We’ve ample evidence by now that some men can get a little testy at not being allowed into women-only spaces because they’ve taken the whole ‘I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body’ to a whole new level - but they were largely acknowledged to be predatory. Under the guise of  gender identity laws, that’s been completely upended.

Strangely, that same commission DID grant same-sex exemptions to a gay bar for men in Melbourne because it helped them achieve equality.

So what gives?

 4 – Women Get Pregnant - And It’s An Inconvenience

Ireland may have made significant strides in women’s rights but it’s worth noting that it introduced legislation for gender self-identity four years before legalising abortion - and is proposing a Hate Speech law to ensure no one can get away with ‘misgendering’ - or correctly identifying the sex of a person.

In Ireland, as in many countries, it’s illegal to fire a woman because she becomes pregnant, but that’s not stopped employers from doing so.

Pregnancy-related discrimination is common – so much so that a Waterford-based employment law firm says it’s contacted by 100 women a month for discrimination-related questions. Yet there are no plans to tighten laws to prevent employers from unfairly discriminating against women who become pregnant.

Women sacked during pregnancy is more common than you think

5 – Women – Stop Centring Your Reproductive Systems!

Menstruator, uterus-haver, body with a cervix… the new, friendly, gender identity inclusive language seems oddly focused on genitalia and the female reproductive system.

This is, apparently, ‘wrong!’ according to renown trans activist, model, writer and broadcaster (is there anything this man can’t do?) Munroe Bergdorf.

In focusing on matters of abortion, PCOS, FGM, obstetric abuse, menstruation poverty, being fired for getting pregnant or being treated differently at work because a boss suspects a woman will be looking to get pregnant - Bergdorf thinks the women who are inconveniently pointing this out are – and I quote – “getting feminism wrong”.

Yes, that’s right, unless you’re including men who impersonate women and promote themselves in reductive, dare I say damaging female sex stereotypes, are you even a feminist?

Bergdorf, a same-sex attracted male who calls himself a woman, has also deployed homophobic, sexist and ageist insults to lesbians online.

But that hasn’t stopped him from being a representative of UN Women UK!

Women and girls are oppressed on the basis of their sex.

This is most obvious in the amount of sex-selective abortions that place every year – for example in India, where up to 100,000 female foetuses are aborted because of their sex.

But for Bergdorf, who maintains his male genitalia, this tiny, inconvenient detail is for the birds.

We're getting feminism wrong, he says

6 – Won’t Someone Think Of The Rapists?!

The trial of the rapist, Isla Bryson, may have served as a national peaking event. It’s hard to see a man in a wig, make-up wearing a pair of leggings revealing his very male genitalia and then watching Scottish politicians – including the then-First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, unable to call him a man.

It led to the ‘individual’, as Bryson was referred to by those politicians, being removed from a women’s prison and placed in HMP Edinburgh that houses both men and women in separate wings.

But as far as Police Scotland is concerned, it is important for men who’ve been charged or convicted of rape to be referred to as women because it nurtures “a sense of belonging”.

Women, such as the victims of Isla Bryson, have been forced to refer their rapists in court as ‘she’ and recount the trauma of being raped by Bryson with ‘her penis’.

It would appear Police Scotland believe that a man’s sense of belonging, even if he is a rapist, carries more weight than his female victims.

Police Scotland face backlash on gender ideology

7 – It’s NOT Cricket

Afghanistan has, tragically, become a byword for the utter devastation of female rights.

14.2 million women and girls are now de facto prisoners of their male relatives, whether those men approve or not. The Taliban has declared women’s voices, even a glimpse of their skin, in public to be a crime under its new ‘vice and virtue’ laws.

On top of that, 3.2 million children and infants are suffering from serious malnutrition.

But despite lofty words from leaders, the Taliban have been invited for UN talks in Doha, with the organisers relenting to their demand that no women be allowed to attend.

The UN itself remains toothless with its tactics of continuing to attempt dialogue even as the Taliban continues to tighten the noose around the lives of women and girls.

Sporting bodies have proven to be equally dismal.

The Afghan Cricket Team have the privilege of being able to play a Test match against New Zealand AND a member of the ICC, despite not having a female team, which is a prerequisite for membership.

Another sign that for Afghan women and girls, the international community is utterly failing them but continues to ignore the obvious when it comes to sport.

This was an Afghan cricket trophy unveiling. And no, it’s not a joke. None of it is.