Meaningless Sex

“In nature, nothing is ever perfectly clear”

Simone de Beauvoir

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On the weekend I read the EHRC’s “interim update,” which they posted on Friday night in response to the judgement by the Supreme Court.

It felt like entering a feminist dystopia.

I was entering a feminist dystopia.

Feminist dystopias, as nightmare visions of the future, tend to teach us about the past and how it endures in the present. They tell us about time. As Sophie Gilbert describes, “it’s never felt more obvious that something is very wrong with the shape and trajectory of the world, that time itself is out of joint.”

The EHRC, time out of joint. In their “interim update,” the language of biological women and biological men is turned from statutory interpretation into a technology, telling us what we “should” do, where we “should” go, in organising or using single sex facilities.

Or perhaps there was not much turning involved.

Only biological women to enter the women’s toilets! But even if trans men are biological women, not them!

Only cis women to enter the women’s toilets!

Though, of course, they made that instruction without using the adjective cis; keeping the unmarked, unmarked.

I visited X briefly. And what I saw was happening there is obviously what will happen now even more or all the more. A barrage of hatred directed against trans people just for existing or for persisting in living their lives on their own terms and against anyone who spoke out in support of trans people’s right to do so.

The Supreme Court judgement has given that harassment a green light.

On X, I also observed another phenomenon I called in The Feminist Killjoy Handbook, “the minimisation of harm.” Many “gender critical” feminists suggested that were gender-non confirming women to be questioned about their right to use facilities for women, then that would be no big deal, not really “harassment,” because they can just say they are women, and then pee in private.

Pee in private, be in private.

Out-of-jail-free-card and into-the-toilet-card.

For gender non conforming biological women only!

The implication is, of course, that if a trans woman was questioned, then the questioner would be right (as well as have the right) and she should just exit the room. And then it could be assumed that if a trans woman doesn’t exit, if she insists on