The Herald Sun is reporting that the women in the Dame Phyllis Frost Correctional Centre in Victoria are objecting to what they call an inmate with a ‘working’ penis and a history of violent sexual assault against a woman and a girl.

The phrasing they are not allowed to use here is ‘man’, ‘rapist’, and ‘paedophile’.

I am feeling this particularly as the Queensland government are, as we speak, pushing legislation that will erase female as a sex classification, most likely leading to violence against women and the silencing of the most marginal of female voices.

The proposed change to the Births Deaths and Marriage Registration Act 2003 will bring Queensland in line with Victoria in allowing people to change their legal sex for all purposes with a simple declaration. This, a common move from left-wing governments, is referred to colloquially as ‘self ID’.

Self ID does not allow an alignment of gender identity with documents as it is being reported, it allows any man, for any reason, to change his legal sex to female and vice versa. It is the legal redefinition of sex in law.

Under a regime with both self ID and gender identity protections, ‘woman’ is a category containing two classes of females distinguished by the type of declaration that was made to create her. If a doctor made the female declaration over a person at birth, that female can access female spaces in the normal way. Gender activists call this type of woman AFAB (Assigned Female at Birth).

If a female declaration is made by a male person over themselves, that person will get access to female spaces and words with the additional protections in ‘gender identity’, this male ‘woman’ is referred to as AMAB (Assigned Male at Birth).

Women are being gaslit about their rights here. We are being told that ‘rights are not a pie’; meaning that giving rights ‘women’ who were AMAB will not take away from women. The language that is being presented to women is that of ‘inclusion’. The better analogy for rights between ‘sex’ and ‘gender identity’ is a poker game where ‘gender identity’ is a wild card in a stacked deck with no aces.

Even if sex is a protected characteristic in law, males can now access the sex of female, while women can never access the protected ‘gender identity’ while accepting their sex as female. Only males can have this additional legal protection in the realm of women’s rights, making them the more protected and powerful ‘woman’, a first class of women, if you will.

Women may hold a ‘four of a kind’, a very respectable hand, but it is only ever males who can hold a ‘royal flush’ in the women’s rights game of spaces, protections, and words.

In a situation of conflict, almost always involving the most vulnerable of women, the wild card always falls in favour of self-declared first class AMAB ‘women’. Second class women who were arbitrarily declared female at birth are being told they must make accommodations for males in their spaces or not use them at all.

In Washington State last week, an 80-year-old woman challenged a man in a swimming pool change room because she was in a state of undress and little girls were going to the toilet in open stalls. The 80-year-old swimmer was not only asked to leave, but she was also permanently banned from the YMCA facility because of the presentation of the man’s wild card of gender identity. The staff at the YMCA even told the woman that they had called the police, so she had no other option than to retreat to where women are traditionally told to retreat, her home.

The hierarchy of rights that emerges from the wild card of gender identity in combination with the legal fiction of the ‘f’ marker for men, means that women lose sovereignty over both their spaces and words.

The second class AFAB females have now no right to the words ‘woman’, ‘female’, and ‘girl’ anymore, if the words are not able to centre the first class of AMAB ‘females’. Words are being removed in many places where ‘woman’, ‘female’, and ‘girl’ have a distinct attachment to female bodies and gender meanings centring the powerful female role in reproduction.

The work women have put into moulding societal gender meanings around their bodies – including removing their bodies, life-cycle, and sexuality from shame – is being wholesale appropriated by a movement that is designed to compel populations to recognise men who perform feminine gender stereotypes as women. The harm this may cause to women and girls is never even considered.

The stereotypes being presented to second class of women by the first class of ‘women’, are often domesticated, heavily made up, sexually submissive, or ‘slutty’. Stereotypes that are offered to girls by gender identity ‘educators’ are almost always pink, sparkly, and passive. The gender of women is now legally owned and protected only in men and manufactured by government and capital funded organisations.

It is interesting that medical professionals can still legally recognise sex on the sight of genitalia in babies and in utero, as this is philosophically inconsistent with gender identity ideology. This is the next tower to be attacked by the gender authoritarians. The removal of sex altogether would annihilate the ability of women to organise as a sex class or exclude themselves from a male on the basis of sex. That is not even considering the impact on science and medicine.

We are already seeing women organise in secret for political or single-sex dating purposes, as recognising sex is unlawful in some contexts in places like Victoria and Tasmania. In California, little girls are actively being encouraged to look the other way if they are frighted at the sight of male genitalia in a space where women and girls are undressing.

Self ID effectively decriminalises what used to be called flashing and criminalises what used to be called safeguarding. This is not a political statement; this is the logical extension of the state ideology that produces this harmful suite of legislation. Ideology that is actively and enthusiastically funded by conservative and left-wing governments alike.

We are seeing, women play and lose the rights card game everywhere, and come up against the violence of the state that is ultimately on the side of first class of ‘women’. This week on Twitter I watched a feminist complain about the Self ID laws in Victoria, and a trans activist produced their licence, on Twitter, to show they had an ‘f’ marker. The activist then openly threatened the feminist with legal action and the police, if she continued to fail to submit to the will of the first class of ‘women’.

Queensland legislators are telling us to look at other states as they push through unpopular redefinition of human sex. As we look to Victoria, we see the same thing we have seen overseas, men in women’s prison, women objecting, women getting called bigoted, women getting raped, women getting arrested, and women who speak out getting reported to her employer or the police.

Self ID is the most successful strategy to silence women with violence, fear, and impoverishment that I have seen in my lifetime. Gender identity ideology has been grown exclusively in academic books, universities, and government departments and has been proliferated by committed activists almost exclusively funded by government and capital interests.

Gender identity in social justice protections, combined with the ability of any man to change his sex to female, is the complete annihilation of women’s rights. Governments are wholly relived of protecting vulnerabilities they refuse to see. The price we pay for this government victory is the laying bare of the most vulnerable of women and girls to the will of the worst of men.

Edie Wyatt has a BA Hons from the Institute of Cultural Policy Studies and writes on culture, politics and feminism. She tweets at @MsEdieWyatt and blogs at ediewyatt.com

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