Misconception and reality

Framing all men as predators harms everyone

Dr Helen Webberley on Heretics: the gender debate, with Andrew Gold, Heretics

What people think

Keeping women safe from trans people in spaces like toilets or changing rooms means treating all men as potential predators. That framing gets presented as common sense, even protective. It isn't questioned much.

What is actually true

What I was trying to say there is that this framing does real damage, and not only to trans people. When we build policy around the idea that any man might weaponise his body against a woman, we are not protecting women. We are teaching them to be afraid of half the population. I have four sons. I raised my daughter to love and enjoy relationships with men, not to fear them. The moment we accept "men are dangerous by default" as the foundation of a safeguarding argument, we have lost something important, and we have not made anyone safer. Predators exist, and the law already deals with them. What we do not need is a culture that treats maleness itself as the threat.

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