I remembered recently that I used to support a mentally and physically disabled girl as a 1-to-1 assistant. I used to have to accompany her to the girls’ toilets and occasionally I had to assist her with personal care. I also helped her change for swimming in the girls’ changing

rooms. I got accused today of being a bigot because I feel ‘icky in toilets with transwomen.’ I’d like people to stop thinking about ‘women’s spaces’ as merely toilets. (Even though they are also important.) Is there anyone out there who really wants to remove the right to employ

carers of the appropriate sex to care for vulnerable girls? With everything we know about safeguarding, grooming and the lengths to which predators will go to insinuate themselves into positions of trust, the fact that males commit 98-99% of sexual assault, that trans women

in prisons are just as likely as men to be sex offenders, does anyone want to take those chances with vulnerable children? Or force other parents to have their choice of carer taken away? And further to that, what is a trans person anyway? What standard should a trans woman be

held to in order to do a job like I described? Is there any standard beyond self-declared identity? Is that what people are advocating for? To consider a man a woman from the moment he makes that announcement? And to risk a discrimination lawsuit if you say you can’t employ him

to provide intimate care to a 9-yr old girl with a range of disabilities? Or to risk being accused of a hate crime because you referred to him as male, in spite of his ‘decision not to transition his appearance’? (Yes, I’ve seen that.) Helping a girl with disabilities change

clothes in a girls’ changing room is the ‘women’s space’ people should be thinking of. But instead they think we’re prudes about who hears us pee (still think that’s legit though.) Enough. I’m going to go double-down on a stereotype and go knit.