Believe Women—Unless They Want Their Own Spaces
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Consent has long stood as a pillar of modern feminist discourse. Women have fought tirelessly to assert their right to bodily autonomy, to say no—and have that no respected. From sexual relationships to reproductive rights, the conversation around consent has been fierce, passionate, and rooted in justice. But strangely, when it comes to the presence of men—specifically males who identify as women—in female-only spaces, that principle suddenly evaporates. Women are not longer allowed to say no to men.
Why are women who claim to be feminists silent when it comes to the lack of consent to have males in our spaces? Worse still, why are some of them the very ones promoting violence and ostracization against those of us who speak up? If feminism means anything at all, it must begin with the defense of female boundaries, not their erasure. Yet today, many mainstream feminist organizations and public figures have been ideologically captured — coerced into prioritizing male feelings over female safety and autonomy.
The very same women who speak so boldly about the necessity of consent often fall silent—or worse, become hostile and abusive—when other women express discomfort about males in female spaces. Whether we’re talking about locker rooms, bathrooms, prisons, or sports teams, the voices of women saying “no” are no longer respected. Instead, they are vilified, mocked, or silenced. Somehow, in this context, female consent becomes optional. Disposable.
And who is doing this? In my experience, it is in large part women on the Left who call themselves feminists. Women who once chanted “believe women,” who marched for MeToo, who railed against rape culture—but who now, without hesitation, gaslight, shame, and attack other women for simply asserting boundaries. Believe all women, except the ones who don’t want men in female spaces; those women get online trolling, harassment, maybe even death threats. Couldn’t one argue that forcing women and girls against their will to accept males into our intimate spaces, where we are most vulnerable, promoting rape culture? Someone make it make sense to me!
I am consistently disappointed by the number of women who so easily sell out their sisters. The hypocrisy is staggering. How did we go from #TimesUp to “shut up”? How can the same voices that demand male accountability in one breath turn around and insist that women be quiet, be kind, and roll over to allow men in our spaces? Women who speak up are being gaslit by the very movement that once claimed to center them. Feminists, in name only, now defend a system that punishes women for asserting boundaries. What we are witnessing is not compassion—it is capitulation.
There is, in modern female political culture, an undercurrent of tribalism and socially sanctioned cruelty—especially toward dissenting women. Bullying is a coercive form of social control, often exercised by those who feel insecure about their status. In this context, women who feel weak or disempowered—whether socially, physically, intellectually, or professionally—tend to resort to aggressive and inappropriate behavior, especially online, to elevate their position within their peer group. Targeting other women who disagree with them becomes a shortcut to status by demonstrating “ideological purity” and punishing perceived heresy. Inclusion has become a weapon, and empathy has been hijacked to enforce conformity. It is emotional blackmail and a desire for power disguised as progress.
Let us be clear: trans women are male. That is not a slur, nor a denial of their completely subjective inner feelings—it is a material fact. The prefix “trans” exists because there is a meaningful difference between being male and being female. If a male person feels unsafe in a men’s space, the answer is not to erase women’s boundaries—it is to create third spaces that respect everyone without violating anyone’s consent.
Despite the online hysteria, no one is taking away the right of trans-identifying males to live freely. They can dress as they like, take hormones (preferably paid out of pocket and not by taxpayers), adopt names that suit them, live their lives. But they are not entitled to the non-consensual inclusion of women in their personal identity project. Most people are happy to live and let live—until they’re forced to deny what they know to be true, or compelled to accept what they never agreed to.
So what happened to believe all women? What happened to consent? In Canada, a man named Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv took multiple immigrant women to the Human Rights Tribunal, in the process bankrupting most of them, because they declined to wax his testicles. These were female estheticians, many working from their homes, whose only “crime” was refusing to handle male anatomy. In the U.S., entire high school girls’ volleyball and basketball teams have forfeited games rather than be forced to compete against or share locker rooms with boys who claim to be girls. In some cases, these young women are punished—but not the institutions or the adults that put them in this impossible situation. In California, under SB 132 (the “Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act”), male inmates who self-identify as women can be transferred into women’s prisons. Numerous reports have since emerged from female inmates about rape, pregnancy, and threats of violence, while prison officials have issued condoms instead of reconsidering housing policies. Currently, there are over 900 men on the waiting list to get into one of the two women’s prisons in the state. Where was the mainstream feminist backlash? Women who did speak out—like JK Rowling, Kellie-Jay Keen, Meghan Murphy, and Julie Bindel—faced online mobs, bans, and threats. The backlash existed, but it was not supported by institutional feminism—it was grassroots, often coming from older feminists or those working outside the NGO-academic complex.
What should be common sense—male bodies do not belong in female spaces—has become heresy, and the girls who dare say it out loud are shamed, silenced, and erased.
It is not compassion to force women to comply. It is not feminism to shame women into silence. And it is not consent when women are coerced—by men or by other women—into surrendering their spaces, their safety, or their speech.
Consent matters. Or it doesn’t. And if we have to “consent” to something under social pressure, threat of public shame, or fear of ostracism—it was never consent in the first place.
And just in case it wasn’t clear…I do not fucking consent.
Jaclynn Joyce 