Last week in the United Kingdom, a case was brought before the High Court by a female inmate who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a trans woman inside the facility. It is yet another incident that spotlights the British government's reckless policy of placing men who identify as women in female-only detention centres.
On the eve of International Women's Day (IWD), Swiss voters approved a law banning Muslim women from wearing face veils in public. Two days later, Torrey Peters became the first trans woman nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction, supposedly awarded annually for "outstanding, ambitious, original fiction" written in English by women.
These represent the increasing demeaning of biologically born women in the West, as well as raise a symbolic and sardonic set of quotation marks around the annual day dedicated to women.
Dedicated feminists, including renowned author J.K Rowling, continue to be attacked and cancelled over voicing their concern over this ludicrous trend taking root within Western society in general.
Women are what they are on the basis of their biology, not identity, despite what these trans activists proclaim. This raises the question of what does it mean to recognise and celebrate women, when the category is losing its meaning.
The above incidents illustrate the clear denial of Western women's rights, women's safety, women's opportunities, and the value placed on the role of women within the public sphere. Yet, during the week of IWD, they receive little attention, thanks to the trans lobby-supporting mainstream media.
UK trans activists have voiced concerns over the government's move to revert to the previous policy of placing only biological women in female prisons — despite the clear danger biologically born men pose even if they self-identify as women.
Yet, prohibiting face veils in Switzerland; the so-called "burqa ban", depriving women of their religious freedom and the liberty to choose their attire, was heralded as liberatory. The nomination of a biologically male author for the Women's Prize for Fiction — yet another invasion of female-only spaces by men who think they are women, and the denial of an opportunity to another female author — was trumpeted as a great progressive advance.
All this marks a decline within the West for the respect of women generally. A little over a month before IWD, United States President Joe Biden issued an executive order that prohibited female-only spaces across various sectors of society. Thus, promoting what women's rights campaigners describe as "the erasure of women".
Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Christiana Holcomb said about the order: "We're going to see an impact in the sports context but far beyond that as well. Especially in healthcare and women's shelters and restrooms and locker rooms. It's a scary prospect for the future..."
I would agree with the last statement, with one amendment: "in the West". America and Europe are in the grips of a strange ideological fog, and women are the worst impacted. In Malaysia, the region generally, and in most of the non-Western world, we do not suffer the same confusion.
Women in Malaysia do not need to worry about men invading their spaces, denying them their religious freedom, or appropriating resources and services dedicated exclusively to women's empowerment and success.
Malaysian women will be ready to protest such gross invasion of their privacy and violation of the right to their private spaces. The theme of this year's IWD was "#ChooseToChallenge", but it seems in the West that the main challenges are how to define what a woman is and the challenge by men who identify as female to gain access to every accommodation afforded to biological women.
These represent the undoing of decades of progress for women in the Western world, and it is passing almost entirely without comment. In a time where liberty has no clear guide where to draw the lines, we need to fall back on the basic nature of our very creation.
In biology, there is no confusion on the definition of gender, so why should we? IWD organisers would do well to use the event to highlight this systematic oppression of women being pursued at an accelerated pace in the West under the guise of "inclusion" and "tolerance", and look to the wider world on how to achieve real progress.
The writer is founder, Centre for Human Rights Research & Advocacy (CENTHRA)
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times
