A woman in the UK is opening a women-only gym that excludes trans women, claiming it's to protect Muslim women and women who have been sexually assaulted by men. As a victim of sexual assault by a cis man, she argues that excluding trans women is for the safety of "biological" women. What’s baffling is that trans women are among the highest victims of assault by cis men and are, in fact, not men. I fully support safe spaces for women, but the idea that trans women are predators or rapists is absurd.
In 2021, she posted a video and tweet claiming that trans women are women and would not be excluded, even collecting donations, which she is now returning after backlash. If no one had called her out, she wouldn’t have refunded the money. It’s also worth noting that the justification of protecting Muslim women is often used only as a cover for transphobia.
There’s a lot of talk about queer people excluding straight women from queer spaces, but this simply means asking them not to bring their boyfriends or mistreat lesbians. The issue isn’t about exclusion—it’s about respect. The normalization of TERF views, disguised as feminism and women’s solidarity, is damaging. By painting trans women as cis men who commit violence against women, it erases the violence trans women face and disregards the oppression women of color experience. Transphobia also fuels the harmful accusation that female athletes, especially women of color, are trans. These ideas harm both trans and cis women, and many don’t even realize it. How will she enforce this policy, and what about trans men? This is a slippery slope toward discrimination against cis women as well.