In Compliance With the Law
Women have heard this argument before. Legality and morality are not synonyms.
Yesterday I made a video about a man who defended his presence in women’s spaces with an argument that justifies his boundary violation of women’s spaces.
His defense was essentially this:
“There’s never a time where...any women’s space that I’ve entered, that I’m breaking any laws. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m in compliance.”
I’m in compliance with the law.
Notice what he actually said.
Not: Women are comfortable with my presence.
Not: Women have consented to sharing these spaces with me.
Not: I recognize why women have historically established boundaries around intimate spaces.
Not even: I believe what I’m doing is morally right.
Just:
I’m in compliance.
And if there is one lesson women’s history should have permanently taught us, it is this:
Legality and morality are not synonyms.
For enormous stretches of human history, men have been “in compliance with the law” while doing things to women that we now recognize as profoundly unjust.
Women had to fight to change those laws.
Again and again, women have had to stand before governments, husbands, employers, churches, courts, medical institutions and entire cultures and say:
The fact that you are legally permitted to do this to us does not make it morally acceptable!!!! Sing it with me!!!
Women Have Heard “It’s Legal” Before
Please consider how much of women’s history consists of women fighting things that were once explicitly authorized by law, embedded within legal institutions, or permitted because women lacked meaningful legal protection.
Under coverture, a married woman’s independent legal identity was largely absorbed into her husband’s. Her husband could control property and earnings that she herself had produced.
Further…
Women fought to own property.
Women fought to control their own wages.
Women fought to enter professions.
Women fought to attend universities.
Women fought to vote.
Women fought to serve on juries.
Women fought against employment discrimination.
Women fought against being fired simply because they became pregnant.
Women fought against sexual harassment being treated as an unavoidable condition of employment.
Women fought against husbands being granted sexual privileges over their wives that would be criminal if exercised against another woman.
Women fought against domestic violence being dismissed as a private marital matter.
Women fought against forced institutionalization.
Women fought against forced and coerced sterilization.
Women fought against child marriage.
Women fought against laws and customs that gave fathers and husbands extraordinary control over women’s lives and children.
And women fought against systems in which their bodies, labor, sexuality and reproductive capacities could be controlled by other people.
The law did not descend from heaven already recognizing women’s full humanity.
Women forced the law to change.
Sometimes the Law Itself Is the Injustice
We don’t even have to look backward to understand this.
Look at Afghanistan today.
Under Taliban rule, women and girls have been barred from secondary and higher education. Their ability to work has been drastically restricted. Their freedom of movement has been curtailed. Their clothing is regulated. Access to parks, gyms, sports and many areas of public life has been restricted. Women have effectively been pushed out of political decision-making.
The men enforcing those rules can claim that they are enforcing the governing authorities’ rules.
They can claim compliance.
Does that settle the moral question?
Somehow it is obvious to everyone when we look at the Taliban, but not when it’s happening in our changing rooms, locker rooms, prisons, shelters, and women-only spas right here.
This is precisely why human beings developed concepts such as civil rights, human rights and civil disobedience. We understand that governments can be wrong. We understand that laws can be unjust. And we understand that sometimes the people challenging the law are the people history ultimately vindicates.
Women’s Rights Exist Because Women Refused to Accept “Compliance”
Imagine telling the suffragists:
“I’m in compliance with the law. Women aren’t allowed to vote.”
Imagine telling a married woman in the nineteenth century:
“I’m in compliance with the law. Your earnings belong to your husband.”
Imagine telling a woman denied entry into a profession:
“I’m in compliance with the law. Women aren’t admitted here.”
Imagine telling a wife seeking protection from violence:
“I’m in compliance with the law. This is a private marital matter.”
Every generation has people who mistake the rules governing the present moment for the final word on morality. And every generation eventually discovers that they were not. Women’s rights exist precisely because women refused to accept “that’s the law” as the end of the conversation.
A Boundary Does Not Become Meaningless Because the Law Fails to Recognize It
A boundary is not created by legislation. The law may recognize a boundary. It may protect a boundary. It may establish consequences for violating a boundary. But the underlying moral question exists before the statute does.
Women can say no before the government gives them permission to say no. Women can object before legislators recognize the legitimacy of their objection. Women can establish boundaries around their bodies and intimate spaces even while institutions are still arguing about whether those boundaries deserve legal protection.
That has been the story of women’s rights over and over again!
These men use “compliance” as justification when the law is on their side, but what about when there are specifically laws to protect women’s boundaries in single sex spaces like the new ruling in the UK?
So when men believe the law permits him to cross a women’s boundary, we’re told: The law permits it. You must accept it.
But when the law changes? When governments or courts recognize sex-based protections? Suddenly we hear a very different argument:
I refuse to comply.
In the United Kingdom, following major legal developments concerning the meaning of sex under the Equality Act, some activists have openly discussed refusing to comply with sex-based rules and guidance.
The contradiction is galling!!
When the law appears to permit access to women’s spaces:
You must accept it because it’s legal.
When the law protects women’s spaces:
I refuse to comply.
It becomes so obvious that compliance was never the principle. It was always something else. It was always just a justification of men’s entitled desires.
The Principle Is Whether Women Are Allowed to Say No
Seriously, are we allowed to say NO!!!
No.
No, you may not enter this intimate space.
No, you may not redefine this boundary for us.
No, you may not demand that our discomfort become irrelevant.
No, you may not tell us that your intentions determine whether our boundary exists.
And no, pointing to a statute does not magically transform our no into a yes.
The morality of a boundary cannot depend entirely upon whether the person crossing it currently possesses institutional permission. Otherwise every women’s-rights movement in history becomes unintelligible. Women would never have had grounds to protest anything until after the law had already changed. Do you see how backwards this is???
Women have historically protested because the law was wrong. The moral argument came first. The legal reform followed.
We’ve Been Here Before
That is why these men’s cry of “I’m in compliance with the law” doesn’t impress me.
Women have heard versions of that argument for centuries. We’ve heard it from institutions. We’ve heard it from governments. We’ve heard it from employers. We’ve heard it from husbands. We’ve heard it from men who possessed rights women did not yet possess.
And women have always answered:
Then the law needs to change.
That is how we got here. Every right women currently possess exists because somebody before us was willing to be called unreasonable for demanding something the existing order did not yet recognize.
So when women establish a boundary and someone responds by pointing to the law, I remember our history.
The law matters. But the law is not God. The law can protect human dignity. But the law can also violate it. And sometimes the first indication that a law needs changing is very simple:
The people being affected by it begin saying no.
WOMEN ARE SAYING NO!!!
👏👏👏👏👏
I hope they feel disgusting, knowing that they are violating women's NO, and having to live with it, too. Although sadly, (RIP, naivety), I feel confident that most of them do not. Because most of them either hate women, or else could not care less about us. Because they are the epic, heroic main characters of their own imagined universes, plus their fetish, (in most cases), or obsessive fixation, (in all other cases), COMPLETELY negates their ability to be able to see anything but themselves. Many of them were narcissists from the get-go, but even in cases where they weren't..? They are now, (casually, non-formally speaking), because that is what their precious belief system / fake "identities" create. It spins them so far out of their minds, they start seeing ignoring women's boundaries, and forcing themselves on us, as not only permissible / acceptable, but even virtuous and heroic, and some kind of stunning, revolutionary act, to bring about the brave new world.
Anyway, on the off chance that some of them reading this have yet to get THAT warped..? I want them to know that letting yourself get further warped is NOT a virtue, it's not brave, it's not heroic, it's not stunning, and it will make you a WORSE person instead of a better one!! It will make you the sort of person that denies basic reality, and falls prey to an insane delusion. That increasingly ALWAYS makes you lose all of your tethers to reality, over time, even if you think you are still quite sane now. (You are like a new Scientologist, having just finished OT level 1, and shit is only getting started, baby!! Hang on to your marbles for a bit longer if you insist, but they WILL increasingly be taken from you. Gradually, without you even realizing it, before it's too late. Oh... and they will take your body and your health, too!!) It will make you completely goddamn dissociated. It will make you harm yourself for life, while smugly smiling, and thinking it is some GLORIOUS, transformative spiritual sacrament, of sacred mind / body alignment!! But it is all a LIE. Because while the harm is completely real, and overwhelmingly serious..? The transformation is NOT!! (I'm not a Christian, but I still feel inclined to use the word "Satanic" to describe this, anyway.) Oh... And it will make you the kind of person who happily, gleefully, smugly, non-chalantly forces yourself on women, PROUDLY invades our spaces, violates our boundaries, and tries to destroy all our rights!!! That is where this path leads, and what it eventually turns men like you into... Run, run, run for your life!! (Starts thinking about that old tale about the wooden doll, Pinocchio, who gets stuck on a seemingly AMAZING island of adventure and wonder, where all the boys who stay there eventually get turned into donkeys. Plus a quote / exchange from an old Agatha Christie movie that I remember: "I'm just following my star!! It led me here!!" "Perhaps, madame, you are following a FALSE star." <Shivers.>)
Been away on holiday, and still am for another two days, in fact. But I just felt like writing this, for some reason.
"The fact that you are legally permitted to do this to us does not make it morally acceptable!!!!"
EXACTLY! I completely agree with the statement that these mentally deranged males should not be in women's spaces. And yet......this is something that applies only to men, that is using the "law" to act immorally and unjust.
I used to work at a venue that hosted music concerts amongst other event types and we routinely had women coming into the men's rest room b/c they did not want to wait for the ladies. Why is that OK and it is OK bn/c the 2 times I tired to get security top do something they just laughed at me and said forget about it.
In divorce court the court assumes the man is a villain who must prove his innocence while the woman must be a victim b/c it's impossible for a divorce to be b/c of anything the woman did. Even if she cheated on him he was to blame for it b/c he didn't do what he should have and that forced her to fulfill that need elsewhere.
When it comes to a pregnancy the law holds both responsible but only the woman has the "My body, my choice" option while the man has no "My wallet, my choice" equivalent.
Women got equal rights like to vote but they have zero societal duties., For example they can't be conscripted for a war as men can. They use t at the very least make sure to keep the population from collapsing by having babies but now most women call that slavery or oppression thanks to feminism.
Our society is full of hypocrisy when it comes to treat mean and women for the same thing. Even when it comes to crime, women typically get lighter sentences for the same crime that men commit. In short, women by law not only have the same rights as men but a few men don't like walking away from a pregnancy or saying NO to conscription for war. I completely agree that these whack-a-do's should not be allowed in women sports or spaces. The problem is that most women are very hypocritical abou6t so called "equal" treatment. They don't want equality, they wasn't equity.
The Great Feminization by Helen Andrews perfectly lays out the problems with the overt feminization of western society. This trans problem absolutely needs to be addressed and likely many of these men put in padded cells however this is a problem women created and even as of today most feminist women are supporting this crazy movement. It is a vocal minority of women pushing back. Feminist created this, made the trans thing possible, with their "men and women are the same" rhetoric from the 2010's. During this period there were many feminist screaming that women can do anything men can and that women are just as strong as men because both men and women are the same. They set the foundation necessary for these whack jobs to test these feminist claims by joining in on previously female only space.
The fact is that this is a problem women created and as time passes and more of these crazy men enter female spaces the number of women complaining grows. It's like the feminists have to experience first hand this crap before they stop supporting it and begin pushing back against it.
The trans issue is not the only issue that was created and or supported by feminist women initially who now have done a 180 and are complaining. Many women in the European nations are now complaining about the migrants, the same migrants they previously were championing to come in.
The problem is that it's going to take actions by men to fix this problem as well as the other caused by feminist women and their overt feminization of society as detailed in Helen Andrews article. Feminism has poisoned the minds of millions of women in multiple generations and until you ladies who are feminist realize the toxicity of the ideology and abandon it we will continue to have problems that we otherwise would not. There has never been a successful human matriarchy in human history precisely because at a biological level, women are not made to lead or govern.
Women stopped being women because of feminism and with enough time they are now experiencing the toxicity this ideology causes with it from crazy men in women's bathrooms to barbaric foreigners sexually assaulting women and the problem with dating today. The majority of men have walked away from the relationship game because it became a rigged game; a no win scenario for men thanks to women. If women want to return to a happy life/society they are going to have to abandon feminism and go back to doing what evolutionary biology created women for. Sadly I think it's going to have to get a LOT worse before the feminist will acknowledge the problem and work to change things back to how they used to be.