A Boundary Does Not Become Meaningless Because the Law Fails to Recognize It

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!!!