Male-only spaces and female-only spaces are not the same

Women who defend female-only spaces should not be dismissed as 'bullies' nor compared to men defending male-only spaces

‘If you want female-only spaces, you have to allow for male-only spaces’, someone said to me recently.

There are certainly situations where this is true. For example, it would be wrong, on lots of levels, for public buildings to offer only female loos with no male equivalents - not to mention the fact that alleyways would become even more piss-soaked as a result. Some individuals may prefer to only have female friends, or only male friends, and, of course, neither scenarios are a matter for legal intervention.

But there are significant distinctions between female-only spaces and male-only spaces and, IMV, it’s not true that ‘if a would-be egalitarian society wants female-only spaces, it also has to allow for male-only spaces’. There are differences, which chiefly lie in the types of spaces that are ring-fenced for males only or females only, and in the reasons for their existence. It matters that these distinctions are laid out clearly, as I’m going to try to do here, because women w…