Alexander Bezdek

This bill addresses the question of whether women have the right to private, single-sex spaces free from males. It is entirely within the rights of individuals to advocate for the abolition of any distinction between men and women. However, preceding law has acknowledged the biological reality that there are two sexes and that we do permit sex-based discrimination in consideration of accommodations for these two groups. Biological sex is immutable, which is why it has standing as a protected class. Men cannot become women through any amount of cosmetic surgery or hormonal treatment. This means that any argument claiming that some men are women is categorically disqualifying. That is not cruel. That does not mean that people can believe they have changed sex, that they cannot request others affirm their belief, or that others cannot choose to affirm it on their own. It does mean that no policy can mandate supporting that belief without violating the First Amendment. Laws guaranteeing women the right to their own spaces are a worthy pursuit in order to minimize the risk of harm to these women from men. Some argue that it is important to have vulnerable men be allowed to use women’s spaces to keep them safe from predatory men. This argument does not hold. The labelling of a man as “vulnerable” is one dependent on a given man’s self-definition. While one could argue that at a given moment most or even hypothetically all men categorizing themselves as vulnerable are genuine and pose no threat to women, the design of this system is fundamentally flawed. No evidence is necessary of there being a single disingenuous man falsely posing as a vulnerable one to recognize from first principles that the risk of this occurring is disqualifying to the design of the policy. Safeguarding vulnerable men in their own spaces from predatory men is an important pursuit and one we must take seriously. Men commit horrible violence against other men, but any solution to that problem must not involve imperiling women.