Recently, we’ve all witnessed the development of a rather strange phenomenon in the world of the oh-so-enlightened West. That phenomenon stems from the rather perverse decision of a number of states to pay for people with mental disorders to have their bodies pumped full of hormones before allowing extremely specialised surgeons to lop bits off and sew different bits on. Yes, the seemingly unstoppable fad of allowing an infinitesimally microscopic speck of a nanoscopic, titchy group of society to dictate what the rest of us should feel, think, and most importantly, say about one of the smallest groups to be found in society, has changed societies located to the West of us in ways which would have been hard to predict even just a few years ago.

In the UK earlier this year, there was a certain amount of entirely predictable media kerfuffle as a result of an instruction given to midwives at an NHS hospital to stop using terms such as “breastfeeding” and “breastmilk”, as these terms had been judged to be discriminatory to transgender women. In place of “breastfeeding” and “breastmilk” alternatives were suggested: “chestfeeding” and “chestmilk”. Further, the word “mother” was seen to be a potential cause of offence for those who didn’t really fit the traditional idea of mothers (i.e. men with alterations), and so “birthing parent” was offered as a replacement.

Of course, the whole mess was due to a woke do-gooder, not a transgender person themselves, but someone who had undertaken to fight the good fight on their behalf, sticking their nose in where it was neither wanted nor required, and causing a veritable tsunami of aggressive outrage to form against transgender people in general. Some sort of ironic congratulations has surely got to be offered to the dickwit who thought that their plan of revised vocabulary terms was going to be a runaway success.

That person needs to be removed from the decision-making team until their brain matures to a socially acceptable level.

What is most disturbing about the whole affair is, however, not the fact that someone managed to pick up the wrong end of the stick in such a truly spectacular fashion, causing outrage and anger in one fell swoop, but that as a result of this car crash of a decision, women were, once more, pushed further out of the picture.

And it’s not only the case in the UK. Over in the US, specifically in California, surprising news has been flowing in regarding a change in prison regulations. With the coming into effect of legislation SB 132 on Jan 1, transgender, intersex, and non-binary inmates have now been afforded the right, irrespective of their anatomy, to choose where they want to be incarcerated.

By the beginning of April, 261 transfer requests had been registered. All of them from inmates who want to be moved from male to female prisons. Not one request for someone to transfer from a women’s prison to a male prison has been logged. Although statistics do indicate that transgender, intersex, and non-binary groups are exposed to excessive violence in prison, surely the answer isn’t to move a tiny fraction of the prison population into the women’s section, is it? That seems to be a tad simplistic. Move the problem rather than solve the problem.

So, take a group of men who might well want to get out of one violent institution where they might feel vulnerable, and allow them to establish themselves in a less violent institution where they will be able, at the very least, to physically dominate those around them. Surely this idea hasn’t been considered thoroughly.

A group of men who either consider themselves to be women or something other than that which their anatomy suggests are on the verge of receiving protection from the US government, at the expense of...yes, women who were born women. That seems a little unfair, doesn’t it?

Whilst demanding respect for their rights,

“I won’t be around predatory men and I won’t be around staff that frown upon trans women.“

these men are determined to trample all over the apparently less-worthy rights of female prisoners. As one female prisoner succinctly put it:

“I do think they should be safe, but it infringes on my right to be safe as well.”

Quite.

But, leaving what is, after all, a minority problem, we find that women face attacks in Europe as well. This time, the attacks are being launched from a rather unexpected, new enemy: Women.

Spokeswoman for the Swedish Green Party, Märta Stenevi, who is currently, somewhat ironically, also the minister for gender equality and housing, recently suggested that native, white Swedish women should stand aside to allow foreign minority women better access to positions of power. Yes, that’s right: a Swedish woman is recommending that her own countrywomen now voluntarily step back, step down, and toddle off home to cook for their husbands purely to allow immigrants to step into their shoes. That’s nothing short of insane, to say nothing of the insulting nature of the suggestion.

I need hardly state that Stenevi has opted to not follow her own advice. This advice is for others to follow, not her. Stenevi is of the opinion that men in Sweden are beginning to move to the Right as a result of believing that their country is already a beacon of equality. Quite what the connection might be between the way Swedish men view the society they live in, and her suggested solution of reducing the worth of Swedish women by elevating immigrant women is unclear. In the interview in which she espoused her rather startling views, one quote stands out as encapsulating what the Greens presumably expect of Swedish women:

“If foreign-born women are to gain power, white, domestically born women will have to move.”

That’s nothing short of inflammatory. A Swedish woman, a Swedish politician is offering up a sacrifice to the Gods of Swedish politics in the form of her Swedish-born Swedish sisters, a group of people she finds less attractive and worthy than foreign women who happen to be presently located in the country. Insanity.

Were it not enough that her credibility as a woman, as far as other women are concerned, has taken an obvious knock, the spokeswoman’s hypocritical stance extends beyond merely selling her sisters down the river. Stenevi, spokeswoman for the Greens has investments in funds which include large oil companies. She seems to have missed the mark on two counts: as a woman, and as a ‘green’ politician.

Society as a whole, no doubt, will suffer, but at the moment it’s women who are paying the highest price. Having fought for the right to equality, all over the world some who traditionally enjoyed advantages over women (men) are now ‘jumping ship’ and trying to ‘out-woman’ natural women. Were this not enough, then we have the oh-so-liberal women who seem determined to force native women’s rights down the agenda so that other, immigrant women can rise above them.

And yet, hope springs eternal. The world will stop listening so determinedly to a manic micro-minority, vocabulary will cease to become a testing ground for new, fashionable configurations of word power, and things will, no doubt, return to a more normal rhythm. Until then, women should just make sure that they watch their backs – there seem to be plenty of people lining up to push them down.