The transgender movement has found itself at odds with one of the only remaining societal values: that women should be protected. Because of this – and rightly so – the trans movement has suffered severe setbacks in its agenda.

President Donald Trump reversed former President Joe Biden’s decision to include males in women’s sports under Title IX. States across the country are passing legislation ensuring that women never have to use bathrooms or locker rooms alongside men. Mass outrage ensued following stories of transgender-identified males perpetrating violent crimes against the women incarcerated alongside them.

Yet none of this could have happened if the first victims of our collective sexual confusion hadn’t been men. Male-only spaces are now seen as chauvinist hellscapes. There is no reason, we are told, for men to exclude the company of women except if they hate women. The leap in logic from this thought to arguing that the only reason for a woman to exclude the company of transgender women is because she is a transphobe isn’t a long one.

Of course, there are a number of reasons why a man may wish for spaces in which women are not present. It is for the same reason that I, as a woman, may wish that the individual getting a pedicure in the salon chair beside me isn’t a bloke named Bryan.

In some ways, the destruction of female-only spaces is the more pressing problem. When a man loses a male-only space he loses camaraderie and companionship. When a woman loses a female-only space, especially the vulnerable spaces which are specifically targeted by transgender persons, she loses human dignity and sexual safety.

Men and women should, and often do, get along quite well – we have the continuation of the human species to show for that. Yet we also need time away from one another, time where we can be freely masculine and freely feminine. If we don’t have this, we risk either resentment or androgyny.

Men need spaces where their natural penchant for aggression is not immediately tamed by the sensibilities of a woman. Women need spaces where they can exercise their softer side without fearing that their vulnerability will be used against them. Most boys have gotten into pretend sword fights or not-so-pretend fist fights at some point in their childhoods with their best friends. Women might cringe at this dynamic, but it’s not worse than the way women behave, it’s simply different. And men need the freedom to be different from women.

There’s a reason that male-only combat troops performed 69% better on ground combat tests than did co-ed task force teams in the U.S. Marine Corps. Aggression is a bad word in our feminized society, yet it is only evil in its perverted form. The officer standing between us and invaders had better be aggressive, yet the husband quarreling with his wife would do well to tap into his gentler side.

In times of trouble, we search for masculinity to save us. It is a sign of our own societal decadence that we have seen fit to do away with the spaces in which such traits are the most likely to thrive.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: YouTube-DC Studios/Warner Bros.