(LifeSiteNews) — It has happened again, this time at a school in Essex, U.K.: schoolgirls were sexually assaulted in the “gender-neutral” bathrooms; the police have been called; a teenage boy has been arrested after four allegations of “serious sexual assault.”
The boy, unnamed because of his age, is under 16. Three of the four attacks, according to the Telegraph, “took place in lavatories used by boys and girls.” Once again, MPs are coming forward to note that unisex facilities in schools are simply not safe for girls.
As J.K. Rowling stated: “This was entirely foreseeable and preventable. A Sunday Times investigation found 88% of sexual offences committed in changing rooms and public bathrooms take place in those that are unisex. Girls’ safety, privacy and dignity is being sacrificed to an incoherent ideology pushed by lobby groups, which gives predatory males easy access to victims.”
Tory MP Miriam Cates, who is also a former teacher, concurred:
Gender-neutral facilities are a threat to the safety of women and girls because they create a private space hidden from the public view where assaults cannot be witnessed. Whilst, of course, the vast majority of males do not mean females any harm, the few who do will inevitably seek to take advantage of the opportunity that gender-neutral facilities present to commit offences. I very much hope that the new DfE [Department for Education] guidance will make clear that gender-neutral facilities are safeguarding risk and should not be allowed in schools.
Stephanie Davis-Arai of Transgender Trend noted that these facilities come with inherent dangers:
Gender neutral means mixed sex and that immediately means that you are not able to safeguard girls. We need a preventative strategy. It is no good waiting for these assaults to take place and punishing the perpetrator, but the policies that schools are implementing at the moment are the opposite of preventative. Schools need to show that they considered the impact on all people protected by the Equality Act, and if they can’t then that should leave them open to legal challenges by parents.
As the Telegraph reported: “Schools are required to provide separate lavatories for children aged eight and over, but a recent report by the Policy Exchange think tank found that 28 percent were failing to do so. There have been a number of concerns raised about mixed-sex facilities, including after a female pupil was injured in Coventry when a schoolboy kicked open her door in unisex lavatories.”
A spokesperson for the Essex County Council told the Telegraph that they are “working closely with Essex Police and relevant authorities regarding a safeguarding matter at a school in Essex. We are supporting the leadership at the school and will provide additional support to the school community if required. The school has communicated with parents and carers and has offered support.”
“Due to the ongoing police investigation, the school is unable to comment on specifics around what they are doing in response to the allegations. However, the school takes all allegations extremely seriously and will always review policies and safeguarding procedures following safeguarding matters such as this.”
MP Nick Fletcher responded to the horrifying news by renewing calls for female-only spaces to receive legal protection from the Department for Education in the forthcoming guidance on how to deal with gender ideology in schools: “Why are we creating an issue that we do not need to create? That is what we are doing by placing boys in girls’ changing rooms and toilets and vice versa. Our job is supposed to be to take away risk, but these policies are actually increasing it. That isn’t to say that all boys or men are a threat, but we should prevent the possibility of something bad happening.”
The sexual assaults of several Essex schoolgirls reveal, once again, that much of gender ideology is fundamentally at odds with human nature – and not just because it is impossible for a biological boy to become a girl or vice versa. Sane, common-sense people have always recognized that single-sex spaces are essential for the safety of women – not because girls and women face a unique threat from men who identify as women, but because some percentage of men will assault women and transgender policies give those men more opportunities.
Pro-transgender activists who insist that those who believe in the necessity of single-sex spaces are “transphobic” are either ignoring or misunderstanding the argument being made. Nobody is saying that everyone who identifies as transgender is a predator, or even more likely to be a predator – what critics are saying is that transgender-favorable policies are fundamentally enabling to those who are likely to commit an assault.
Unfortunately, no matter how many women and girls are victimized, that point doesn’t seem to sink in.
