Nowhere Safe for my Female Children

Written by K.L.

By K.L.

Today I cried after listening to NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines break into tears recounting her experience being exposed against her will to a man in her changing room.

Why?

Because 1 out of 6 American women are sexual abuse survivors and this kind of experience extends and triggers abuse memories. Because the bathroom at my job has a sign for all genders on the previously designated women's room but the men's room is just for them. Because I am a mother of girls and being a girl is not good enough anymore. Because I cannot send my 3 female minor children into any public or school locker room, restroom or changing facility without a female adult to supervise. Because I fear that my eldest daughter will be housed in a college dorm room with a man who identifies as a woman.

Our freedom is no longer and our safety is compromised. 

When my kids go to middle school, they are routinely told men can be women, and women men. Kids are suspended for misgendering other kids, books are passed out that tell stories of tweens achieving happiness through social transition. Anyone who pushes back is told to reeducate themselves, to be kind, to be tolerant, to stop seeing what they see with their own eyes. Compliance is demanded. Step in line. Allow fetishists to be their true selves they say when it's clearly a misogynist version of womanhood. Gender medicine is pushed everywhere. Wounding little girls' bodies is normalized. Self harm is normalized as "gender affirmation".

Punish, punish, punish, punish, silence, silence, silence. That's what we hear and feel. All four of us feel eliminated, endangered and ignored.

- K.L.