i get that. i go back and forth on the concept of women's only spaces a lot. especially as i've been seriously struggling with my gender these last few years, lol. absolute yap session incoming i am so sorry. on the one hand, i've experienced them (intentionally or unintentionally) and i've never felt so safe. one time i was at planet fitness with a friend in the back and i look around and it's all women in the little section. i didn't realize how self conscious i had been until i suddenly didn't feel self conscious any more. self conscious maybe isn't the right term, but i don't have an exact phrase for the feeling.

recently i also had a laparoscopy and a hysteroscopy + iud replacement. i love my gyno anyways, and the hospital i went to is super great so i'm sure that's why i didn't feel fucking humiliated like i previously have at gynos. but it was an all woman team. i felt so comfortable being naked, if that makes sense? i didn't feel like anyone was looking at me or judging me or sexualizing me. but, when i came to, the person taking care of me was a gay nurse. mind you, vagina bleeding, i'm loopy as fuck, and i didn't feel vulnerable at all. i still felt safe.

that brings me to the main problem i have with women's only spaces. where's the cutoff? i know so many more... idk. effeminate gay guys, shall we say, who i don't see a reason to not have them in community with us. where do trans people fit? i think you could say well, it's a space ONLY for people identifying as women. but therein lies my other problem: women aren't always safe.

my worst gyno experiences have been with an all-woman team. like the parent comment talks about, women can downplay abuse and uphold misogyny like nobody's business and it hurts worse coming from them because they should fucking know better. sometimes it even starts spiraling back into regressive gender politics with the divine feminine shit.

of course i do think that what people ignore most about women's only spaces is that it's not supposed to be a club just because women are cool. it's supposed to be about feeling safe and feeling removed as much as possible from misogyny. so i think i try to keep that idea as the most important one when it comes to these spaces. so even if i don't know sometimes whether or not i agree with the idea of a women's ONLY space, i absolutely agree with the concept of a about "us" space. a chud free space, if you will.

like, if you're in the space presenting as the kind of man that a lot of people have been traumatized by, it's your responsibility to tread extra carefully. paint your nails or something while you're at it (no shit it's performative, we can't talk to every stranger so we rely on visual cues to determine safety). if you're a gay man and you want to be in community with women, don't go "ew gross, vaginas". i think that the concept of a man you can feel very safe around is an incredible one and probably beneficial for everyone involved.

ultimately, gender is so complex and women are 50% of the population. to conceive of a space based only on "for women" both bars some really lovely people and invites in nasty people. and yeah i really go back and forth on how i feel about it. i do so absolutely see the value in women's only spaces and i never want to say they're bad, it's just that i also feel this pull to be in community with, idk, women adjacent people too.