Ruth Wishart: Women spend too much of their lives being scared

Or perhaps that should be IF they grow up since, in some parts of the world, it’s still not unknown to kill off female babies pre or post natally. In parts of the world, boy babies, being generally stronger, likely to earn more than their sisters and not ­expected to provide a dowry on marriage are considered of greater long-term value.

Yet even in “enlightened” societies we find that there is still a gender pay gap which remains stubbornly un-eroded ­despite ­legislation specifically passed to close it. Women, you see, will take time off the career ladder to go off and have ­babies themselves, and probably, mostly rear them too.

Obviously, these children were the ­result of some miraculous self-conception, since there is no comparable evidence of ­fatherhood carrying a fiscal penalty. ­Indeed, even when paternal leave was ­introduced and partially adopted, many men felt unable to grasp the opportunity fully, lest their prospects of advancement were affected.

Their employers too seemed to have a slender grasp of how babies are made. Or chose to ignore the fact that even in this in-vitro fertilisation age, it still takes two.

Girl children will quickly learn that it’s “unfeminine” to display too much in the way of personal ambition. There was a ­telling thread on social media last week which showed clothes – not just any clothes, M&S clothes – still being sold showing how boys could be pilots and superheroes and girls could be sugary rather than spicey. Not really much of an advance from pink or blue sleepsuits.

In America, young Black boys are ­given “the talk” about why it could be life-threatening to answer a cop back. There and here and everywhere else, young girls are given a variation on this warning about what not to let boys/men do to them.

Into this already complex mix come the difficulties faced by young women and boys who are same-sex attracted. And who faced decades of hostility for straying from the ­official script.

Gays and lesbians know all about the ­perils of being a minority, just as ­people of colour do, and people facing both ­physical and mental disabilities which, in the latter case, we are only beginning to understand.

Yet, it sometimes appears that none of the above have loud enough voices ­compared with trans activists. They are apparently the most abused and ­discriminated against minority of all. Tiny but vocal.

Among the people who suffer from the full-on toxicity of this activism are trans women and men who, despite all the prejudice and ludicrous barriers put in their way, managed to transition and live the lives they wanted to. On their most ­fervent wish list is not a desire to become involuntary poster people for the cause.

Also in the firing line are adult females who have the temerity to pop a head above this dangerous parapet. If they are lucky, they are merely branded gender-critical. More usually they are subjected to ritual abuse and labelled transphobic. Not to mention given unsavoury details of what fate lies in store if they don’t shut up. Trust me, you do not want to read some of the threats.

It mattered not if you supported trans rights, and the obvious need to civilise the transition process, but had merely ­wondered aloud how to prevent women’s own rights being impinged upon.

It’s long been accepted to everyone in this debate that the problem is not ­transwomen who threaten nobody, but predatory men who could and have taken advantage of legislation which was never designed to offer them opportunities to be bad actors.

Yet this is wilfully and regularly ­misinterpreted.

For instance, when the UK Equalities and Human Rights Commission ­suggested last week that it might help the debate were it to be noted that the term sex be regarded as biological sex, it became the cue for another full-blown furore.

It was not a suggestion that ­pre-existing trans rights should stop being ­protected, or that anyone would be unable to seek a certificate allowing them to be ­legally acknowledged as living in their ­preferred gender. Rather it was an ­attempt to ­allay the concerns of those trying to protect women’s rights. The greatly ­misunderstood majority.

Because there is now little doubt that women’s rights are being ­systematically dismantled. We have seen how many States in America have used the ­Supreme Court rejection of the Roe v Wade ­legislation not just to criminalise ­abortion per se, and any women ­seeking a ­termination, but also any medical ­practitioner who assists them.

In Scotland, we have yet to pass buffer zone legislation which would protect women from protesters when they seek all kinds of reproductive health care. In some parts of South America, there are women being charged with and jailed for infanticide having miscarried!

In sport, top female athletes are ­routinely traduced for trying to protect their sport and their podiums from trans athletes who were relatively mediocre performers when male, but still benefit from having gone through a male puberty. They are stronger and have greater lung power and heart function.

That physiological fact is what gave many women a head-scratching moment when the sports behemoth Nike paid a young trans woman to promote their new sports bra as an influencer who would reach parts of their client base not ­hitherto signed up to the brand. ­Dylan Mulvaney’s hundreds of thousands of ­followers could be relied upon to ­access her account of her personal transition. They would watch her home video of ­exercising in a Nike bra. By selling a ­product she ­inadvertently became one.

ONLY now have some sports belatedly tried to make the playing field level for women who have devoted their lives to achieving success, only to be outperformed by those who developed in a different way when younger.

Trans and non-binary athletes are ­entitled to compete at the highest ­possible level. The how of that is still to be ­determined. Yet should their ­entitlement be able to outrank that of female-born sports stars?

It might be useful to recall that when Helena Kennedy presented her report on misogyny in Scotland there was some genuine incomprehension. What was all the fuss about, some decent, caring men asked? We’re not anti-women.

And they’re not. It was about the ­casual misogyny that is so often deployed in the workplace and the golf clubs. More particularly it was about that minority of men who are sexual predators. And about those men who use their superior strength to terrify the women with whom they cohabit.

It’s about girls and women being ­perennially fearful when walking home alone. It’s about the victims of domestic abuse who quite literally have nowhere to run to, most especially if there are ­children involved.

Girls and women spend altogether too much of their lives being scared. Scared of predators, scared of abusers, scared of losing their job if their kids get sick, and now scared of examining a family budget always in the red.

So before you go into overdrive over this plea for the female majority, please remember that every section of society has some pain to confront.

Getting through life as unscathed as possible isn’t some kind of ranking event. It’s not a competition. Caring ­passionately about one group doesn’t indicate hostility to another.

Even a heathen like me knows that ­loving your neighbour as yourself is a pretty fine commandment.