Women have an extra reason for wanting single-sex spaces when they are vulnerable or naked: as protection against male sexual violence and harassment. Their spaces do not constitute privilege, but revolt against the age-old oppression of females by males. And if you really must analogise race and sex, you should line up the two oppressed groups: women and black people. Feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye does so very tellingly in The Politics of Reality, her collection of essays published in 1983: ‘it is always the privilege of the master to enter the slave’s hut. The slave who decides to
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