Defending Women's Spaces Quotes

“As long as men's violence against women is present in society in anything like its current prevalence, we need specialist services for women, girls and children who have been subjected to that violence. To be effective and to offer the best benefit and hope of recovery for some of the most harmed, those services must be single sex.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“The concept of gender equality is an oxymoron. Gender is a hierarchy. Sex is the axis of sex-based oppression and gender is the biggest tool in the oppression box.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“The struggles of women are not a single-issue matter. Women do not lead single-issue lives, and for the majority of women, the inequalities intersecting their lives are multiple. Neither do we need to deny the rights of others to prioritise the rights of women. We do not need to deny that males can be victims of abuse. We do not need to deny males and people with transgender identities the right to develop specialist services in order to assert the boundaries of our own. Putting women first is not hate.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“[...] The number of transgender people serving prison sentences rose from 70 in 2016, when the data was first collected, to 139 in 2018, then 163 in 2019, and finally to 197 in 2020 [...] This represents a 181% increase in 5 years. 158 (80%) were males who identified as women while 20% identified as male.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“[...] In the space of 50 years, we started from a place of formidable feminist collective energy and action pulling together and creating new services to support women who had been subjected to men's violence. Within a couple of generations, we have come to a place where many, if not the majority, of those working in the same organisations and supporting later generations of victim-survivors of men's violence seem to have lost their political edge. What happened to the willingness or ability to stand up for women's sex-based rights and protections, to the understanding of the patriarchal context of men's violence against women?”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“[...] Criminal behaviours of those who had legally and medically transitioned from men to trans women followed the pattern of male offending and those who had transitioned from women to trans men continued with female pattern offending. Males who had transitioned were 18 times more likely to be convicted of violent crime than females.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“People can be incredibly resistant to considering facts that don't fit with their world view and the belief that women are as violent and abusive as men is one that too many seem to be unwilling to let go of. Sex differences in intimate partner homicide rates (homicide includes killings sentenced as both murders and manslaughters) show that so-called 'sex symmetry' is a myth.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“Another piece of research found that when women were reported to the police for abuse, which men often to as a form of attack, they (women) were arrested to a disproportionate degree given the fewer incidents where they were perpetrators. The study found that men were arrested for one in every ten incidents, whilst women were arrested for one in every three incidents.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“When I talk about sex differences and reporting or domestic and sexual violence, people often suggest that the differences are exaggerated because it's such a taboo for men to report. Not only does this fail to recognise that reporting abuse is also a taboo for many women, but research has found the opposite to be true: that men overestimate their victimisation and underestimate their own violence, whereas women are more likely to overestimate their own use of violence but underestimate their victimisation. Women normalise, discount, minimise, excuse their partner's domestic and sexual violence against them, and they're more likely to find ways to make it their fault.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“It is not possible to have sex equality for all in a society when one's sex is the one that is for sale - a commodity or service - and the other sex is the consumer, and almost always the purveyor (pimp); consumers have rights over and above the goods and services that they buy. Legalising prostitution isn't the answer either.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“Feminism is the fight for the liberation of all women as a class from subjugation under patriarchy.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“[...] It is not transphobic, in my opinion, to believe that people cannot change sex, that women's oppression is based on our sex, and that gender is a hierarchy. Sex is the axis of sex-based oppression and gender is the biggest tool in the box. Feminism is ultimately optimistic and offers the hope of change and a better world.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“Disagreeing with the beliefs of someone is not the same as saying they don't exist.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“Transgender people should be accepted as they are, but not as the sex they are not.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“If we accept the concept of "cis" women, we're accepting that the class of 'woman' can be mixed sex.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces

“Whether or not individual men pose harm, it benefits women if all males are excluded from some spaces.”
― Karen Ingala Smith, Defending Women's Spaces