IN recent years it has become fashionable in predominantly English-speaking “progressive” circles and establishments to feign bewilderment at basic evolutionary facts related to our species. Often, this bewilderment is specifically reserved for only one half of the population. Despite millions of years of mammalian ancestry preceding us, it is only now that the female homo sapiens is apparently a convoluted, nonsensical entity.

A cherished argument to prop up this convoluted, nonsensical entity is that female people everywhere at any point in time do not share exactly the same experiences, therefore a “woman” can encompass any male who lays claim to the label.

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It is true that women come from all kinds of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, and as a result they will have been shaped as individuals by various experiences over the course of their lives. Women differ in our beliefs, political values, personalities and ethics.

Yet, looking at events unfolding in Afghanistan in recent days, many women around the world feel a shared sense of dread and heartache for the women trapped in such intolerable circumstances. The sickening, sinking feeling is an instinctive one that bypasses all pseudo-intellectualism. Strip away the relatively superficial differences between women and that sickening, sinking feeling is an instinctive one precisely because there are some experiences that only female humans can be subjected to. For better or worse, there is a common reality that no convoluted, nonsensical definition can erase.

Looking an Afghan woman in the eyes, what connects her suffering with our struggles here in Scotland? The embodied reality of womanhood that transcends time, distance and cultures. She is me and I am her. It is a visceral bond that no male can ever identify into and no female can ever identify out of.

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It is only by an accident of fate that I live in the UK. I am one of the rare winners in the grotesque lottery of life. Life for women in the UK has been shaped by its own cultural and religious heritage. Its historical trajectory enabled British women to organise and win incredible gains for their daughters in a way that women from many other countries can only dream of doing.

The plight of Afghan women is a stark reminder of the iron fist of oppression that men can wield against women on the basis of our sex. It is an uncomfortable truth that without the majority of men on our side, women truly are at the mercy of the vicious whims and savage violence of men. My heart breaks for the women of Afghanistan – so many of them had a taste of freedom, opportunity and being a person in their own right, and now it has evaporated almost overnight. I know what is happening to them could happen to me too, if circumstances enabled it. The incel attack in Plymouth reveals the deep hatred and desires of subjugation that some men harbour for women.

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Far too many women in the UK take their precious freedoms for granted. Yes, there’s much that can be better, but it’s important to realise just how rare it is to live in a time and place where women have so many rights and protections within a stable, wealthy society and where most men view us as worthy of full personhood.

Some women are so intoxicated by these freedoms – freedoms they themselves did not win – that they think it’s great fun to indulge in all kinds of outlandish luxury beliefs, such as biological sex being a social construct, women are not oppressed on the basis of sex, and that being a woman is nothing but a feeling and set of sexist stereotypes. They have feasted at the table of liberty for so long that they think they can ignore reality by chanting mantras and “queering” words.

Bloated by their gluttony, they cheer the erosion of the same rights and protections that enabled their arrogance and ignorance. Their fingers and mouths greasy with the remnants of the fruits of labour of the women that came before them, they sneer at those who understand the precarious nature of our rights and personhood and seek to protect it. They might belch out insults and smears in between mouthfuls, but deep in their hearts they know they would never willingly trade places with Afghan women, because all the queer theory in the world won’t save them from the slaughterhouse.

Mel T
Edinburgh