A few days ago I read two articles that gave me hope. One was about FINA barring trans-identifying men in women’s swimming competitions. This came after Lia Thomas won at the NCAA and made his female swim teammates uncomfortable in the locker rooms. The second one was The International Rugby League also not allowing men who identify as women in international rugby women’s competitions with talk of other sports governing bodies doing the same.
Finally some common sense!
In a society that claims to be progressive, I will never understand why we sacrificed these women and girls on the altar of an ideology that overwhelming benefits only men. From reading those two articles, are women’s voices finally being heard? Have the erosion of women and girls’ rights finally stopped somewhat in time to protect our children’s generation?
My hope that things were changing in the west started to plummet with news of what was happening here in Taiwan. An announcement of another seminar on “No-surgery Gender-changing” appeared on Facebook. This seminar is titled “My Gender My Decision— on the case of gender-changing without forced surgery”. The Facebook announcement says that the seminar will host the lawyer from the first Self-ID case and go through how that case progressed. A Youtube vlogger/lawyer will comment on the importance and the future of Self-ID.
The announcement also states, “Both online and in-person participation is welcome. Everyone is welcome to register.”
On the surface, it sounds like they are inviting the public’s participation and opinion on this issue. Yet, things are set in place to make this seminar as inaccessible as possible for the public.
To enter this seminar you will first need to register. Upon registering, you will need to receive an invitation based on the organizers’ discretion. Only after your invitation has been accepted, will you be required to enter before the seminar starts or you will not be able to enter at all. The seminar is scheduled for 7/1 and starts at 7:30 pm on a Friday evening when most people are returning home from work or mothers such as myself are taking care of the children. If you miss the 7:30 deadline, you are blocked from entering.
Every member of the public has a right to know how policies such as self-ID will affect women and girls such as my daughter and me. However, they provide little to no information and even purposefully block the general public from participating in the discussion. Because of this lack of transparency, it’s vital for websites like https://noselfidtw.cc/en/ to shed some light on what’s happening around the world and how it could affect women right here in Taiwan.
It makes me furious that our concerns are not being heard at all. How can they keep spreading this agenda that is harming Taiwanese women and girls like my daughter and purposefully leaving the public—especially mothers like myself—in the dark? These policies based on men’s declaration alone will affect half of Taiwan’s population and put thousands of girls and women at risk. It angers me that there is no transparency to the public on this issue as we saw with the university’s female dormitories. Mothers and fathers need to speak up now and make their concerns known. If we don’t participate in decisions that will affect our girls, others will do it for us.
