Defining moments in the erasure of womanhood

Around the world, in many ways, women are being undermined, silenced, violated and erased.

Iranian woman Ahoo Daryaei in her underwear, walking around the campus grounds of her university in Tehran.

I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t believe that being born a woman was anything other than a clear win. Especially being born a woman in Australia.

I was raised among strong women who believed we could and should be anything we aspired to. The only career advice my father ever gave me was simple: “Gemmy, whatever it is you choose to become, I don’t care, but if I ever catch you being half-arsed about it, there will be trouble.” This is, of course, the sanitised version. Bruno’s language was more colourful.

Likewise, I’ve never really thought that women had anything to be concerned about, in terms of our gender and our identity as the species-critical cohort of adult human females. Until now, that is.

Recently I’ve found myself increasingly troubled by the cumulative effect of certain things that in isolation I have nervously avoided considering. Let me explain.

I never imagined a day when defining what a woman was would be up for grabs. I never imagined a day when female spaces and places were similarly at risk. I certainly never imagined a day when I would form the view that womanhood, broadly, was under threat of systemic erasure.

Before you pooh-pooh me, I will qualify by saying it looks different depending on where you live and what culture you live under. From undermining mothers and motherhood in Western countries such as ours, to banning women from speaking in public and denying them the freedom to dress as they please in places such as Iran and Afghanistan. All of it, tentacles of the same octopus, the same creeping evil that I am convinced seeks ultimately not just to undermine women but to erase us, our womanhood and our femininity.

Unless you’re living under a large rock, you’ll have seen the footage this past week of young Iranian woman Ahoo Daryaei walking around the campus grounds of her university in Tehran. She’s dressed only in her bra and knickers. Her steps are slow, deliberate and defiant. Her name means Deer of the Sea, as beautiful as her actions are breathtakingly courageous in the face of the abhorrent, women-hating, violent Iranian regime run by savages who count among the world’s greatest human rights violators. A regime welcomed and feted by the UN, I should add.

At the time of writing, nobody knows her fate. The regime says she’s not well, has been taken to a hospital for treatment. I think the word they’re looking for is torture.

Iranian woman Ahoo Daryaei walks around her university in Tehran.

The Iranian regime has been murdering, maiming and disappearing women for decades. It has been denying them agency and independence. As does Hamas with the women of Gaza. Hamas, a proscribed terrorist group in Australia, is also the government of Gaza, a place where women have half the legal rights of men and intra-family sexual violence is legal.

As you read these words, five young women remain hostage somewhere in Gaza. We’ve spoken about them before: Liri, Karina, Agam, Daniella and Naama. Whisper their names, and just for a moment imagine they are your own children, your girlfriend, your sister. There are 101 hostages still being held and yes, there are men also being held, but it’s the women I want to talk about.

There are now troves of evidence of hostages being raped and sexually abused by Hamas terrorists and the civilians who are complicit. Even the corrupt UN has now reluctantly accepted it. I can’t bring myself to think about what they continue to endure while the world seems to have forgotten.

Released hostage Mia Schem stared down the UN Security Council this past week. “The UN has not lifted a finger to free the hostages, you sit here in your comfortable chairs debating the lives of my friends as if they are a political issue.”

Where are the feminists cheering her on? Silent and complicit.

From one side of the globe to another, it’s happening in various forms and degrees of severity.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has banned women from showing their faces, speaking in public, speaking to one another or being heard, under the guise of “virtue laws”. In response to international outcry, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the criticism was “arrogant” and non-Muslims needed to better understand sharia law. Oh, we understand all right – and we say no.

These are the obvious violations of womanhood that are hidden in plain sight but for the most part have been met with a shrug and a few cross words by the international community and progressive feminists. Just as they did when Italian boxer Angela Carini was made to apologise to her Algerian opponent, Imane Khelif, at the Paris Olympics in August.

But last week a report claimed Khelif was in fact a biological man. French publication Le Correspondant reported that leaked medical records from last year showed Khelif had neither ovaries nor a uterus but male sex organs. Other publications reporting on the story detailed how the medical report was compiled by French and Algerian doctors who determined that Khelif had a “5a-reductase-2 deficiency”, a condition affecting only biological men.

Khelif is now taking legal action about the latest reporting and the International Olympic Committee is dodging fire as I write.

Meanwhile, US swimmer Riley Gaines continues to advocate for female athletes against considerable resistance from women and men.

All these examples are, in isolation, disturbing enough. Cumulatively? Terrifying.

This isn’t a study or a comment on being trans, or anyone’s religion or anything other than to note there is a pattern around the world in many different shapes and forms that speaks to this attack on womanhood. Nobody is having commensurate conversations about men. There are none that question the biological legitimacy of manhood, none that affect men’s sports, and nowhere are men being forced to cover themselves from head to toe and denied the right to show their faces in public. This stuff happens only to women.

Every human deserves dignity and agency and the ability to live their lives in peace. Women? It feels like we’re the ones who are being cut out of that equation.

When are we going to have an honest, fearless conversation about this?

Where are the feminists? It’s far from empirical evidence, but from my observation it’s conservative women leading this fight, those of us who are constantly told our views don’t count or are bigoted. Or, in my case, that I’m just a tool of the patriarchy. Unsurprisingly, that insult was hurled by a woman on the progressive left. Let me say this, if I’m a tool, I’m happy to be a hammer when I need to be, but the only toolbox it belongs to is my own.

I don’t get it, I really don’t. We have so much to lose by letting this slow, creeping, ugly march go unchallenged; there’s no time to lose in turning the tide. Let’s give ourselves permission to have a conversation about this, an honest one.