I am a psychologist in an outpatient mental health center that specializes in treating post-traumatic stress-related conditions. The clientele is overwhelmingly girls and women who have experienced sexual violence.

Young girls with these histories have never had safe boundaries and have difficulty identifying unsafe situations, and are at risk. Part of their treatment is helping them to identify potentially unsafe situations and pay attention to cues in the environment and within themselves.

One of the other clinical supervisors has taken lead on labeling the women’s restroom “all females and female-identifying persons.” It is true that the [men who identify as women] who come to our clinic have had significant trauma. However, these individuals are a small minority of our patients.

My opinion is they can be directed to a single-user accessible restroom that can also be labeled “all genders.”

Girls and women in virtually all cases can correctly identify who is biologically male regardless of attire and gender identity. Now, we are in a position of engaging in counter-therapeutic interventions and asking young sex abuse survivors to override a danger signal we are trying to help them attend to. A biological male in a restroom would reasonably be considered a higher risk. This action sacrifices the well-being of girls to affirm [men who identify as women].

If it isn’t enough to offer safety and access to an all-gender restroom, if we must affirm this class of males’ identity over any other concern, girls and women lose safety, dignity, and the right to consent to which males enter their space.

Letters From the Front is a new series from WoLF curating stories from women about how “gender identity” ideology has impacted them. We’ll share new letters, submitted anonymously, each week.

WoLF does not necessarily endorse the content of Letters.

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