The One UN Representative Fighting for Women’s Rights

United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Reem Alsalem (L) and U.N. Human Rights Officer Orlagh McCann (R) address a press conference in Ankara, Turkey, on July 27, 2022. (Aden Altan/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

We’re constantly told that trans women pose no threat to biological women—this is simply not true. Women’s rights activists are regularly targeted and physically assaulted by aggressive trans activists. This fact isn’t lost on Reem Alsalem, a humanitarian who was appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls back in 2021.

As I reported last month, Alsalem recently released a strongly worded statement (pdf) condemning the many ways in which members of the trans community continue to intimidate biological women.

Alsalem’s decision to release such a statement was a brave one. She has been targeted by trans activists in the past. Moreover, her current employer, the United Nations, is big on political correctness. When it comes to championing trans-friendly issues and trans-friendly jargon, the intergovernmental organization is only too happy to oblige. The UN regularly releases statements lamenting the scourge of transphobia, and what steps must be taken to make the world a more trans-inclusive place. Today, it seems, all we talk about are the rights of trans people. But what about the rights of all the other 7+ billion people who don’t identify as trans? What about the rights of biological women, for example?

This brings us back to Alsalem, who has spent the best part of 25 years fighting for the rights of women and girls all across the world. I reached out to her for comment on this rather important matter.

She told me that she released the powerful statement because she was inundated with stories of women, girls, and their allies being punished for expressing their views on sex, gender, and gender identity.

“These stories,” she said, “kept emerging on screen and multiplying.”

Moreover, said Alsalem, she couldn’t ignore “the level of noise, sabotage, threat of violence, or actual use of violence that kept becoming louder and louder.”

It’s odd that many of the people and organizations attacking Alsalem are eager to champion the rights of women in Afghanistan and Iran, but less eager to champion the rights of the women in their own countries.

Make no mistake about it: Attacks on biological females are real. They have been occurring for years. Alsalem mentioned a few examples, including Helen Steel, who was attacked at the London Anarchist Bookfair in 2017 for helping women who were distributing gender critical leaflets. Meanwhile, in France, in 2021 a group of female survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse were attacked by activists and had eggs thrown at them.

“Similarly, in Spain,” said Alsalem, “from year to year, the 8th of March is accompanied by outbursts of attacks from transgender activists on women who advocate for single-sex protections for women.”

In March of this year, in Auckland, New Zealand, British activist Kellie-Jay Keen was attacked at the Let Women Speak Event.

“While I do not agree with some of the views and sentiments of Ms. Keen,” commented Alsalem, “we must acknowledge her right to speak without violence or intimidation.”

In the United States, around the very same time Keen was being attacked, Riley Gaines, a swimmer who regularly advocates for female-only categories in sports, was ambushed and hit by screaming trans activists. Far-left transgender activists—now known as “TRANTIFA,“ a portmanteau of ”trans“ and ”ANTIFA"—pose a significant threat to the public.

I asked Alsalem to define the word “woman.” She wasted no time in responding: “adult human female.” “At least that’s what it used to mean up until very recently,” she added.

“Female,” clearly relating to biological sex, has been considered an equivalent of “woman,” reflecting many other non-English languages where the distinction between female and woman doesn’t exist. For example, Alsalem explained, “in some Indo-European languages, female reproductive biology is even embedded in the word woman, which can be traced to the word ‘life’ (as in, giving life, giving birth). Think of the famous slogan Jin, Jiyan, Azadî—Women, Life, Freedom—where Jin (Woman) and Jiyan (Life) have the same root.”

This global, universal, and historical understanding of “woman” being equivalent to “female,” she told me, is what informed the recognition that women have faced discrimination due to their sex, which is at the heart of international human rights frameworks such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) convention.

In recent times, however, with categories of personal identification changing and expanding, and new terms constantly being introduced into the common lexicon, the word “woman,” like so many other words, has been corrupted.

All of this leaves us asking one rather important question: Can anything be done to bridge the divide between the trans community and the non-trans community?

“First of all,” responded Alsalem, “we have to remember that we are speaking of some radical trans activists that do not speak for nor represent the entire trans community.”

Many trans persons and their allies, she added, don’t support them or their questionable agendas. Alsalem believes that there are many things that “can and should be done” to bridge the aforementioned divide. These include opening up spaces that allow everyone to speak to the issues in a respectful, dignified manner, without anyone jumping to injure or cancel them.

“The issues at stake are too important, far reaching, and complex not to be discussed and debated by the whole of society,” said Alsalem.

Finally, she argues that “this process of discussion, reflection, and legislation shouldn’t be left only to parliaments or political parties and their political bartering but wider and more representative, consultative, and inclusive processes of consulting citizens in any given society.”

Perhaps these matters should be voted on in a referendum, since they have implications for broader society.

Recently, in the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, a UK-based journalist, discussed how the introduction of citizen juries or assemblies could reinvigorate liberal democracies and help decide contentious issues. He referenced their use to decide on the scope of abortion rights in my home country of Ireland. On trans-related matters, something similar could be employed. Alsalem likes the idea, as do I.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.