I lived in Britain for over a decade, but I’m not from there and my personal references are from Northern and Southern Europe.
In simple terms, Britain is incredibly sexist (even compared to Southern Europe), but they practiced what’s called “Benevolent Sexism” - “women are emotional sensitive creatures which must be protected”.
The “benevolence” here is the mask covering the denial of agency of women and of their capabilities (for example, this very argument is deployed to claim that due to their “sensitivity” women can’t handle the harsh environment of corporate top management) - women aren’t just treated as “less capable” than men, they’re expected to try to fit with the image, so you see a lot more and a lot thicker “performative masking” on at least English women (especially middle class and above) than you see in Northern or Southern Europe - women in Britain aren’t supposed to be emotionally strong individuals fully confident in themselves for being themselves and not caring about what other people think of them.
So yeah, from that discriminative take on women comes that idea (that also ends up in Law) that one has to “protect” women by treating them in a different way from the rest purely because of their gender (which is why “solutions” in Britain for sexism are invariably of the “treat women differently” kind), and on such an environment of sexist thinking and practice it’s pretty natural that the issue of “what makes a woman a woman” is taken to extremes and is framed as one of “protecting women”.
The hilarous bit is that, lacking references from having lived elsewhere with totally different cultural expectations on women, most Brits (including women) never EVER examine that axiom that “women are more fragile and thus must be protected” so genuinelly think that all these assumptions about women and the discriminatory behaviour “to protect them” is not sexism but the very opposite of it.
In such an context and under such an anti-egalitarian take on gender, transfobia anchored on “protect women” and even parroted by the local “Feminists” is very much a natural thing.
I lived in Britain for over a decade, but I’m not from there and my personal references are from Northern and Southern Europe.
In simple terms, Britain is incredibly sexist (even compared to Southern Europe), but they practiced what’s called “Benevolent Sexism” - “women are emotional sensitive creatures which must be protected”.
The “benevolence” here is the mask covering the denial of agency of women and of their capabilities (for example, this very argument is deployed to claim that due to their “sensitivity” women can’t handle the harsh environment of corporate top management) - women aren’t just treated as “less capable” than men, they’re expected to try to fit with the image, so you see a lot more and a lot thicker “performative masking” on at least English women (especially middle class and above) than you see in Northern or Southern Europe - women in Britain aren’t supposed to be emotionally strong individuals fully confident in themselves for being themselves and not caring about what other people think of them.
So yeah, from that discriminative take on women comes that idea (that also ends up in Law) that one has to “protect” women by treating them in a different way from the rest purely because of their gender (which is why “solutions” in Britain for sexism are invariably of the “treat women differently” kind), and on such an environment of sexist thinking and practice it’s pretty natural that the issue of “what makes a woman a woman” is taken to extremes and is framed as one of “protecting women”.
The hilarous bit is that, lacking references from having lived elsewhere with totally different cultural expectations on women, most Brits (including women) never EVER examine that axiom that “women are more fragile and thus must be protected” so genuinelly think that all these assumptions about women and the discriminatory behaviour “to protect them” is not sexism but the very opposite of it.
In such an context and under such an anti-egalitarian take on gender, transfobia anchored on “protect women” and even parroted by the local “Feminists” is very much a natural thing.