Whenever I write about rape the articles are usually pretty popular around my own set of feminists, I’m not sure this will be one of those.

Around my own set of feminists another purity rinsing is happening about immigration and the women who raise concerns. They are worried about the risk to women from misogynistic cultural beliefs, religions, and their growing influence in urban areas.

There were two main, very personal issues that were central in my decision to start writing for a public audience on ‘the gender issue’: one was rape and the other was disability.

I wrote a story in Quillette about my history of sexual abuse and that of my close childhood friend and cousin Nicky. Nicky later became profoundly disabled and needed nursing home care. By the time she died in 2016, I hadn’t had a conversation with Nicky for four years, because she had lost the ability to speak.

When Nicky and I were kids there were no computer games and no entertaining daytime television. We spent many hours in each other’s company simply getting to know each other, looking at each other faces, and talking. By the time she lost her speech, I could read Nicky’s thoughts in her eyes and in the movement of her brow. I could read her energy, and she could read mine.

I knew Nicky carried sexual trauma in her body and I could feel the different ways her body reacted to the staff of the hospitals, psych wards and nursing homes that were her home in those last years.

As soon as I found out that the males could identify into female care roles, I immediately thought of Nicky. From my personal experience with rape and disability, I knew things I couldn’t unknow. Sending a male to take care of Nicky’s intimate care needs would have been state-sanctioned rape, the intention of the carer would be immaterial.

Rape is so common among women and especially poor and disabled women, that I know for a fact that nursing homes and are packed with women who carry sexual trauma.

When I wrote about the experiences Nicky and I had in childhood, transactivists told me that I was weaponising my trauma and Nicky’s illness against the vulnerable men who needed to care for women’s intimate needs as a gender affirmation practice.

Rape is political, disability is political, the way taxpayer money is spent to care for the vulnerable is political, and immigration is political. Therefore, we have a situation where testimony is not heard indifferently, but often chosen to enforce a political narrative.

If people will remember, a number of years ago a group of Lebanese boys and men went on a rape rampage through Sydney, the fact that half of them were named Mohammad or versions of that name, didn’t help community tensions about Muslims and mass migration.

Not once did it occur to me that people identifying the rapist as Lebanese, implicated my Lebanese husband or my Lebanese Muslim family in the crime. I remember feeling disappointed when I found out that the rapists were Lebanese, but in no way, on any level, in any corner of my mind, would it have occurred to me to silence the rape victims in identifying the ethnicity of their attackers or in talking about the culture and religion of their attackers as a contributing factor to the attack. The idea of suggesting such a thing, to save the reputation of Lebanese people, would never occur to me, because Lebanese are very obviously wonderful, hospitable and kind people.

In the feminist world, we talk about rape culture a lot. International cross-culture studies have found that more patriarchal cultures, and cultures that diminish the value of women, do have escalated incidences of sexual violence. The relationship between rape and culture and rape and certain interpretations of religions is well established. The connection between sex and rape is also real, but then there is no connection between race and rape. These concepts are so simple we could explain them to a child.

This is why when a prominent commentator read out a letter on radio referring to ‘Lebanese men’ as ‘vermin’ in 2005 I was disgusted. Tensions in Sydney continued to escalate and in 2005 there were riots in the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla between young white Australian men and Lebanese Australian men.

In 2009, the commentator was forced to apologise to the Lebanese Muslim community and pay $10,000 to the president of the Lebanese Muslim Association after a human rights complaint. The complaint was upheld because race and religion are protected characteristics in Australian law. Lebanese Muslim men have protection in law from discrimination.

Unfortunately, sex is no longer protected in Australian law, nor, by association, are the vulnerabilities of sex to rape. Therefore, we need to be careful who we are silencing and be mindful about who does, and who does not, have power.

I am alarmed when I hear of women who come forward with testimony of rape and violence within Muslim communities, or from Muslim men, being accused of weaponising their trauma against Muslims. It makes me sick when victims are shamed for their speech.

In retrospect, the Lebanese gang rapes, the trial and conviction, the releasing of details and the surrounding outrage, did lead to racial tension and it did lead to some bad feeling toward Lebanese Muslims and Lebanese in general. But to react to this by asking the victims to be silent or to not talk about the cultural or religious aspect of rape would be really stupid and abusive.

Of course, the progressive middle-class in Australia are really stupid and abusive, and the ABC and its media friends have continued to imply that talking about culture and religion in relation to sexual oppression of any kind, is distasteful to their middle-class palate. Therefore, the only people who now talk about the link between rape and specific cultures and religions are the right and the great unwashed (the working-class).

The progressive left is allowed to talk about sexual violence and culture, but only in the pen they are given, and in those boundaries, they talk about almost nothing else.

What the left call ‘gendered violence’ is what white men do to white women. From this elite prison, the left then go around calling women the bad names when they raise concerns about the safety of female bodies around sexist, patriarchal, and backward cultural and religious ideas. Allah forbid we suggest some sexist ideas are sometimes concentrated in particular regions or community groups.

My contention is not that we only talk about dangerous cultural concepts in relation to sexual violence, but that the way to deal with racial tension is not to silence women about cultural and religious aspects of rape or sexual assault.

If Lebanese or South Asian Muslims have a male violence problem in their community, then they need to be called to account, just as the Catholic Church was held accountable for paedophile priests. If they don’t have a problem, then there is no need to stop women talking about it, because it will be easily debunked with public debate. After all, you will remember race and religion are protected in ways sex is not, ie. in the discrimination law.

When the debate about the link between mass migration and ‘grooming gangs’ sparked up in the UK on X, I stepped in to defend women’s right to speak about this issue.

An open letter has been circulating in British gender-critical circles, signed by a group of middle-class correct thinkers, who say they are not as racist as some gender-critical women. I asked for the ‘wrong speak’ evidence, of which I was provided none.

As soon as I started to defend women from claims of far-right association, and their right to criticise a religion (people criticise my religion all the time), I waited for the accusations to come that I am also racist and culturally ignorant and so they did.

The dynamics in UK politics is of course slightly different, and the class volume is turned up a thousand decibels. Maybe it is because Tommy Robinson and the right have been so vocal about the problem of the grooming gangs, but if no one else raised it first, people should be questioning the influence of the progressive culture on the press and the police. This neglect has obviously given the right this opportunity to claim dibs on the issue. I am reminded of Andrea Dworkin’s famous quote that: ‘[To] right-wing men [women] are private property. To left-wing men, [women] are public property.’

Ultimately, unprotected women will run to safety. If sections of the right are offering sanctuaries for women to speak out, you will hear women speaking from that direction. This is why I write in a right-wing magazine. Women have their own side.

It is not that women are leading right on immigration, it is that working-class women live in the real world, and free of the stifling constraints of middle-class respectability, are able to openly agree with the right when they are correct about something.

Women raising concerns about the effect of mass migration on sexual violence in the population is not racist. Please disprove women who make claims of religious and culturally based sexism, bring the data, but stop shamming them, you are embarrassing yourselves and promoting rape culture.

Edie Wyatt writes on culture, politics, and feminism. She tweets at @msediewyatt, blogs on Substack and you can catch her on Welcome to the Dollhouse