Tomorrow I will vote with my vulva.

Some might argue it’s my lady brain, a feminine focus on the trivialities that mean I’m constitutionally unsuited to caring sufficiently about the big manly issues of this election. It’s true, neither small boats nor even the cost of living are at the top of my priorities. For me, I want a world in which the full humanity of the female half of the population is recognised, and that starts with a basic understanding that our rights are not to be dismissed as a culture war issue.

Whether one chooses to acknowledge it or not, part of growing into womanhood is learning that men are physically stronger than us, and that some use their strength to be violent to women. It is a biological fact that shapes every human interaction between the sexes. Indeed, the one in four British women who’ve been raped will carry this understanding with them.

Our foremothers campaigned with this in mind. First wave feminists fought for such basic dignities as single-sex public lavatories to free women from the “urinary leash”. Today, it remains the case that women in parts of the world without sanitation still routinely face sexual assault when they leave their homes to defecate. It might sound trivial to those ignorant of such struggles, but female-only space is essential if women are to continue to take our place in civil society, and if our human rights are to be recognised.

There’s an embarrassment of candidates in my constituency representing every view from compost fondlers to migrant kickers. Yet despite this variety of political choice, only one woman is standing. Ironically the party she represents is unwilling to explain the basic biological difference between her and her male opponents.

Meanwhile the incumbent Tory candidate can kiss my x goodbye. For much of the past decade my elected representative has refused to meet with me to discuss the threat posed by trans activism to safeguarding, statistics and sanity. That the county hospital, local police and women’s services in his constituency all have policies which recognise gender self-identification was of no interest to him. After pleading for a meeting about the spike in referrals to the (now closed and disgraced) Tavistock I was permitted to meet with his assistant who lightly promised to pass the message on.

Perhaps had I been a testicle-owning ejaculator my warnings about trans activism might have warranted attention

When I emailed to warn about the influence of Stonewall on the democratic process the response of my MP was to suggest I don’t understand how lobbying works. Later, when I sent him a Times article I’d written showing that a Stonewall supporting senior aide to Boris Johnson had his sticky fingers on the Prime Minister’s despatch box, I was told that he didn’t listen to “media rumours”. It was at that point I gave up. Perhaps had I been a testicle-owning ejaculator my warnings about trans activism might have warranted attention.

Historically the men of the left have told women their rights could wait until after the revolution. Indeed, some infamously suggested that our role in the revolution was to be prone. Meanwhile, to turn to the conservative voices of today, the likes of Matt Walsh are content to lazily blame feminists for our oppression, claiming it is “a murderous and evil ideology [that] refuses to be honest with the world. Feminism has brought about destruction, misery, confusion.” In reality, the theories of sex denialists like Judith Butler have as much to do with the struggle for women’s rights, for recognition of our basic humanity, as Rishi Sunak does the Taliban. Both, after all, are within the conservative tradition.

Ultimately, a sex-based analysis is no less relevant than one based on class. Unlike people’s relationship to the “means of production” which can change, our biology does not. Yet the concerns of feminists are sneered at as side-issues, as domestic, as personal not political.

So tomorrow, I will be one of many feminists refusing to participate in a political pantomime that ignores the reality of women’s lives. Because to my limited womanly mind, those in power who are unable or unwilling to even define “woman” ought not to be trusted with our votes.