Europe is changing in ways that put women at risk: rising migrant male populations, legal and cultural shifts that downplay sex‑based protections, and institutional choices that prioritize ideology over women’s safety.
I’m grateful to be American, and I love traveling—last June I was in Greece and I plan to see Paris and London. Still, the reality is clear: parts of Europe are becoming risky for women, and that reality affects anyone who cares about female safety. Traveling isn’t the same when basic protections feel eroded.
European governments have allowed large numbers of single, military‑age men from predominantly Muslim countries to arrive, many admitting attitudes toward women that clash with Western norms. That influx has coincided with rising reports of sexual assaults and a sense that authorities often fail to respond in ways women deserve. When public safety weakens, the people who suffer first are usually women and girls.
Courts and officials sometimes appear to excuse or minimize assaults instead of confronting them. In one widely reported case, Hamada Salah, 28, told a woman he was “the perfect age for sex” before he touched her, and Judge Carolyn Scott released him with an order prohibiting him from “deliberately touching any unknown female on public transport.” That kind of response feels like a shrug where a strong answer should be.
Other incidents show a disturbing pattern of cultural excuse-making. Some “asylum seekers” from Afghanistan reportedly tried to justify assault by saying they weren’t “used to a society where women are free and deemed equal to men.” That explanation treats a violent crime as cultural misunderstanding rather than confronting individual criminal responsibility.
The U.K. has faced a years-long probe into grooming gangs where Muslim men targeted and abused British girls for years. Local authorities too often blamed victims or their families, apparently worried about accusations of racism rather than doing what was needed to protect children. When institutions fear political labels more than they fear harm, justice slips away.
On top of that, the European Parliament has been moving in ways that erase sex-based protections by treating mentally ill men who “identify” as women as if they are biological women. That shift rewrites legal and social categories in ways that undermine dedicated women’s services and ignores the sex-based nature of many safety needs.
Part of this looks like a political reaction: after a U.K. high court said biological women have legal standing and trans women do not enjoy those specific protections, activists and bureaucrats set out to counter that ruling through policy. Instead of defending sex-based rights, some officials are changing rules to sidestep the court’s decision and the real concerns it raised.
The practical result is grim: safe spaces—maternity wards, changing rooms, rape crisis centers—are threatened by policies that refuse to acknowledge sex as a meaningful category. Women who insist on sex-based protections can be labeled intolerant, while men who abuse or threaten them are sometimes tolerated because they present as something else.
They have not only destroyed feminism, but they installed a permanent, two-pronged patriarchy: Muslim men and “trans identifying” men. That phrase captures the odd and dangerous coalition forming when cultural sensitivity trumps common sense protections for women.
Where will European women go when their safe spaces are gone? Policies that prize appearing tolerant over enforcing basic standards of behavior leave women without places to turn. This is not abstract; it affects hospitals, shelters, schools, and public transport.
Europe’s political class has decided that appearing tolerant matters more than protecting women. They have redefined “woman” out of existence and excused predators in the name of multicultural sensitivity.
The tragedy is not that Europe made a mistake. It’s that they made a choice and they’re doubling down on it. A continent that once lectured America about enlightened values now struggles to guarantee its own women the most basic freedom: to live without fear.
