Lawmakers are frequently called upon to revisit and revise laws to adapt to changing times. This is one of those times.

Late last year, three women complained to the Xenia, Ohio , police about a naked man in the ladies’ locker room at their YMCA, including when little girls were present. The man, who claims to identify as a woman, said he had been told by local YMCA officials that he could use the ladies’ locker room.

The city attorney brought charges against him for violating Ohio’s law against indecent exposure. But the overhanging abdomen of this 5’8”, 350-pound defendant reportedly concealed his groin area, making the complainants unable to swear they had seen it, so after a multiweek trial, he was found not guilty last month.

In March, three 14-year-old high school girls in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin , were surprised to find an 18-year-old male in the girls’ locker room after their swim class. As they were showering in their swimsuits before changing into dry clothes, the male approached, took off his clothes, and showered next to them, making no effort to conceal his nakedness.

When this was brought to the attention of school officials, their only concern was for the male student.

The impact on the freshman girls of having a naked man showering with them in their locker room was not given a moment’s consideration. Fortunately, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is looking into the school district’s inaction in this case.

And let’s not forget Lia née Will Thomas , who, in addition to selfishly depriving female swimmers of their rightful and hard-won and well-deserved places in record books and on winners’ platforms, also deprived them of the privacy to which they were entitled in their locker rooms.

These and innumerable similar events around the country in recent years illustrate the impotence of current laws to protect women and girls. The intrusion of a male into a female-only space comprises two separate offenses: the male’s presence where females do not expect him to be, and the male’s ability to see females in a setting where they rightly expect privacy.

The normal and nearly universal reaction girls and women experience upon suddenly discovering a male in a female-only space is a sharp intake and holding of breath, and heightened vigilance to the possible imminent need to protect oneself, or at least one’s modesty. Certain spaces are reserved exclusively for females in recognition of their special vulnerability in them.

Most laws punishing indecent exposure were drafted with a particular scenario in mind: the man in the park wearing nothing but a trench coat and flashing it open to shock whatever woman or child is unlucky enough to be within range. These laws should stay on the books and be enforced.

But they are insufficient to deal with current challenges.

An element of the offense can be the intent to shock. But a man who claims to identify as a woman will certainly also claim he does not intend to shock. And he will cast aspersions at any woman who is, in fact, shocked by his presence in a women-only space, requiring her to defend herself against charges of bigotry.

Most jurisdictions have laws punishing “peeping toms” or other surreptitious invasions of privacy. Like laws punishing indecent exposure, peeping tom laws were drafted envisioning a particular scenario: a man (usually) watching through a window or peephole at unsuspecting girls or women in a state of undress. These laws obviously cannot deal with the invasion of privacy that occurs when a male actually physically and openly intrudes upon female private spaces.

The invasion is not surreptitious. It is in your face. They dare you to call them out. And if you do, they impugn you as a hateful bigot.

Transradical sympathizers rail that it is cruel to exclude from women’s spaces a person who feels he belongs there. Rarely, if ever, and certainly not in the Biden administration’s proposed Title IX regulations, is consideration given to how cruel it is to the girls and women who are confronted not only by the sight of a male in female-only spaces, but also by being viewed by a male stranger in violation of their deeply ingrained, self-protective modesty.

Perhaps willing jurisdictions and organizations can find ways to accommodate men claiming to identify as women. But subjugating girls and women, taking from them to give to these men, is not the answer. And that means elected officials must update applicable laws to deal with today’s challenges.

Failure to do so condemns today’s and tomorrow’s women to a permanent loss of the sovereignty they once had and should continue to have over their own activities and spaces.

Eileen J. O’Connor is a Washington, D.C. area attorney. She headed the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2001 to 2007.