The Gender Dissidents SurveyI care about this because my daughter told me aged 13 that she thought she was a boy.
I am a journalist so have explored the issue in media coverage. I do not feel able to voice a public opinion.
I have had a negative response from colleagues who think I should not question the evidence base for medical interventions on children and young people who say they are the “wrong sex”.
ConcernedMum, My daughter is not a boy
I, like too many women, have experienced grooming, rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence and am fearful of allowing men into women’s spaces.
I am concerned that my gender non-conforming son will grow to hate his beautiful healthy body because of the narrative that gender trumps sex.
I have created anonymous social media accounts to voice my concerns and engage in discussion. I have discussed with my children their right to retain their own spaces and their right to express themselves (i.e. their gender) in any way they choose without this altering their sex. I have contacted my children’s schools to discuss their policy re self identifying students.
I felt compelled to step down from an important task force at work re women in STEM when headed by self-ID trans woman and no opportunity or environment for objection.
I have lost friends and been ostracised from left wing, feminist, and social justice groups of which I was previously an active member. I have had to develop new and anonymous social media accounts because changes in work policy have made clear that I will lose my job for refusing to share women’s only spaces i.e. toilets with trans women.
L C, PhD in STEM (medical sciences)
I care about it as I am horrified to see the misogyny that has existed since time began cloak itself with a progressive cause to undo women’s rights and take away so much of what we have fought for. I care because I am appalled that my three daughters may grow up with fewer rights than I had as a teenager and young woman.
I have been speaking up on social media since 2015 and tentatively speaking about in person from that time, I started attending events in 2018.
I have lost many friends who have unfriended me on Facebook. My relationship with my brother in law and his wife has been permanently soured as he has accused me and my husband of being transphobic. I know that a number of colleagues past and present view me as bigoted.
C, Feminist and mother
I care because I’m a woman who sees women’s rights being eroded due to this irrational unscientific belief the only definition of womanhood is ‘someone who identifies as a woman’. It’s ludicrous. Furthermore, as a new mum I want my child to grow up expressing himself however he likes, pursuing the interests and hobbies which fulfil him, without feeling that because he may like something stereotypically ‘feminine’ then he has been ‘born in the wrong body’.
I have commented anonymously on articles and social media posts online, posted on forums, and emailed my local authority regarding their removal of ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic on their website.
I have received backlash online.
R, Author
I care because I want my daughter to have a safer life than I have had. I want her to be able to be confident in raising her safety concerns and not worried about being declared a bigot because she is fearful
I have spoken to friends. I regularly voice my concerns at work as the topic comes up scarily regularly for an infants school.
I have been reprimanded at work for stepping out of my role to complain that they had changed the protected characteristics in the schools equality policy.
I escalated to governors and they eventually agreed the law had not ‘changed yet’ – my work is now more heavily scrutinised and one of my colleagues no longer speaks to me. I have lost friends and a fb account. I use twitter anonymously. I am fearful of making connections with anyone as I can’t afford to be ‘outed’ and lose my career.
Phyliss
I struggled with my gender identity in my teens, I have been sexually assaulted and took part in a celibate marriage with a person who used me as a depressing up dolly and later came out as trans.
I have talked to people, but people call me names. My youngest daughter gets very angry with me
LMD , Asperger’s female not CIS but woman
I first became engaged with trans issues when I had to teach a unit on queer theory to my A Level class. Having very little knowledge of my own, I followed some trans accounts on twitter and read some web resources to develop an understanding. It seemed to me that trans people were an oppressed minority who needed help in overcoming societal prejudice in the same way feminist groups, the civil rights and gay rights movements had done before. I read what I could and spoke up for trans students at college when other members of staff misgendered them in front of me. I was a good ally.
I don’t remember the exact moment I realised that something was wrong. In the early days I got drawn into an argument on twitter about whether men could have periods. It seemed self evident to me that they couldn’t but apparently they could and i was hateful for suggesting otherwise. I assumed at first this was just a lone crank, how wrong I was. The penny dropped for me when I listened to Rebecca Reilly Cooper’s remarkable talk “Examining the doctrine of gender identity” on Youtube. This video had a profound impact on me, I still listen to it a couple of times a year.
I am now hugely invested in this issue and my eyes are open to the harm “the doctrine of gender identity” does to women and girls. I am appalled at the misogyny suffered by women online.
I despair of the pressure young lesbians are put under to accept trans women with penises as sexual partners.
I am terrified at the thought that my beautiful gender non-conforming daughter will be sucked in by the cult. But I am heartened at the number of women (and some men too) that are refusing to go along with the lunacy.
I like plenty of tweets and reply to quite a few, often debating with trans rights activists at length but, ultimately to no real purpose. Occasionally I summon up the courage to send an original tweet myself but not often. I comment on Facebook threads now and then.
I am too nervous to go full TERF on Facebook in front of all the people I know in real life. My partner hates me speaking out publicly even though she agrees with me. She’s worried I might get sacked and she’s right to be concerned about that.
It worries me too, although not enough to make me completely silent.
I teach at a college where traces of the transcult are creeping in. Displays in the library, genderbread people on display in classrooms. I’ve only been there a few months so I feel I need to get bedded in more before I speak out. I’m hoping that one day I’ll be asked to deliver a tutorial or take my class to a talk or get some CPD that will give me the excuse I need to speak up. I truly feel that I will have the courage when the time comes.
Have you had any consequences? So far, very little. Some ex students have told me on twitter how disappointed they are with me but I can easily take that. I’ve not lost any friends or been disciplined at work. My gender critical activities are too far under the radar at the moment. I can’t help but feel that because I’m a man I get off much lighter too.
R, Gender Critical Educator
This matters to me because when I was a student in the mid-1980s, I was a feminist (of course!) but I was confident that most of the major battles had been won, and that we were on a trajectory towards genuine equality. If someone had told me that in 2020, women would be fighting desperately to hang on to the definition of woman, in order to protect our hard-won rights, I’d have thought they were crazy.
I have written to my MP, written in support of gender-critical women who raise their voices publicly, written private letters of support to those women; made FOI requests on sex/gender topics; spent several Saturdays leafleting with other women involved in the Fair Play For Women campaign to draw attention to the proposed GRA reforms; completed the govt’s GRA reform consultation questionnaire; completed Edward Lord’s (shocking) consultation on making all City of London visitor attraction toilets mixed-sex; been active on social media; written a (far too occasional) blog; taken every opportunity to talk to family and friends (and selected colleagues) about these issues; attended WPUK and Let A Woman Speak and other events; spoken at Women Say in Hyde Park on IWD 2020; with others, set up a women’s group in our city which meets regularly (before lockdown); am active in a private Slack group for GC professionals in my sector.
As a consequence I have been frozen out of the friendship group I made when my son was a baby, because one of the mothers has a “trans child”. My son has been asked by other students at school (he attends a school which is obsessively proud about its Stonewall status) if his mother is “still a TERF”.
Rachel Bosenterfer, Adult human female. Mother. Loudmouth
I’m worried about women’s sexed based rights being lost, about abusive men saying they are women because of a feeling in their head. I don’t believe humans can change sex – that’s basic science.
Being a woman is not a costume. I’m menopausal and I suffer hot flushes, heart palpitations and horrible bleeding each period. I nearly died giving birth to my first son. How can a man say is the same as me because of a feeling in his head. It’s all so wrong.
I’ve done lots of FB posts to alert my friends. I handed out leaflets for Fair Play for Women during the consultation. I have 2 x sons with special needs so can’t do much else.
I lost a few friends. I’ve had to go anon on Twitter because someone threatened by business when I was posting as myself.
JR, Adult Human Female
This matters to me as I cannot stay silent while women’s sex based rights are removed along with our voices. I cannot watch children & young people being indoctrinated into a harmful cult.
I have joined 2 women’s group fighting against self I D. Ideally repealing the GRA. I have written to my MP and others, I have met with my MP. I have ‘collared’ another MP at unrelated event & sent him emails. I have spoken out at a mayoral candidate meeting and had email exchanges with said mayoral candidate. I have emailed a Baroness and had meaningful dialogue with her. I have stickered. A lot. I have attended WPUK meetings, (5 or 6) and a further meeting organised by ‘Posie Parker’. I talk to people all the time & they ‘get it’. Attended FILIA.
I have had to be extremely careful as my adult children have been taken in and think I’m needing to educate myself. They have no idea how much campaigning I have done. I’ve been ‘doxxed’ once and am on the cusp of a second doxxing. I don’t work so the ‘only’ damage will be with the relationship I have with my children. It breaks my heart but it won’t stop me fighting.
KB, Heartbroken mother & campaigner,
The Gender Dissidents Survey