Tag: Abuse

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Healthcare

I saw a person with severe learning disability develop mental health problems after one of their live-in carers transitioned… and not being able to discuss it because “be kind”.

I care because I saw a person with severe learning disability develop mental health problems after one of their live-in carers transitioned MtF (male to female), and not being able to discuss it because “be kind”.

I work with people with learning disability.  I was working with a man with severe learning disability who was suddenly suffering from anxiety.  Met with staff team (24 hour support) – one of them was clearly a late-transitioning TIM (trans-identifying male) – had previously worked there as “Charles”, now referring to himself as “Charlotte”.  I was discouraged from mentioning this as part of the psychological formulation. 

I also work with women and girls with learning disabilities, and elderly people with dementia, who are reliant on personal support with hygiene etc – always have same sex support.  I am horrified at implications of it becoming same gender under self id.

I’ve been to Women’s Place meetings, posted on Twitter, tried to start conversations at work, but fear professional consequences.  I have successfully had conversations with family and friends where I can be more explicit.

I have had death threats on social media, and the usual abuse, in horrible sexual language.

S, Supporting People with LD and Autism

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Healthcare

My instincts are to welcome gender non conforming ideas and folk because the world needs more kindness and less constraining gender roles

I’m a woman and a feminist. I have studied social science and social theory. I have personal experience of misogyny, sexual harassment, rape, miscarriage, abortion, childhood abuse, mental ill health, IVF and infertility. Those experiences have been embodied.

My instincts are to welcome gender non conforming ideas and folk because the world needs more kindness and less constraining gender roles.

That said, I have experienced being told that using the words woman and mother at a breastfeeding support group is transphobic and I find this ludicrous and offensive.

Non binary and trans folk are of course entitled to use words such as chestfeeding parent etc but the idea that talking about breastfeeding and mothers is transphobic when these are experiences that women (not all women of course) have had forever is ludicrous. Social constructionism in meaningful as a critique but we cannot disembody ourselves even if our dysphoria makes this an attractive option.

I’ve talked to friends. I don’t talk much on social media about this.

Kittycat

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Healthcare

It’s a small life, I can’t trust all that easily and the wounds I carry bleed from time to time, but it’s a life and I owe that to the women that looked after me as soon as I left the airport.

I care about this issue because at the age of 14 I was raped to try and correct my homosexuality. I came to the UK as soon as I could at the age of 18 to seek asylum due to the harassment I received in my home country following the very public trial.

The people that raped me knew what a woman was, if I’d have been a gay man they would have hit and physically assaulted me and not raped me. It is important that we acknowledge and deal with the issues at the heart of violence against women in the UK as well as internationally.

If women coming to this country to seek asylum for MVAW (male violence against women) cannot tell their stories and get meaningful help because their language is now hate speech or exclusionary then how much of a safe refuge is this country?

I was broken when I came here in 2001, I’d experienced an unwanted pregnancy due to the rape and tried to abort at home due to abortion being illegal in my home country. It didn’t work and I was forced to carry my trauma with me for 9 months only to give birth to a child that only survived for 76hrs due to damage caused to his brain by my attempts to terminate. I have to live with this. A lot of women have to live with these kinds of wounds.

We need a place and a language to talk about our issues and to heal. To find support that demands nothing from us, not validation, not that we change our language, nothing.

I managed to get the help I needed and have managed to carve out a life here. It’s a small life, I can’t trust all that easily and the wounds I carry bleed from time to time, but it’s a life and I owe that to the women that looked after me as soon as I left the airport. The female doctors and nurses I was able to ask for, the female therapist who was with me for 15 years and delayed her retirement to help me stand on my own. The lecturers at my university who guided me and helped me gain a degree and become financially independent of the state. The lesbian community that helped me accept myself. They became my tribe, I am thankful.

I have written to my MP, I have been to his surgery to speak to him. He seems sympathetic, he’s from a Religious minority group himself and seems sympathetic but I’m not sure he has really done much about this as his party is firmly pro trans.

I have joined online forums and signed petitions and donated where I could. All the people I speak to seem to be very sympathetic and understand the insanity of where women find ourselves but many fear speaking publicly as do I.

I’ve lost friends. I work in an NHS mental heath setting and most of the people I work with understand the insanity of the current trans movement but this is whispered in dark corners and can never be said openly.

Everyone is scared, I had a colleague say to me a while back that we, as mental heath services, are going to pay dearly for this in a few years time but we daren’t go against the Stonewall lobby that is everywhere in our Trust.

As a mother, grandmother, feminist, educationalist, woman, this matters to me for a number of reasons. As a survivor of domestic abuse, I know how vital to me were women only spaces. I would not have been able to get the support I needed if I had not been confident that specific spaces were open only to women. The fear of such spaces being available to male-bodied people, however they identify, is very real and, I believe, would prevent women from accessing safety, support and much needed resources.

Sex is real. Women are women. Women’s oppression is based on sex. Women’s hard-won rights are in real danger of being eroded. Trans people have rights and, obviously, shoukd do. These are safeguarded in law. As are sex-based rights. The two are separate. One set of rights should not, and need not, trump another. Women are women, transwomen are transwomen and both should be safeguarded.

I am deeply concerned at what is being promulgated in schools and what children and young people are being told online. Feminism has fought for years to break down gender stereotypes. Our nonconforming children should be allowed/encouraged to be just that. Dress wearing boys and tomboy girls should not be told they are in the wrong body.

It’s clear that many young people, disproportionately girls, disproportionately those with conditions like autism, are being put on a path to medicalised transition too early, too quickly and often inappropriately. There is insufficient research into the impact of puberty blockers and what evidence there is suggests not the ‘pause’ as is often cited but the first step in an increasingly inevitable pathway.

Women are being silenced. We are afraid to speak for fear of casually being labelled and abused as transphobic. We are not. Generally, we are progressive women with histories of fighting for human rights and many causes. We haven’t suddenly become bigots. We are not transphobic. We ARE supporters of women’s rights.

I’ve made social media posts, attended consultation at House of Lords and submitted evidence to the Gender Recognition Act consultation.

P, Women matter

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Healthcare

The risks to our lives and wellbeing cannot be fully understood when those with male bodies and socialisation are counted as female.

I care because female bodies are hugely under-researched and misunderstood across all aspects of public and private life. The risks to our lives and wellbeing cannot be fully understood when those with male bodies and socialisation are counted as female.

I’ve donated to crowdfunds and talked to peers in real life.

As the main earner in my household, I cannot risk saying anything publicly that could jeopardize my job in the NHS.

The negative consequences come from being too scared to speak up. I have emotionally-abusive, gaslighting parents who I no longer see.

Discourse around this issue, where the truth is plain but verboten, triggers exactly the same responses in me as my parents’ abuse did. It makes me feel like a powerless child.

Female body inhabitant, One of the 51%

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Others

As a rape victim, I don’t want people with penises in my changing rooms, in my toilets, in women’s prisons.

This matters to me as a rape victim, I don’t want people with penises in my changing rooms, in my toilets, in women’s prisons. And as for biological men (who identify as women) competing in women’s sports that makes my blood boil, I know as a female I can’t throw as far, run as fast, lift as heavy as a biological male and it makes me so mad that women, no matter how hard they try will never be able to compete.

I have also been looking into autogynophilia and it scares me, I think a large number of these men have this. I honestly have no problems with people that have fully transitioned. And the vile abuse that people get on Twitter for saying all this is scary.

I’ve liked things on Twitter. I’m too scared to even retweet. I refuse to be called cis, I’m a woman.

I have been called a transphobe by my good friends. I change the subject now because it makes me uncomfortable.

Moonface , Not cis

Categories
Healthcare

Difference is what makes us human and should be celebrated

This is crucially important as the only thing that makes us male or female is our bodies and there is no such think as being born in the wrong body.  Difference is what makes us human and should be celebrated, not forced in to limiting social constructs that oppress us all and reinforce stereotypes. 

Bodies matter in other ways too and male bodies are much stronger, faster and more powerful so should not be allowed to enter women’s sports.  Only men rape, so they should not be allowed access to our sex-segregated spaces.  Safety, privacy and dignity are desperately important. 

I am also very concerned about the meaning of language and that words that are very specific can be changed as casually as the definition of the word Woman, now changed in law by the Scottish Government.

I have attended rallies (threatened by trans activists beforehand, who also told the organisers that we were intending to rush the stage and be violent – a complete fabrication).

I help to organise local meetings that are very peaceful but have been subjected to really vicious and threatening abuse by trans activists and even local politicians standing outside of the venues.

I work as hard as I can to raise awareness of the issues involved, handing out leaflets and standing up whenever I am able, to share details and correct misinformation.

I am in a number of groups that share links and other information, acting within a political party to support and protect women’s rights and fight against the erasure of the meaning of being a woman / female.

I have written to my MP and been ignored.

On a training course the transgender trainer was extremely unpleasant when I said that women and transwomen have different health care needs.  They made a complaint to my manager.

I was subjected to very intimidating abuse and threats at meeting venues, monitored by trans activists within my political party and my views closed down immediately when attempting to defend women’s rights.

On Twitter & Facebook I have been told to die in a fire and that I should be raped to death, subjected to outrageously offensive comments and aggression, and reporting these comments to the Twitter and Fb resulted in no action being taken by the perpetrators.

I have had my face filmed very closely by some abusive trans activists (some masked) who were attempting to intimidate me from attending a meeting.

J

Categories
Healthcare

As a nurse I dread the day I have to put patients of the opposite sex in a shared room because of the trans ideology.

I care about females safety and sex based protections. I will not allow them to disappear because I want a better future for my daughter. As a nurse I dread the day I have to put patients of the opposite sex in a shared room because of the trans ideology.

I posted frequently on twitter but left because I was worried about being reported to work. I’m currently writing a letter to my union about their policies.

I have been abused on Twitter.

E H, Reality believing nurse

Categories
Healthcare

I see patients who declare their sex to be female but turn out to be biologically male with male genitalia.

I care about this issue because the silencing of women/removal of women’s sex based rights to prioritise the feelings of a tiny number of men who decide they are women is unfair. I support trans people’s right, just like anyone else’s right, to be safe from harassment and abuse and to live their life in peace, but this should not be to the detriment of women and girls. I am also concerned about the erasure of lesbian women and girls and the transing of children.

As a medical professional I am increasingly concerned about the conflagration of sex to gender. On medical forms we increasingly now have to ask someone their gender not their sex and I have personally examined patients who declare their sex to be female but turn out to be biologically male with male genitalia.

Why are we afraid/unable to ask someone what their sex is?

I have raised this with my employer. I examine people intimately and I want to know whether they have male or female genitalia in advance. This affects my preparation for the examination and the equipment I need. The gender question on referral forms and medical forms does not tell me this. This is embarrassing and unacceptable for trans patients as well as medical staff so they are not getting best care. It also affects statistics if gender is used instead of sex to describe the patient in medical records.

I have been VERY careful to frame my concerns in terms of a lack of good care for trans patients rather than my wider gender critical views.

Adult Human Female , Gender Critical Medic

Categories
Education Healthcare

A woman is a material reality

I know that women are punished for being women, not for pretending to be women. A woman is a material reality. Our oppression is sex-based and we need to be able to speak about it. I’m also extremely worried about the loss of single sex spaces and how that endangers women. I am disgusted that female sports are being overtaken by men and I worry a LOT about gender non-conforming children being told they’re in the wrong bodies. That is the very opposite of safeguarding. I have been terrified at the way women have been harassed, threatened, doxxed, taken to court, sacked, slandered and physically attacked for believing in the reality of biological sex, and that prevents me from saying more.

I have very occasionally tweeted about it and I have ‘liked’ tweets by others who have spoken out.

I have been roasted by acquaintances on social media. I’ve had to leave online groups. I’ve received abuse on Twitter from lots of people including a man holding a baseball bat who boasted he liked to kill TERFs.

Kath, Teacher

Categories
Healthcare

I try to speak up because I know what it is like, when as a child you are unable to speak up for yourself

This matters to me as someone who was subjected to years of sexual abuse as a girl, as well as a lot of sexual harassment since my teens, and who has subsequently relied on single-sex spaces to get through life. I want to protect female-only spaces for all the girls and women who need and want them for whatever reason and I try to speak up  because I know what it is like, when as a child you are unable to speak up for yourself.

I think that it is deeply wrong of organisations to disregard the needs of vulnerable, previously abused girls by making them choose between the trauma of sharing spaces such as changing rooms or bedrooms with males or facing the consequences of speaking up when they do not feel able or ready to.

Girls’ trust in others’ ability to safeguard them will be diminished.

I have campaigned by handing out leaflets. I requested to speak to a long-established women’s group who then invited me to present the issue. Following my presentation the group expressed deep concerns about the situation. I have written to my MP and then met and discussed it with him twice – he was fairly dismissive of my concerns of the first visit and chose to centre the needs of one group over the needs of others. On our second meeting he was very rude to my friend who had come to support me. I have helped with women’s groups and with children’s safeguarding groups who have been campaigning. A photo of me, but not my name, has appeared in a main stream newspaper and also appeared in a less main stream media outlet.

I have had a very small amount of verbal aggression in public and have also been shouted at when attending meetings. When an organisation that I was involved with held a meeting, the Grade 1 listed building was graffitied with the words ‘T*RFS F*CK OFF’ which was designed to intimidate attendees. A photo of me appeared in a non-mainstream media outlet where the position of safeguarding group I support was inaccurately linked alongside far-right groups. I have not yet had any issues with my work but this is mainly because I have been very careful about keeping my work life, as a hospital-based nurse (RGN) separate from my campaigning. I have no doubt that if they were linked then someone would try to have me removed.

C