Tag: feminism

Categories
Academics and researchers

I disagree with the dogma of Stonewall

It matters to me because the real work of the Equality Act is incomplete. Removing sex as a protected characteristic undoes the historical work of feminists and activists. I believe all groups of women (including trans women) have the right to freedom of conscience and freedom of association.

I disagree with the dogma of Stonewall and find their campaign slogan troubling (acceptance without exception and ‘no-debate’), on a personal and professional level.

I don’t believe any charity should be unaccountable or beyond critique and intellectual scrutiny and academics should feel able to engage in that critique without risking their professional status and livelihood. 

I have written to the head of equality for my trade union and raised concerns about the behaviour and tactics of high-profile trans-activists. I have communicated that concern to regional officials and my local branch president. I have spoken to my (former) MP. I have spoken to work colleagues I know I could talk to without retribution, but speaking openly is a high-risk strategy and I have not yet done so.

I would be subjected to targeted harassment and probably lose my job.

JC, University lecturer, trade union activist, mum to two daughters, not on twitter – got hounded off

Categories
Academics and researchers Healthcare Parent survivor

I am concerned that my gender non-conforming son will grow to hate his beautiful healthy body

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)

Categories
Academics and researchers

As a young child, I was told that I could not participate in the sports that I loved because they were ‘not for girls’

I can’t begin to do justice to the importance of feminism and womanhood in my life. As a young child, I was told that I could not participate in the sports that I loved because they were ‘not for girls’. I have been overjoyed to see the strides made by women’s sport in the past 25 years, and that – on the whole – there are far more opportunities for girls to participate in sport than when I was growing up.

It breaks my heart to see these strides undermined simply to appease a small group of biological males who seek to ‘affirm their self-appointed gender’ by taking the hard-earned place of women in sport. I am devastated that women’s sporting history is being rewritten by people like Lauren Hubbard and Rachel McKinnon.

Girls and women are subject to all manner of abuse – mostly at the hands of men – and they fully deserve (and need) single-sex spaces in which to thrive and feel safe. Every woman knows what it is to feel unsafe and vulnerable, and no-one has the right to dismiss our concerns.

The idea that biological males can simply announce themselves female and enter women’s safe spaces is obscene. I have never felt more strongly about anything in my life.

It is a topic that I discuss with my partner and trusted friends on a daily basis. While I have engaged with some of the public debates on Twitter, I don’t feel that what I do is enough. I am in the difficult position of knowing that if I speak up, I will most likely lose my job – a prospect that I cannot afford to risk at the minute.

My work colleagues have extremely strong views on the ‘transgender’ issue, and regularly use offensive terms such as ‘TERF’ to publicly bully those with genuine concerns into silence. While I have never directly received such abuse, I know that if I were to be more vocal, I would be their next target.

K

Categories
Academics and researchers

You don’t need to say anything more than ‘transwomen are not literally the same as women’ to be considered guilty

I a woman and a mother of girls. I thought feminism was making progress, that their life would be better than mine and mine better than my mother and grandmothers.

I see that my right to define myself and my right to say why I feel kinship with other women can be shouted down as hate speech, and so I have therefore no right to define myself. So feminism is as likely to go backwards as forward.

I’ve written to my MP and complained to IPSO. I have spoken to friends. I have spoken to my girls. I have written a couple of blog posts and was going to give a paper.

I have set up a module that will deal with feminism. That has, weirdly enough, reconfirmed my commitment to feminism and made me more active.

But I am worried about my job, and the negative consequences. I know from colleagues that this is very real and you don’t need to say anything more than ‘transwomen are not literally the same as women’ to be considered guilty. And it is targeted: some colleagues who are not considered ‘terfs’ get to joke about it; others have every word monitored (by students, by the way).

I am relatively new to this debate and am expecting a complaint to happen, as my students are now aware of my views.

M

Categories
Academics and researchers Healthcare

The promotion of absurdities by policy makers is a gift to political ‘anti-elite’ extremists

I recognise and agree with the concerns of feminists and parents of ‘GNC’ (gender non-conforming) children, but the greater concern for me is the abandonment of the most fundamental principles of rational analysis, normal considerations of responsible policy- making, standards of debate, consistency in ethical judgements and simple recognition of banal facts, in favour of respect for the subjective claims of one particular group (with no rationale given for privileging this group).

Consistent principles, grounded in objectivity and rational enquiry are what project minorities and the powerless from the whims of those with power. Meanwhile, the promotion of absurdities by policy makers is a gift to political ‘anti-elite’ extremists and populists. (It’s extraordinary that this needs to be said in the 21st century.)

I have donated to crowdfunders, signed petitions and written responses to UK and Scottish government consultations. I’ve had very carefully chosen conversations privately. I’m silent on social media, beyond liberal use of the like button.

I’ve mostly acted anonymously. My employer is very proud of its trans-friendly policies, I have a family to support and I don’t think the risk-return calculation merits raising my (obscure) voice.

D, University employee

Categories
Parent

I am appalled that my three daughters may grow up with fewer rights than I had as a teenager and young woman

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

Categories
Others

You absolutely cannot understand what it means to be female if you have been raised and socialised as a man

This matters to me because I am a feminist who believes in equality.  You absolutely cannot understand what it means to be female if you have been raised and socialised as a man.  You cannot understand what makes a female feel vulnerable around male bodies.  Male entitlement.  Male strength.  Male power. 

I have been raped more than once.  Sexually abused from childhood.  Controlled, belittled, groped, patronised, objectified by men.  Being a woman is not a costume, it is a lifetime of looking over your shoulder.  Being born and raised as a male will give you no insight into that underlying fear.

I have done very little.  I’m too scared to put my thoughts out there.  I’ve seen brave women who have spoken out and have been attacked and abused for their beliefs. 

I have lost a good friend.  She has been in an abusive relationship for years, and left it to go into another.  She is a good person and has been raised to “be nice”.  She is nice to her abusers and blames herself.  That is what female socialisation does to you. 

Doris, I am a woman.  An adult human female

Categories
Academics and researchers Healthcare

I have an abhorrence of totalitarian belief systems and dogma

Because I am a feminist and have an abhorrence of totalitarian belief systems and dogma.  I felt I could not stand by in silence while other women were bullied and persecuted simply for stating facts and for refusing to sign up to an ideological system. I am also deeply troubled by the developmental harms and confusion being caused to children, especially gender non-conforming children, by the way this ideology has infiltrated schools and other educational spaces.   

I have been a signatory to several letters in the mainstream press. I have taken motions to my union at local and national level. I have organized a major feminist conference at my university. I have co-authored a blog on an educational website. I have written to my MP. I have submitted responses to government consultations. I have written letters to university vice-chancellors, editors and other senior academics to protest the treatment of feminist scholars within their institutions. 

I have spoken to the staff and headteacher at the school where I am a governor about their PSHE resources. I have attended several demonstrations and events by WPUK. I  was a founding signatory of the Labour Women’s Declaration. I have shared resources, material and opinions with women in my academic and social networks. I have written to the organizers of an event where a feminist was attacked for distributing material.  I have co-authored pieces in the press. I have used feminist materials in my teaching.  I have joined a local activists’ network …..   

I have been asked to step down from an international editorial board because of my feminist views (after publishing a piece on academic freedom on sex and gender).

SeveraI people in my academic network, some of whom were close friends, no longer speak to me.   I am no longer welcome in some of these network events.

I have had student activists post my name on lists of dangerous “TERFS”, calling on all trans students to avoid my classes because they are unsafe.  I have had defamatory posters, showing my photo and calling me a fascist, displayed on the walls of my workplace. I have been referred to on social media as a bigot and a transphobe – although I am not even on social media myself (partly because I do not have the stomach for all the bullying).   I have been named in defamatory articles by student journalists.   I have been insulted by fellow activists in my union branch.

J, University lecturer

Categories
Academics and researchers

I am surrounded by intelligent, well meaning work colleagues, but reading their social media posts makes me question their critical thinking

This matters to me because I have a young child, I see that the teachers, politicians, union reps, work colleagues they have to deal with in future may well be pushing gender ideology.

As an academic I am surrounded by intelligent, well meaning work colleagues, but reading their social media posts makes me question their critical thinking. Their social media post that a man can mestruate for example; how can they peddle this rubbish?

My most reccent lived experience  – I opened the door to leave a cubicle in a ladies toilet and a man was facing me. We were alone & I was terrified. I had no idea why he was there. Fortunately, he left, but other women have had worse things happen to them when confronted by a man in an enclosed space. The idea that I would be in the wrong for complaining about him being there is a threat to all women’s safety

I have joined a feminist alternative to Twitter.

Kathie W

Categories
Academics and researchers

It feels as if all of my struggles for equality have been thrown in the bin

I have been a feminist for forty years. I have had to share a work bathroom with a trans person who is a stereotype of femininity and gets lauded by colleagues for their stiletto shoes and fishnet tights and mini skirt. It feels as if all of my struggles for equality have been thrown in the bin. I care about the safety of women and girls in sport, prison, school, the toilets . . .

I have engaged lightly on social media, I have spoken fully with friends and have attended women’s meetings behind closed doors.

I know one of my colleagues (a ‘trans-ally’) is aware of my views and I’m sure has been responsible for tearing down flyers I have put up outside my office (from Women’s groups such as WPUK) and replacing them with trans flag flyers.

TREA, Lecturer