Tag: feminism

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Parent

I have a daughter and I want a world that respects her boundaries

This matters to me because I have a daughter and I want a world that respects her boundaries and gives her equal opportunities to those born male. I believe feminism should centre females (those born female) always. Women’s sport should be protected for the 51% born female. We should not be compelled to say things we do not believe to be true.

I’m mostly too afraid to raise such a controversial subject. But it matters when I vote and I changed the way I planned to vote in the last election.

I have done very little that would draw attention to me.

S Jackson, Self employed mother of two

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Self employed / entrepreneurs

I suspect that I am getting less freelance work from one particular organisation as a result of being gender critical

I was formed by 1970s and 80s feminism. Women had – and/or made – their own spaces. A couple of years ago I became aware that this now was seen as ‘exclusionary’. As a survivor of sexual abuse the idea of men being able to easily access spaces by saying they ‘identified as a woman’ is very frightening to me. It seemed vital that self-ID should not be introduced via reforms to the Gender Recognition Act.

As a lifelong socialist I am appalled by the way in which the Left seems to have abandoned any kind of recognition of sex-based inequality. It frightens me that girls and young women are labelled transphobic for trying to protect their own dignity, privacy and safety. It frightens me that women from conservative religious groups risk being further marginalised if they cannot access female-only spaces.


I have been fairly vocal on social media – FB and Twitter. I’ve gone to a Woman’s Place UK meeting. I made a submission to the consultation about possible reform to the Gender Recognition Act. I also wrote to my MP about this topic. I’ve also raised this issue within the religious group I belong to – the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).


I suspect that I am getting less freelance work from one particular organisation as a result of being gender critical. This annoys me hugely as I have done a lot of very good work for them. I’ve been barred from a Quaker FB Discussion group whose moderators all support gender identity theory. I’ve lost one FB friend and for a while my daughter – then a student blocked me.

Sibyl Ruth, Writer, library worker, parent and step-parent, gender critical feminist., SibylWrites

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Healthcare Others

I am outraged at the lies the gender lobby tell about female athletes

I care very much about the girls and women who are being mistaken or rumour mongered  as masquerading as female , the hurt this causes them , the danger this puts them in.

I am outraged at the lies the gender lobby tell about female athletes and the pretence that males entering female sports is harmless and fair .

Further to the female athlete point I’m also outraged at the lies the gender lobby have been spreading about Michele Obama , the pretence she must be a transwoman or at very least is intersex and must have used surrogates etc. And now the cover up that this was a Republican plot . Trump might be lots of things but he isn’t pretending men can be women or that any girl or woman as tall and intelligent as Michele Obama must therefore be at least a physiologically masculinised female if not a full blown male.

I do not want sex based words to be redefined or the theory that sex is on a spectrum taught in schools. I worry that sex spectrum theory is being /will be used to shame and humiliate girls who are taller than average or have facial features which have been deemed ‘masculine’ by genderists.

I am concerned the whole thing is an attempt to establish a big bad rational dominant men , little good irrational submissive women norm and destroy feminism once and for all along with naturalising male aggression and hiding female passive aggression too.

I’m also concerned about children being manipulated into damaging their bodies and having their wombs removed. And young men being tricked into sexual activity with other men and then being demonised for reacting badly to such abuse too.

I have been posting on social media and newspaper comments sections , supporting crowdfunders , fighting the good fight whenever I get the chance. Since 2017 mainly on Twitter.

I’ve been blocked and given verbal abuse.

Mary, Middle aged mother

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Voluntary sector

Men are male and women are female, and those are real conditions in the world

This matters to me because men are male and women are female, and those are real conditions in the world. That has consequences that matter especially for women individually and collectively.

I’ve posted on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve campaigned with Speak Up For Women NZ

I brought Meghan Murphy to New Zealand to speak at events and on television.

I’ve fundraised for SUFW. I’ve organised ground campaigns including delivery of leaflets throughout New Zealand

I’ve had my employer tagged by a transactivist claiming SUFW supports pedophilia and was investigated twice by my employer.

I was made to unfriend and block all work colleagues.

Jenny Whyte, Feminist trade unionist

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Voluntary sector

Most of the women we support feel safe knowing we only support women

I work with women who have suffered abuse in a women’s only service. Most of the women we support feel safe knowing we only support women. I worry they will feel less safe or be put at risk if people are simply able to self ID. Predators will take advantage of anything and this seems like a way for them to access vulnerable women and limit the ability of organisations to protect women.

I have followed feminists on Twitter, conducted research and shared information- admittedly not too much as worried about fall out at work.

Lauren, Domestic abuse support worker

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Voluntary sector

This matters to me personally because of the way some TRAs treat survivors of abuse/rape

This matters to me personally because of the way some TRAs treat survivors of abuse/rape who are unwilling to share female spaces with those who are physically male. More broadly I’m also concerned about safety in prisons and hospital wards and the effects on women’s sports.

I have spoken out anonymously online and there have been some rather heated debates in my workplace.

IC, Cat person, feminist, abuse survivor

Categories
Media and Arts

I objected to a ‘feminist publishing style guide’ at my workplace

I’m a feminist and understand the political risks and impact on women of removing the word – woman – we use to refer to female people. Working in publishing, I see words and their meanings as intensely political.

I objected to a ‘feminist publishing style guide’ at my workplace which used gender identities thinking suggesting using terms including ‘people who menstruate’ and ‘womxn’ – in an organisation that has used the international feminist understanding of biological sex and gender as a social construct to advance women’s rights, funding progressive work over decades including my project.

I am currently watching a situation unfold with the result that my project will be closed down. I suspect my views on gender are part of the factors in that proposed closure, but have no evidence as yet that this is the case.

M, feminist working in publishing

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Others

As a woman this directly affects me

As a woman this directly affects me and all women

I post on social media daily and bring up the subject in real life whenever I can!!

I have had direct threats via DMs on twitter.

E.U, Lifelong feminist supporting women’s issues around the world

Categories
survivor

I honestly start to cry when I realise that Stonewall are callous enough to want to take that away

After I did the Freedom Programme I noticed that I had a sort of bodily trauma response if I couldn’t control my boundaries around unfamiliar men.  Even at the door of my own house.

 Actually that experience had always been there, but I hadn’t recognised it before.  I have trans people in my life and I read them as trans people – there’s a mix of male and female characteristics there – so I get that response less but it’s still there. 

When I started to  understand what Stonewall are doing I was horrified.  Firstly, there absolutely must still be single sex services for domestic abuse victims. I honestly start to cry when I realise that Stonewall are callous enough to want to take that away.  That is nothing to how I felt when I read the Stronger Together guidance endorsed by Scottish Women’s Aid that advises actively gaslighting women who are victims of domestic abuse. 

I needed a safe space full of women to discuss and process what happened to me, and I’m so grateful to my local Women’s Aid for doing that. 

My mother in particular kept pressuring me to center the needs of my abusive husband, and it was really hard to hold my own reality.  I clung to anyone who would let me have my own reality.  Here are Scottish Women’s Aid, signing up to taking women’s reality away.  They could have said, no we won’t use our position of power to deny women’s reality or diminish the importance of their feelings about that. 

Secondly, I saw that Stonewall want to remove any safeguards from obtaining a GRC, and that this would mean male presenting male people in women’s spaces.  I can probably work with male people who have actually transitioned in public toilets.  I can possibly work with male people who have actually transitioned and are very very careful in public changing rooms.  I am willing to do that for people diagnosed with gender dysphoria.   Self ID proposes that any male presenting as male can use any women’s space without being careful, and I can’t work with that.

I have completed consultations in long rambling ways, trying to put in as much as possible.  I have spoken to people who I believe to be open to different points of view.  I have a Conservative MP, and there is the one advantage to having a Conservative MP that she actually might be receptive to this.  I am afraid I am a bit late to the party, as it’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve really been aware of this stuff and capable of actually doing anything, because I was very overwhelmed by the domestic abuse.

I’ve experienced the general of being called a TERF.  The term TERF means “woman against whom it is acceptable to perpetrate misogynistic abuse and violence”.  It’s distressing for any woman to be called that.  It does trigger something particular for me.  Especially when women use it and give validity to the idea that it can be legitimate to perpetrate misogynistic abuse.  Especially when women argue that we must accept or ignore the misogynistic abuse because of the terrible suffering of trans people. 

My mother said to me, “you might have to put up with a bit of abuse”.  That is essentially what liberal feminists are saying when they use the term TERF.  It just makes me feel trapped again with no refuge.

As an only parent, I don’t get to participate in public life very much.  I can only really go places where my son can come as well.  The only other place I could speak up is work, and I work for a local branch of a national charity that is fairly woke.  In any event the issue doesn’t really come up very often in the rural part of the country where I live. 

Kimberly

Categories
Transwidows

He left some very large women’s clothes in a cupboard where I was bound to find them

I am a transwidow. For 14 years I was married to a man who did everything to destroy my love and in the last 4 years taunted me mercilessly. He wanted me to hit him so that he could go to the police and prosecute me for domestic violence. I did not. Finally he left some very large women’s clothes in a cupboard where I was bound to find them and when I asked he said: “It’s true. I’m a transsexual”. Four months later he left us.

Slowly I found gender-critical feminist women on line and I started to learn about the psychiatric and legal framework for gender dysphoria. I had no idea that my life could be so “disposable” to him. Actually I was a victim of premeditated fraud: he tried to take my house and my savings from me, but I resisted such blatant attempts. I should have kicked him out much earlier. He is a criminal – a psychiatrist who knew him well described him as “something of a psychopath”.

More morally energetic men, such as Walt Heyer and Richard Hoskins, have found a way out of the rabbit hole. GD sufferers do know that their beliefs are untenable. That is why they are so, so touchy about anyone who questions these beliefs. But we must not condone insanity.

I have contributed to the Transwidows Escape Committee threads (all 3) on Mumsnet. For 10 years I have written comments under news and other articles on line. I have made contact with the main feminist campaigning groups and met their founders at various meetings all over the southern half of the UK. I know about 5 or 6 transwidows. In 2019 I finally set up transwidows.com (not to be confused with TinselAngel’s Transwidowsvoices.org). I have concentrated on logic or legal or professional psychiatric issues in my comments.

I am campaigning for repeal of the GRA and associated bits of the Equality Act 2010 because these laws condone insanity. I want to attack the laziness and cowardice of the GD psychiatric specialists. They have betrayed their Hippocratic oath to “do no harm”.

I have been banned from commenting under Daily Mail articles – my first tilt at the GD “windmill”. But, as I said above, I have confined my comments to verifiable statements or facts with references.

UW, Transwidow, Scientistranswidow