Tag: safeguarding

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Healthcare Others

All women need the security of female only spaces and fair representation

This matters to me because all women need the security of female only spaces and fair representation.  Sexism cannot be addressed if we lose the ability to define each of the sexes unambiguously.

I have handed out leaflets in the street and talked to people to ask them to fill in the GRA consultation in 2018.  I have written to my MP and my children’s schools.  I have attended meetings and protests, signed petitions and contributed to crowd funders.  I am part of a sub-group that puts together info for one of our campaign groups to use in their campaigning.

I have made a point of catching up with all my current and former acquaintances who are school governors, on health boards etc and have made them aware of the situation and issues with safeguarding.  I strike up conversations with women I don’t know and give them FairPlay leaflets.  I occasionally post on social media, mostly Mumsnet with a few twitter posts.

I have been attacked on Twitter and it now makes me uneasy to use Twitter.  I have had a few friends distance themselves from me.  I have resigned from my political party and all the local members that I had thought of as friends are no longer in contact with me.

S

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Healthcare Others

I’m grateful my daughter is grown up and not the toddler that insisted she was a boy

I care about women’s rights, freedom of speech, democracy. I dislike and fear authoritarian and violent nature of trans activism. I care about democracy and rights of women to meet, right to speak out. I care about accurate use of English language. I care about accurate data. I care about safeguarding children, and vulnerable women. I’m against gay conversion therapy whether it’s psychological by churches or medical and physical by voluntary organisations and the medial establishment. I’m grateful my daughter is grown up and not the toddler that insisted she was a boy.

I responded to consultations on reform of GRA in Scotland and Westminster, to implementation of Gender Representation on Public Boards, evidence on conflation of sex and gender to Scottish Government, responded to Hate Crime consultation. Write to MP, MSP, Cancer Research UK of effect of self ID on clinical trials. I’ve talked to friends and family and small group of people and arranged talk for same group. I’ve attended meetings. Left leaflets in books, metro on buses other public places.

I’ve had some angry messages when I arranged discussion of issues to small group.

Luddite, born in 60s, grew up 80s.

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Healthcare Voluntary sector

I have been in hospital where I have felt very vulnerable

I work in children’s services in a disability organisation. I am extremely concerned with the disregard and flouting of basic safeguarding principles in gender ideology. I also have a disability & a health condition and I have been in hospital where I have felt very vulnerable. I do not wish to be on a mixed sex ward or to have intimate tests/procedures carried out male who identifies as a female.

I have answered consultations, signed petitions and contributed to fundraisers for legal cases. I have spoken to family and friends about it. Most agree with me. Some do not.

I have been told I am being unkind by some friends for speaking up and had my social media account reported and suspended for talking about biological reality.

Rosalyn , Woman of the world, @RosalynRoses

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Healthcare Public Sector

I have to be careful about my views at work for fear of repercussions especially when trying to raise safeguarding concerns for young children

I care about all rights and equal rights, but I am a woman, a lesbian. I have been called a terf, verbally abused on line and during marches, having to be in a group for fear of reprisal… for saying a sex and gender are not the same, being called transphobic for saying a trans woman is not a biological woman and certainly not a lesbian.

I have to be careful about my views at work for fear of repercussions especially when trying to raise safeguarding concerns for young children and people who say they are trans…without any proper evaluation or analysis of their living situation.

I’ve joined marches, online groups, twitters, help crowd funding to name a few.

I have been called terf, bitch, cunt.

DK, Womansworld65

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Others

Self ID creates a huge hole in norms of day to day safeguarding

So many reasons. I care VERY MUCH that women’s voices seem to be repeatedly and routinely ignored, disparaged and attacked. I firmly believe that no child is born into the wrong body. I have gay siblings and the idea that they are somehow fundamentally ‘wrong’ strikes me as deeply and distressingly homophobic, and that this opens the door to a warped form of conversion therapy.

I do not think it is possible to change sex, and that one of the worst aspects of this is the potential for exploitation  – financial or emotional/psychological/sexual – of troubled individuals (plus it allows for such horrors as forced sex change /conversion therapy such as is seen in Iran). I think that sexual predators DO go to great lengths to access potential victims and that self ID creates a huge hole in what have been up to now socially accepted norms of day to day safeguarding for women and girls in certain contexts – I believe that both men and women should be able to access single sex spaces and to know that those spaces will be single sex.

It is simply not bigotry to express concerns for the safety of women and girls. It is not hate to state that sex exists and that women and girls are subject to discrimination (at best) BECAUSE THEY ARE FEMALE.

I have done mainly social media, and that mainly (but not entirely) anonymously.

Not experienced consequences on a significant scale – but my partner has struggled with my interest in speaking out about this issue.

Milly

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Healthcare Parent

I have two very young daughters and I want to be able to look them in the eye when they’re old enough to understand

I care about safeguarding, I care about children being taken down irreversible pathways medically, I care about women’s sports, I care about freedom of speech and I care about us not being seen as non-men or as second-class citizens.

I have two very young daughters and I want to be able to look them in the eye when they’re old enough to understand and we look back on this lunacy and laugh.

I am using my expertise in the sports and charities sectors to help both a grassroots women’s organisation and an LGB organisation with their campaigns and administration, respectively.

I have raised the issue at work, helping to influence policy, and I’ve discussed with friends and family, who know I can be trusted as a sounding board on the issue.

I have retweeted relevant articles on twitter in my real name (I have about ten blue tick followers, mainly sports celebrities, out of about 850 so hopefully some will take note).

I donate to crowdfunders and to the grassroots movement by standing order and I made a substantial donation to lumos to say thank you to JKR.

One of my best friends and I had a row about men using loopholes to access women’s spaces. We’ve been friends for more than ten years and I was frightened at how angry he got with me. Our friendship is only (just) surviving because I’m friends with his wife, too, otherwise I’m sure it’d be over.

Claire G, I’d rather this went away so I can concentrate on more fun stuff

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Healthcare

As an eighteen-year-old student nurse, I didn’t speak up about Jimmy Saville

This matters to me because I am a woman and a mother of daughters, I care about our rights and opportunities and I care about the dignity and choices of all women. As a Nurse, I also care that people with gender dysphoria are able to access psychological therapies and the treatment that they need.

It matters to me that women and girls can participate fully in society, whether that is with our career choices, via sport, or through social activities, and I want women and girls to have the privacy and dignity they need when dealing with intimate body functions. I care passionately that my daughters can be the women they wish to be, expressing their personality and identity their way and I want them to enjoy safe sex with partners of their choice.

I care that regulatory capture has already eroded safeguarding boundaries and is seeking to reduce them further.  I care that vulnerable people can be persuaded that being Trans / Non-binary will solve their complex issues. Professionally, I have encountered people having more surgery “because if I just had my breasts enlarged/face sculpted/other procedure I would be happy” These people must not be sold a lie.

This especially matters to me, because of something I didn’t speak up about. Thirty plus years ago, as an eighteen-year-old student nurse, I didn’t speak up about Jimmy Saville.

At the time it was a trivial issue and I had no idea of the breadth of the man’s depravity, I just thought he was a creep. But I have asked myself many times since, what if? What if I had said something? what if others had said something? could he have been stopped sooner if the incidents had been stitched together and the picture was clear? We need sunlight.

I bore my friends and family endlessly. I tweet – though under a pseudonym – about issues that affect women and girls, have contributed to crowdfunders and have tried to raise awareness on online platforms, endeavouring to patiently, factually challenge incorrect posts and to repost and celebrate the views of feminists I respect.

I have written to my MP, responded to consultations and am part of online feminist groups. I have written and emailed organisations whose policies undermine the rights of women and girls. I have a long list of organisations whose products I boycott as a result.

Unfortunately, my nursing code of conduct and healthcare employers social media guidelines limit what I can write in my own name – so no I haven’t experience negative consequences, because I work within the rules. I would like to go beyond them.

Helen, Woman, Mother, Nurse,

Categories
Healthcare Parent trans familiy

Strangers have been given access to and coached my daughter to delete her childhood and replace her future with their transgender story

I care because my 12 year old daughter announced she is trans and is socially transitioning 11 months ago. I care because strangers have been given access to and coached my daughter to delete her childhood and replace her future with their transgender story. I care because my 12 year old daughter has been asking to go on hormone blockers before puberty because they’re safe. I care because it feels like my daughter is being taken away from me.

It was very clear to me from the beginning that raising my voice in any visible way would very quickly lead to being cast as transphobic and bigoted, someone to be excluded and worked around. I have spent months looking to understand what is going on, how the machine works. I have learnt that as a parent I am up against YouTube with adults selling the transgender story to my daughter. I am up against a local LGBTU+ youth charity tutoring my daughter privately on the transgender story. I am up against the NHS with their services to process the transgender story. I am up against my daughter’s school who are validating and authenticating the transgender story, and I am up against my ex wife who affirms the transgender story.

The transgender story is just that, it’s a story. Someone has made it up. There’s no science, there’s no law. But it’s story that is consuming children, women and parents to provide evidence the story is real, that it’s not a story. It’s as big a story as creationism, as big a story as Father Christmas.

The machine is literally just that, a machine, at its core it’s just a defined pathway of tick boxes to account for and ultimately protect institutional decisions. Its purpose is to provide a group of adults with validation the story they made up is real, based on children lives. The machine’s existence in this country is an outcome of institutional neglect and cowardice, my disbelief has no bounds.

Raising my voice means a number of things. Being the best possible dad I can be, be more available and listen more. Keeping close to the YouTube algorithm to see what’s being pushed to my daughter. Making it clear that the LGBTQ+ youth charity does not have my parental permission to continue time with my daughter. Telling the GP that I do not support a referral to Tavistock that my ex-wife organised. Opening up a private psychotherapy route to support our daughter with her development in a professional and open minded way. I haven’t worked out how to deal with the school. The school are more detached, their motives and use of safeguarding best practice and resources on any topic is hugely fragmented and difficult to work with.

I have benefited from the bravery of Keira Bell, and many women, teenage girls and a few men willing to put themselves on the front line of extreme personal aggression to bring this story to the attention of many people. I cannot effectively express my gratitude enough, their work is having an immediate and direct effect on offering protection for my daughter from the machine.

I have benefited from the recent political interest their work has generated, and I have benefited from Covid19 that has put a huge brake on the machine.

I contribute financially to support mumsnet in the face of the realities of #nodebate, I support crowd funding legal cases as they appear. I would like to spend more time working 121 with other parents but I don’t have the reserves of energy yet for this.

I have been called transphobic, bigoted and verbally abused for questioning the machine, questioning the story. Asking questions like what’s the rush, why does this have to happen so fast? Exactly when does professional child psychotherapy actually happen to take a look at a gently bumpy childhood? How can a LGBTU+ youth charity with no child professional qualification have such free and protected access, and influence, over a child’s life choices? Which school roles, what qualifications and what criteria do they follow to bypass my parental authority at the school? Why does social transitioning need to delete a child’s history?

I have been very careful about how and when to visibly raise my voice. I am in a fragile position where my daughter has been well tutored with the transgender story, and unqualified people have the authority to transact the transgender story without my parental authority. The natural outcome will be to reduce my role in her life to being an absent father who’s principle purpose is to provide money. That popular, age old stereotypical man we thought we’d lost many years ago.

When I did choose to raise my voice with the LGBTU+ youth charity not having my parental permission to continue their time with my daughter, my daughter attempted to work around me with the school to continue. An action the school had coached her to follow if this happened, based on the trans inclusion policy they follow. I got lucky with Covid19. The impact over the last eight months, has been massive. I have lived a life of sole dedication to this topic, it is the hardest thing I have had to deal with. This has been much, much harder to handle than our divorce, the stress has been monumental.

A dad

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Healthcare Parent

This is a highly inappropriate thing to say to children with any form of disability

I care because no child should be told by anyone in authority that they may have been ‘born in the wrong body’. This is an ideology, not a scientific fact and should be taught as such, if at all.

I don’t imagine there are many people in this world who didn’t like aspects of their body growing up and they should be taught body positivity and self acceptance.

I also feel this is a highly inappropriate thing to say to children with any form of disability who may well feel like they are in the wrong body but are unable to identify out of it.

Self ID is a separate matter which raises all sorts of ethical and legal issues. The current GRA requirements seem reasonable to me but as with all law should should be subject to considered review. In the current climate this is difficult due to the atmosphere of fear of being branded transphobic.

I’m not particularly vocal on social media anyways but having seen the hate and vitriol spouted at anyone who doesn’t fully devote themselves to trans rights activity worldview I don’t want to get involved publically.

Not personally because I am aware that if you even hint to the wrong person that you feel women’s and children’s safeguarding should be considered in all of this you are subject to criticism.

My wife mentioned to a work colleague that I was interested in the the Scottish GRA review and upon hearing that I thought self ID could have negative implications for women’s legal protections she was informed that I am bigoted, transphobic and denying the reality of trans people.

Nick, Interested parent and casual twitter observer

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Media and Arts

I’m a founding member of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights

I care about women’s rights and protections. I care about truth-telling. I care about mental and physical health for all. I care about child safeguarding. I care about preserving my Charter rights and freedoms.

I’m a founding member of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights (caWsbar), non-partisan, volunteer coalition working to preserve the sex-based rights and protections of women and girls as enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I attended Meghan Murphy’s talk in Toronto and I was appalled at the hate mob that threatened us physically and verbally with misogynist slurs. I felt unsafe and rattled. I’d never felt like that before in my own hometown, which is normally safe and peaceful. As a founding member of caWsbar, I use a pseudonym to protect myself, my family and my livelihood. I hope to be “coming out” soon as gender critical.

Esmeralda Vee (pseudonym), Media worker, documentary filmmaker, mother, Canada