Tag: school

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Healthcare Self employed / entrepreneurs

I didn’t get the chance to finish before I was cut off

This matters to me as I have two young daughters and I am scared for their futures if sex based rights as girls and women are removed. I disagree with trans women participating in women’s sport for reasons for fairness and safety.

I worry about the safety of women and children, myself and daughters included, if the definition of women is expanded to included transwomen. Male bodied persons should not be allowed access to women’s only spaces for reasons of safety, privacy and dignity.

I am not a cis woman. I do not need a prefix to describe myself. I am a woman – an adult human female.

I have raised concerns about teaching gender at school when it was mentioned in a health and well-being session for parents. I didn’t get the chance to finish before I was cut off and the deputy head started talking about gay friends she had that we’re getting married and how wonderful it was, as if I was some massive homophobe.  I have commented on social media but only on topics about children and puberty blockers. I don’t feel confident enough to speak out on other matters, like women’s rights, without fearing a negative backlash and being accused of being a transphobe. This angers me as it is not transphobic to stand up for women’s rights.

I know the school thought I was a homophobe but this will not stop me from speaking up in future, although next time I will perhaps put my concerns in writing so I can’t be cut off. I am self employed so very aware of speaking out, even on women’s issues, as the current climate is so volatile and I fear for being called transphobic and my business being targeted by TRAs.

I am scared to speak out on social media as I feel that I would be judged and perhaps even lose friends.

Mum of Two, Adult Human Female

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Others

Sex-based rights matter to me

As a female keeping hard won sex-based rights matter to me. As do single sex spaces in hospital wards, prisons, schools and shops.

I speak and have conversations offline mostly with men.

Jane Bloggs, Raising awareness by talking with the family

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Others

Biological reality matters

I care because I am a woman, because I care about other girls and women, and because biological reality matters. 

I have shared articles on closed/trustworthy groups. I briefly raised the new Relationships and Sex Ed guidance with my child’s school teacher (but at the end of a meeting about a different topic) and shelved it for the time being

I have been too scared to speak up on social media for fear of the consequences (losing friends, being reported to my work).

Cath, woman, academic, freelancer

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Self employed / entrepreneurs

I have an impressionable 12yr old son who I worry would be easily dragged into this madness

I care because I am a woman and the old-fashioned kind of feminist who cares about the rights of women and girls.   I care because I have an impressionable 12yr old son who I worry would be easily dragged into this madness that I view “woke” as.   Also, I don’t like being told what to do – I don’t want to be in the situation where pronouns are always requested. 

I have debated online and with friends.   I have raised issues at governing body meetings at my local school. 

I have been involved in quite hurtful social media spats.   On my Facebook page I posted an article about “Karen” White and commented that penises should not be in a women’s prison.   For this I was called homophobic, disgusting, and a disgrace by a work colleague.  

Vic

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Parent

I care because my daughter declared herself trans male at age 13, she has now desisted

I care because my daughter declared herself trans male at age 13, she has now desisted.

I raised concerns during multiple CAMHS meetings with my daughter expressing concern at their unquestioning acceptance of her trans status, despite a pre-existing ASD diagnosis and clear signs of social influence from a key friend at school.

I have also written to Amnesty about their support for self ID (particularly their campaign for there to be no age limit on the legal process) and subsequently cancelled my membership. I also talk regularly to friends about our experience.

I have been cautious about being open on social media about our situation out of concern for my daughter’s privacy. I have avoided negative consequences by being hugely cautious about speaking out on this topic.

AJT, Mother of a daughter, who was trans and now isn’t

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Others

I have to take a thousand different precautions to keep myself safe – but these are useless if men are free to use women’s spaces

It matters to me because as a woman I have to take a thousand different precautions to keep myself safe – but these are useless if men are free to use women’s spaces. Before lockdown, I hadn’t been to my nearest city, less than an hour away, for several months, because the last time I went there was a man in the public toilets in the central library. I don’t know where else to go to the loo safely!

It matters to me because women’s opportunities are precious. We’ve fought hard to get them.

It matters to me because as a girl, me and two of my friends campaigned to be able to do woodwork at secondary school. We won, and the three of us excelled at it, carrying on with it for 5 years and passing an exam in it. Moreover, two years later, instead of girls doing cookery and boys doing woodwork, everyone had a term each of cookery, woodwork and metalwork. I’m really proud we helped bring about that change. But if we did that today, we might well be told we were really boys and be pressured into transitioning. I never wanted to be a boy – but what aboout my parents? Did my father really want a son?

I was vocal on twitter until my anonymous account was closed. While I was there I tried to engage with people who were open to discussion – not easy on twitter, and it did get quite stressful.

I have joined the local ReSisters group.

I have started having conversations with “woke” family members  – it took me months to build up the courage and find the words to do that.

My twitter account was closed.

Sue, Low paid, invisible yet apparently essential

Categories
Lesbians

We banned him from lesbian events for touching women without their consent

I’m a lesbian and was for years active in a women’s centre which acted as a hub for local lesbian activities and groups and support. I and other volunteers held monthly brunch meetings for lesbian women, we had a monthly lesbian feminist group, a monthly cafe event, a newsletter that publicised everything from walks and bike rides and dining clubs and festivals and weekends away to personal ads. We probably reached the best part of 1000 women. We had innumerable women tell us we’d been a life-saver for them. People actually moved to this area because they knew there was this wonderful, open, established lesbian network they could plug into.

Then a trans-rights activist in a wig and lipstick and long nails came to a couple of our events. 

He stood out because he didn’t look like the rest of us. We asked him to leave. He refused. He came to a brunch, made a speech about how he’d come to educate lesbians about transgender issues and, as women tried to leave the room, forcibly hugged them. They made complaints to us. We banned him from lesbian events for touching women without their consent and took the issue to the police who did nothing. The trans-identified man said he’d take the women’s centre down. And he did.

He applied to become a committee member. The committee at that time was dominated by straight white Momentum Labour women who welcomed him. The BAME women, many of whom are not allowed by their faith to attend events where there is a man present, took their funding and left. Many of the lesbians boycotted the women’s centre events in protest. The women’s centre closed down. The lesbian women’s movement fractured as some women took a GC stance and others took the ‘poor transgender people’ stance. Friends fell out. Younger lesbians told off older lesbians for their failure to be kind and reasonable. This fracture in the lesbian community is still festering and I can’t see a time when we will ever be able to rebuild what we had.

I have educated my MP about this, but while she’s sympathetic and makes GC noises to my face she still maintains a supportive pro-trans public persona.

I’ve written 50+  letters and emails to the BBC, the Guardian and other media organisations, occasionally with success (ie, articles have been changed, headlines have been changed) Lots of emails to Radio 4!

I send postcards of support to many women, particularly whose who are fighting alone within their professions/ institutions.

I’m out and proud as GC on my very secure FB page and found that as soon as I started talking about it, quite a few others started saying that they’d felt the same way but had felt uncomfortable about discussing such things.

I’ve taken a firm, rational, non-emotional GC line in lesbian social groups etc and while some people are offended, I usually find that the majority even if they’re silent at the time, sidle up later to say they agree.

I belong to a Resisters group and have stickered and gone out on the streets leafleting. Again, the majority of people agree with a GC line.

Once you start talking to people you realise that 80% are GC, 10% are confused or don’t care and fewer than 10% really take the TWAW line — and even then can’t justify that belief.

I’ve lost several people with whom I thought I’d be friends for life. I had a lesbian GP friend who is now so deeply enmeshed in transgender ideology that she has gone off to specialise in transgender medicine and refers to me openly as a TERF. She spouts all the Mermaids stuff about hundreds of trans teens killing themselves and won’t hear a rational response. It’s brought out a sort of Messiah complex in her: she’s going to rescue and protect all the poor transpeople. It’s profoundly disturbing to realise that even someone like her — clever, educated, years of experience in public service in the NHS — is so emotionally and intellectually susceptible to irrational ideology. 

I’ve also been very badly patronised by younger women friends who think their brand of feminism (intersectional feminism) is better than my 1970s/1980s feminism. It’s come as a real shock to realise that these apparently impeccably feminist young women don’t centre women in their politics. Some of them treat me as if I have learning difficulties. You know: ‘You can’t blame Issilly for her opinions, she comes from the medieval school of feminism where women hate all men…’

The biggest negative consequence has been realising how irrational and misogynistic and homophobic the world still is, under the guise of being ‘nice’. Lesbians are under attack from all sides, including other lesbians. I feel really glad to have had a wonderful 30 years of positive lesbian feminist culture and so sorry for younger lesbians who have nothing that I had to cling onto.

Issilly, who was just a lesbian until she discovered she was actually a radical lesbian feminist

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Healthcare Others

I have a niece who insists everyone refer to them as “they” and they want to get a double mastectomy- they are 17

I care about this issue because gender ideology seems so obviously harmful, with more children and young adults wishing to become permanently medicalized and feeling they have to change their name simply because they don’t want to confirm to rigid sexist stereotypes.

I have a niece who insists everyone refer to them as “they” and they want to get a double mastectomy – they are 17. Other than that, they remind me so much of virtually all of my friends when I was 17. Edgy, into the latest cool look, playing around with image, being provocative in all sorts of ways. The most we did was tattoos, piercings and food-colouring hair.

Double mastectomy?? New name?? Abusing people for using normal pronouns? It’s like a generation has no new ways left to be shocking and this is it.

Ultimately, I care about protecting women’s spaces from this absurdity.

I’ve donated a lot to crowdfunders who aim to protect women’s spaces. Donated to to eg yours Maya, Posie Parker’s, Jennifer James… Many more, but I mentioned JJ because I remember the Labour keep All Women Shortlists female Only campaign was a turning point for me.

Women are excluded from politics, not because they stick some lippy on, but because they are of the sex who fall pregnant, and everything that comes with that.

Unfortunately the JJ campaign seems to be completely stuck in the mud, but that’s where trying to come up against the Labour Party will get you I suppose.

I have replied to more petitions than I can list here.

I have tentatively raised concerns (WRT women’s spaces) with friends and have, to my relief, found many agree with me. My brother is too woke at the moment, but my Dad has been diamond.

Well, my brother said I was “like a racist” because I thought Transwomen shouldn’t be in women’s sports or prisons, and appears to have typecasted me as a bigot, despite myself being very lefty and liberal, so our relationship has soured a bit.

I got “ghosted” by a Canadian friend who works at the BBC, after I stated I wasn’t 101% supportive of R McKinnon (winning women’s world records). I actually thought they might be different.

I haven’t raised the issue with my child’s school or at work at all. I know how risky it can be.

Ophelia Forte, Mum, feminist, gender free

Categories
Self employed / entrepreneurs

I am self employed, and also too old to worry about my career

As a parent of a child who was somewhat gender non- conforming as preschooler and at primary school .. . As an elderly feminist who hated many aspects of ‘becoming a woman’ myself (and still do) with lesbian friends of my own age who have said openly that growing up in the current climate they would have believed themselves aged 14 or so ‘ a boy’, no question – rather than the adult lesbians they became. It was immediately clear to me that the basics of feminism as I understood them were being undermined.

I cancelled Guardian subscription (over (non) reaction to your case Maya and JKR’s response) and retweeted the editorial response to Glinner and Mumsnet. Written to MP. Got into a couple of Facebook arguments. Retweeted and shared a number of articles. Had serious email exchange with my very serious but uninformed sister (with lots of woke friends) when she put a trans tenant in to live with existing female tenant in our deceased mother’s house. She agreed existing tenant should be informed her new co-tenant was trans. (She was fine about it apparently . . But may have felt she had no choice).

I have been called a transphobic bigot etc of course!  And I’m sure I have been blocked by some on social media. But I feel able to speak my mind partly because I am self employed, and also too old to worry about my career!

Sarah G, Writer, dancer, musician, mother, feminist

Categories
Education

I have seen badly drafted laws passed, with negative consequences

I care because I see an undermining of the very concept of truth. Certain truths have become unspeakable because groups of activists have deemed them hateful or distressing. I care because I have seen badly drafted laws passed, with negative consequences. Even worse, I’ve seen interested parties covertly undermining the laws that help to keep women and girls safe. I have two daughters. I do not want them to have fewer legal protections than I have had, and I do not want them to be silenced from speaking the truth.

I have shared my concerns with friends and family, and had very positive discussions with each of them. I have introduced several people to WPUK (Woman’s Place UK) and brought my daughter and a friend to the Women’s lib 2020 conference. I have challenged my daughter’s school about their mixed-sex toilets, supported safe schools alliance, and contributed to many crowdfunders.

There have been no negative consequences so far, possibly as a result of not being on social media. I am concerned as to potential reactions of my colleagues, should this issue be discussed at work.

Diana, Teacher