The Gender Dissidents SurveyI care because it upsets me that all liberals get labelled as unhinged because some people refuse to acknowledge science and reality to accommodate someone’s feelings. I’m a liberal.
I have been unfollowed, reported and blocked from social media.
R, Writer
I care about this because I am a woman & I have a daughter. I am horrified at how the rights & safety of women & girls are under threat when there is still such an issue with male violence towards women & girls.
When I see women I have admired for years, journalists, campaigners, feminists, being silenced, bullied, threatened it scares me.
I haven’t raised my voice yet, I’ve shared a few things online then immediately deleted it as I’m scared of the reaction. But I’m starting to feel ashamed of my silence. As things get more absurd I begin to realise I am quite prepared to chain myself to the railings for this cause.
I am mentally preparing myself for the fight. I am reading the science, trying to seek out people who feel the same as me. It’s extremely comforting to realise there are more of us out there then the trans lobby would have you believe. Thank god for the bravery of woman’s place UK & the Labour Women’s Declaration, they give me strength & inspire me to speak out.
Sara, Woman, Mother of girl
I fell into this rabbit hole in Oct 2018. I knew straight off that some well meaning teacher would have had my 10 year old self in a binder, steered towards hormones, fed a load of dangerous ideas. I was in shock at single biggest attack on womens rights in my lifetime. How did I not know? The mainstreaming of pseudo science, of pink brains in blue bodies, with it’s attendant State sanctioned mutilation of children. Has everyone gone collectively barmy?
I started looking into it properly from Oct 2018. Playing catch up. I accumulated 1000s of reference links & screen shots.I’ve not stopped talking or posting about Transgenderism since. I know I’ve grown awareness in my own friendship networks and community networks, I did a lot of explaining amongst my local muslim contacts online. Kept encouraging them to start talking about it in their family groups. Transgender Trend stuff was really helpful. I challenged supporters of No Outsiders when parents were protesting. Activists MPs & TU people.
Virtue signallers were all over Brum social media. How many had read it? I’m still regularly tweeting Jess Phillips with #childsafeguarding. I found Gender Critical Green Party members, I’d have left the party if I hadn’t. We’re trying to get a GP womens rights policy agreed. Got Lab friends to raise issue in their local branch & nationally: working on getting the Lab Wom Declaration passed at branch. Culture: Chased up Barber Institute re Drag Queen Story Hour & Coronation St, long story. Written regularly to MSM. Signed petitions. Written to MPs. Donated to crowd fundraisers. Put up stickers. Bought Tshirts. Supported others. Been able to offer words of comfort & experience, especially to younger campaigners, who get caught up with vicious eejits online.
Don’t let them waste your time & energy or rent space free in your head. Age has its advantages.
Been called: bigot, shameful, told I’ll be dead soon anyway because I’m old, accused of fighting a phony war. Dropped by numerous online ‘friend’s & political group pages. All a bit hurtful, especially at first. But seeing what’s happened to others has really boiled my piss. I’ve nothing to lose. I’ve no career or reputation. My true friends are just that, true. So I’ve been fearless in speaking up & out. For all those confused misled kids who can’t and for whom this is urgent. For all the women who are more vulnerable than I. Sanity must prevail.
Susan Green , Not dead yet
This matters to me for many reasons. Because women are being erased and redefined, reduced to their bodily functions, recategorised as a sub section of their own classification, having their rights removed and their ability to stand up for and protect themselves reduced. Because I worry for especially young women who are learning who they are and taking drastic actions which they live to regret. Because I’m seeing an increase in homophobia. Because there are troubling safeguarding issues for my daughters.
Because the males who are impinging on women’s protected spaces are affecting vulnerable women and certain religions and because asking why there’s a male in your safe space isn’t protecting women it could get you arrested for a hate crime. Because I’m dismayed that decent people who think they’re being liberal and welcoming are unaware of the cost to women. Because I see so much aggression and vile comments aimed at level-headed women just trying to raise awareness of the issue.
I’ve not done much. Discussed it some with family. Chat in private groups of like-minded women. I was sharing stuff on Twitter but I’ve dialled back on that because I’m freelance and I’m working currently with a third sector organisation and they are notoriously ‘woke’.
A year ago I was right there on the Trans Women are Women side of the fence, but then I started to see how simply raising legitimate concerns and questions about how we could accommodate male bodied people into women’s and girls’ safe spaces got you instantly labelled as a TERF.
And I started to see male bodied people using their self ID to access and beat women out of female specific awards and sports and scholarships that were there to redress the male focused opportunity and privilege, and then I started to see rape crisis centres have their funding cut for trying to protect traumatised women from sharing a safe space with a male bodied (ergo more physically powerful) person, and Jessica Yaniv and male bodied people who self ID abusing vulnerable women in prison. (Obv, not all Trans people.) And again when women tried to raise legitimate concerns about these things – whilst still trying to find a way to support trans people and help them to find a way to live their lives as they want to, safely and free from abuse and incorporated and welcomed – still being shouted at and labelled transphobic. And then I saw lesbians being called bigots for being same sex attracted. And then I saw people trying to pretend that actual biology ergo science was not a tested, provable thing which is a very dangerous route to take. Then I’m afraid my position shifted somewhat.
I started out just asking simple questions about safeguarding and was called transphobic and a TERF very quickly. I saw the same pattern repeated again and again with pleasant, caring women who showed concern for trans women and wanted them to live safe happy lives but not at the expense of women feeling safe and secure because of opportunistic men taking advantage of self ID, being threatened and called bigots and then I realised there was something very wrong with the TRA movement.
Shiv, Woman, mother, freelancer, feminist
It matters to me because I do not want to see the voices of young women being drowned out. Having seen school girls protesting after boys were allowed access to their spaces, I realised how uncomfortable that would have made me. Furthermore, I believe everyone has a right to voice their view on this matter without fear or repercussions of job loss or harassment.
I have begun following gender critical discourse online, I have discussed my views with my mother, and several of my friends, and have discovered that we all share similar views. I have slowly been posting more and more on my private social media, and I have been routinely discussing the reality of biological sex from my position of being educated in anatomy and cell biology.
I have fallen out with my brother who is the complete opposite of me, and thinks self ID and other gender ideological ideas are good. I have lost not-so-close friends after they discovered that I was following and taking part in gender critical discourse.
Cat, BSc anatomical sciences and pharmacy advisor
As an academic in social sciences and, partly, gender studies, I do not want to pursue a career teaching and professing falsehoods. In short, gender identity may lead to a person’s social identity and legal sex to be modified, but her/his genetic and reproductive make up remain unchanged. This, apparently, is contentious to utter.
So far, practicing my arguments on this in social media and discussing this with colleagues. I live in a small European country where these debates are very niche but do exist.
I have experienced scolding from some quarters (people on social media, PhD students), for not being “inclusive” enough. I have heard of other scholars in Europe being scolded in seminars or having papers rejected for applying a binary classification of sex.
Ellen , Post doc in social sciences, Scandinavia
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
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)
I’m a woman in computer science. In school I was bullied for taking maths subjects and had to suffer silently as teachers and pupils alike bullied me. I now see women who faced these same experiences, lose female centred opportunities to people who got to experience this as male, and therefore faced none of it.
The trans movement damages the reputation of women in spaces where we’re already desperately trying to quash stereotypes by suggesting that all it takes to be a woman is to wear a dress and makeup, which is NOT what makes me female.
Please help me, please help us, the trans movement is terrifying, I’m terrified. I’m sorry for not speaking out, but you see the backlash.
I don’t know what I can do without risking my career. I’m watching the rights of women be eradicated by identity politics.
I can see Olympics in the future with only trans or male athletes, the misogynistic structures of the past awarding women’s awards to men who don’t know what it’s like to fight for your place in society your whole life, but just get to put on a dress and then claim the whole lived experience of a woman.
It’s not acceptable for white people to identify as black, and then claim the lived experiences of people of color. For all the same reasons men cannot become women and then truly know what it is to grow up and live as a woman.
Please, for my daughters in the future, who currently have no future, fight this to the end.
I’m sorry, I’m a 22 year old going into the tech industry, I can’t speak, the vitriol is suffocating and terrifying. But I know my silence is a problem and I’m sorry, I’m just too scared of losing my entire future.
E
I’m a woman of the adult human female kind, a survivor of male sexual abuse from a line of survivors of male sexual abuse with friends who’ve experienced male sexual abuse and colleagues who’ve experienced male sexual abuse.
Single sex spaces and sex based rights and protections make our lives outside of our homes possible. And because gender is absolute nonsense – regressive, patriarchal nonsense. They think I’m a TERF? I think they’re a narrow-minded bigot from the 1950s.
I have started a huge row with a colleague (male) who shouted at me that I was a disgusting person for suggesting trans women are not women.
We are both criminologists. Criminologists. I cannot stress that enough.
Yeah, see the above. I yelled back twice as loud but frankly it scared the shit out of me that an intelligent colleague with a professional interest in, y’know, intelligent, nuanced analysis and good science, could behave toward me in that way and seem to think it justified. It has kept me (professionally) quiet.
The Mo, A post-hysterectomy woman who doesn’t feel excluded by the word ‘woman’, or discussions of menstruation; so stop using me in your facile arguments, you TRA morons – I’m a woman, an adult human female!
The Gender Dissidents Survey