The Gender Dissidents SurveyI am concerned about the erosion of women’s rights to single sex spaces, and about gender non-conforming children and young people being directed to hormones and surgery.
I have expressed gender critical views on social media and discussed the issue with friends and family.
I was anonymously reported to my employer for alleged transphobia.
Kate, Adult human female
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!
I care about the physical safety and dignity of women and girls and I think this is jeopardised by self ID and I think it is wrong that we are being asked to take this risk to appease trans women. Single sex spaces should be preserved.
I care about fairness for women in all fields and consider that women and girls face a loss of opportunity in sports and perhaps at work and in education if their places are being taken by males who identify as women.
I am worried that health issues arising from biological sex ie pregnancy and birth, ante and post natal depression, menopause etc may be impacted when male bodied people identifying as women access services designed for females. I believe women are being bullied and silenced, and asked to “be kind” at best. This is unfair. It is important that we are allowed to defend our sex-based rights. Without a recognition of our biology we may lose these rights which is what concerns me most of all.
At the moment not a great deal but I have talked to family and friends and I have started to make my views known on social media. It feels dangerous.
I have been criticized in twitter. A follower of mine whose son is a trans man said something very unpleasant about how I should worry that my husband was raping my daughters if I was so concerned about sharing bathrooms with men.
LAK, For women and girls
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
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
As a woman, I am concerned that the rise in these views I strongly oppose – they make my skin crawl – will make it unsafe for me to use women’s toilets and other women’s spaces.
I’ve written to University authorities to ensure correct labelling of toilet facilities.
I have had only minor consequences like losing friends and being blocked on twitter.
S, campaigner
I am an Adult Human Female. Sex-based oppression is real; my experience as a human being of the Female Sex IS my life.
When a Man insists that he is a Woman because he says so, I am being lied to. I am being asked to lie. I am being asked to lie about what I can see in front of me. I am being asked to deny my life experience.
This GREAT UNTRUTH harms Women and Girls.
Sex (Male/Female) is our biological, material reality: it’s why an estimated (ref UN) 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone some form of genital mutilation.
Gender is a set of constructs and stereotypes: it’s why little boys are dressed in blue.
When we conflate the meaning of Feminine Gender with the Female Sex, decades of Women’s suffrage is eroded.
In my opinion as a Lecturer in the Arts and Humanities, this ‘great untruth’ is located most conspicuously in the general conflation of the words ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’. The ‘great untruth’ and its advocates have quietly confused and manipulated our foremost legal, cultural and educational UK institutions. Squeamishness against using the word ‘Sex’ to denote sex is an innocuous reason for this conflation.
A deeper analysis and understanding of Gender Ideology and its philosophical beginnings, in particular, can offer a genuine insight into its hold (for anyone who actually cares to unpick its message). So educators like me have to be careful at the moment – I could be reprimanded or ‘no platformed’ for questioning the practical need for same-Sex toilets or pointing out my unease . I have been warned several times of ‘stirring up trouble’….
There are practical reasons why Women have Sex-based protections; the most obvious is Safeguarding and there is overwhelming, uncomfortable and compelling evidence that Women clearly need protection from Men. The uncomfortable truth is that Women need Sex-based protections and the Equalities Act went some way to provide it.
In practical terms, if a Man can self-identify into Womanhood, the protections in the Equalities Act become meaningless. Our Sex-based Sports, Sex-based toilets, Sex-based changing rooms, Scholarships, Bursaries, Women of the Year Awards, Women & Girls’ Health and the actual word for Women are being blindly co-opted.
Philosophically, I believe Women are being ‘deconstructed’. As any good Academic will tell you, when you deconstruct an image, a word, an idea, it becomes meaningless.
The thing is, Women are not an image, a Word or an idea. Women are Human Beings and our reality is located in practicalities.
The ‘great untruth’ does not require the default Adult Human Male to do anything. Adult Human Males are not required to accept or safeguard other Adult Human Males who wear Feminine Gendered clothing or make-up, or who undergo life-changing surgery to appear as a Feminine construct. It means that Adult Human Males do not have to confront their part in why Women need practical Sex-based protections.
I have (and probably) will continue to receive death threats for exposing the ‘great untruth’ – Men cannot ‘change’ into Women.
Louisa Jones, Film Lecturer
I care because the pro-gender lobby is hugely sexist, and aims to trample women’s rights – our rights to safe, female-only spaces, our rights to self-definition and even discussion of female reality and biology. I care because of the huge safeguarding concerns for women in vulnerable situations e.g. prison and hospital, and also the danger to children’s health and wellbeing.
It is cruel that gay, autistic, gnc etc children are being taught they are in “the wrong body” and must undergo a lifetime of medical alterations by adults who seem to gave forgotten their own childhood. I care because this movement has truly shown that women are at the bottom of the pile, considered less important than male feelings.
I have spoken with family about this, who said they wouldn’t have been aware otherwise. I have posted gender critical (but fairly mainstream, approachable) articles on social media for friends and coworkers to see (and had a few surprise “likes”).
I responded to the Scottish GRA. I researched gender ideology and the many areas of concern, and wrote a well-sourced email to my MP (Labour MP Cat “3 homes” Smith – useless, says transwomen are women, believes I am wrong and didn’t care about any of the quoted articles or stats in my letter).
I also wrote to Labour leadership and deputy candidates (apparently Kier’s team had nothing to say about women’s rights or protecting Equality Act 2010, but promise to protect non-binary people in whatever that means). I wrote to Tory women’s minister and got a better response from the GEO (that the Equality Act 2010 was safe, women’s rights matter).
I donate regularly to causes such as lawsuits, campaign groups. I vocally opposed my employer (a uni) changing ladies and gents toilets to unisex by virtue of simply changing the sign.
Our male union rep (Unite) said he wasn’t fussed and it was more important that non-binary and trans people don’t feel like “the odd one out” by using the other, single uni unisex toilet already available in the same corridor. Women’s safety didnt matter.
Thankfully more powerful women than me pushed back and the sign was quietly changed back.
I have had very uncomfortable arguments with colleagues and union reps and received very dismissive replies from politicians. Mostly it is just stressful because I have anxiety anyway. I am afraid of speaking out and losing my job at a uni that works closely with Stonewall and Gendered Intelligence. I am more afraid, however, of not standing up to bullies.
G
I have always been gender non conforming tomboy STEM moterbike guitars /female band and back in the 70 womens lib but it wasnt until I accidentally stumbled on Dr Jane Clare Jones that I realised in a deeper way that it wasn’t that I liked “boy”things but that labelling those things male was part of a patriarchal system. It made me realise how important language is and that removing language that enables us to express our oppression manacle us more firmly “in our place” in a way that many won’t even notice or if they do will be unable to articulate
My experience at work was of a young autistic teen X who was accused of Transphobia by a class mate Y (who sometimes came in as male sometimes presented as female ). Because X stared at them.
X said he didnt feel he was Transphobic it just made him feel funny that Y kept changing (name as well as clothes) his autism was ignored. There were a lot of demands being made by Y re toilets etc also at odds with our large female Muslim students rights.
Management was in a panic . Transphobia is apparently the worst of crimes
I have taken part in twitter/ discussion with friends/some work mates to raise awareness
I haven’t had any consequences because most people I’ve spoken to think the idea that a man can really be a woman/access women’s spaces /sports is completely mad or were unaware of it and recognise the consequences immediately. I haven’t spoken out on one FB account though because that account is a partially music account to promote bands. I have on the other.
Sophia, Musician, Maths lecturer
This matters to me because when I was a student in the mid-1980s, I was a feminist (of course!) but I was confident that most of the major battles had been won, and that we were on a trajectory towards genuine equality. If someone had told me that in 2020, women would be fighting desperately to hang on to the definition of woman, in order to protect our hard-won rights, I’d have thought they were crazy.
I have written to my MP, written in support of gender-critical women who raise their voices publicly, written private letters of support to those women; made FOI requests on sex/gender topics; spent several Saturdays leafleting with other women involved in the Fair Play For Women campaign to draw attention to the proposed GRA reforms; completed the govt’s GRA reform consultation questionnaire; completed Edward Lord’s (shocking) consultation on making all City of London visitor attraction toilets mixed-sex; been active on social media; written a (far too occasional) blog; taken every opportunity to talk to family and friends (and selected colleagues) about these issues; attended WPUK and Let A Woman Speak and other events; spoken at Women Say in Hyde Park on IWD 2020; with others, set up a women’s group in our city which meets regularly (before lockdown); am active in a private Slack group for GC professionals in my sector.
As a consequence I have been frozen out of the friendship group I made when my son was a baby, because one of the mothers has a “trans child”. My son has been asked by other students at school (he attends a school which is obsessively proud about its Stonewall status) if his mother is “still a TERF”.
Rachel Bosenterfer, Adult human female. Mother. Loudmouth
The Gender Dissidents Survey