The Gender Dissidents SurveyI’m very concerned about the conflict of rights between trans activism and women, particularly with regard to single sex spaces and women’s sports. I’m also worried that many young people are being almost encouraged into a trans identity, particularly young girls.
I talk about this online when and where it feels safe to do so.
Awkward conversations where accusations of transphobia hang in the air.
MA, Writer
I care because I have two daughters and I don’t want them growing up in a world that is less safe than the one I grew up in. I care because I see women becoming erased and our protected rights decimated. I care because we’re losing everything we fought for: the right to privacy, the right to fairness in sport, the right to have females perform intimate care on us, our right to single-sex wards, toilets, prisons, changing rooms, refuges…the list goes on. I care because I don’t want to be referred to as a menstruator, or cis, or a non-man.
I’ve written to newspapers to complain about men being referred to as women in cases of paedophilia and sex attacks. I have written to companies about being referred to as menstruators and their anti-women social media.
No consequences yet apart from nastiness on social media and being Terf-blocked.
P, I stand with JK Rowling , TerfyMcTerfyFace
I care because I know from experience, & research, that males – no matter how they identify – expect women to give way to them. They are taught that women are inferior in all respects.
The trans agenda is based on mantras designed to silence debate in order to remove female rights to privacy, safety & dignity.
My main concern is over the safeguarding of girls & women: I have even been told women who have been sexually assaulted need to be re-educated to accept males as women.
I do not believe sex can be changed. I spent years teaching Equal Opportunities; children learned their sex (female) & race/colour (black) did not make them inferior, it was society’s gender & race stereotypes which did this.
I care because LGBT+ training, Stonewall & Mermaids, is based on lies. Our children & women deserve better from society. They are putting the fetishes of males above the lived lives of women & girls. Males need to become responsible for themselves, especially their violence, & allow women to become their authentic selves.
I have raised the issue at my place of work. A place which I am told it is well known children (generally girls) are brought as part of the grooming process.
I have discussed aspects of the trans ideology with colleagues. This has to be done quietly and in corners as my place of work is a Stonewall Champion.
The company lays on (voluntary) LGBTQ+ training sessions each year; we are encouraged to support the Pride march throughout town, add our pronouns to the end of emails & wear Pride & personal pronoun badges.
I have written to my line manager & head of the company. I listed the trans mantras which a colleague quoted to me as fact. I showed by provable research that the mantras were deliberately confusing & based on lies; e.g Trans women are women; children know they are born in the wrong body at 3 years old; trans people are the most vulnerable in the world, thousands of trans people are killed each year for being trans etc. etc.
I have also contacted my MP, who is sympathetic & understanding but not prepared to do anything. I have contacted my local Council pointing out the errors regarding use of confusing & ambiguous language in their Equality & Diversity Policy.
My colleague reported me; she is worried I would not allow a man to follow a girl into the female toilets. Her view and that of my line manager is that were I to question him I might upset him as he may be a trans woman.
I have been told I am to be given an official reprimand. It has not taken place as the company closed down due to COVID-19 the day it was to be administered.
I have been told I am not to allow anyone to think my views are those of the company I work for.
Outside work: due to my views I have left the Labour party, I have left the Women’s Equality Party, my friends laugh at me – as they think climate change is more important, they tell me I have a one track mind, they tell me it is too late (that was from someone high up in the GMB union). On the positive side; I have raised the issue with the local primary school headteacher. He had no clue what I was going on about but we agreed I had opened the conversation and we could continue if need be at a later date.
AnonymousJ, Sex is real. Males cannot become women/female
I care because the more I learnt about this issue, the more blatantly misogynistic and terrifying for women’s rights it became. I knew nothing a couple of years ago, but started to see words like TERF appearing online and wondered what they meant. The answer led me down a dystopian rabbit-hole, as I saw what else was happening in the name of ‘trans rights’.
Far from a mere social media issue, it is now having real world consequences. I have worked in Universities which have changed previously ‘Women Only’ toilets into spaces for ‘All Genders’ (sic) . This not only makes me feel like my personal safety has been sold down the river for an adolescent gimmick, but I also got a sense that many young female students weren’t comfortable with it either, but daren’t speak up, lest they be tarnished as “bigots”. This makes my blood boil.
I have also encountered ‘gender neutral’ toilets at a major city centre theatre which has gone full ‘woke’, despite the reality that their biggest clientele are of retirement age and are likely to be baffled by it all.
( I also had an experience last year on a freelance job, when all of the toilets in the public building being used, were temporarily re-labelled ‘gender neutral’, discriminating against the needs of the large number of female staff (who stayed silent), simply to accommodate a “non-binary” 19 year old girl, whom we had to remember to address as ‘they/them’ throughout or else, like an episode of the Twilight Zone).
I also believe this movement is totalitarian and undemocratic and I do not want to be part of a society in which ideologies may not be critiqued or questioned, under threat of violence. I do not believe it is really about trans rights at all, it is a smokescreen for the oppression of women.
I’m furious and scared that women are being made explicitly less safe, yet if we speak about it it is US who get called BIGOTS!!! It must stop. Self-ID becoming law would be the worst thing to ever happen to women.
Amongst close friends and family I have spoken openly about the issue with much agreement (and disbelief). I have signed petitions, and contributed to legal cases when I can. I have also donated to women’s groups, such as Fairplay for Women, etc. I have bought tickets to events in my area (but not always attended if I thought there may be a hostile crowd nearby). I contributed my opinions to the GRA review. I have sent supportive messages to outspoken, more confident women online so they hopefully know that someone agrees with them. I have also emailed retailers with discriminatory policies, such as gender neutral changing rooms, to register a complaint.
I never use my real name for GC activities as I fear being targeted by a misogynistic hate mob, as has happened to so many outspoken women. I also fear that if I were to speak out, in even the mildest terms, it would damage my future career/earnings. I work freelance in the “arts” where the mantra is ‘trans women are women’ with no room for dissent. To question this, is to be labelled a ‘transphobe’ resulting in career-suicide under the current climate.
Deborah, Adult human female
It started as bafflement at the perversion of language – obviously lesbians can’t have penises – and grew into a horrified realisation that there is a huge movement to define men as women (and vice versa), which particularly concerns me because it appears to me totally regressive, and I don’t want my children to grow up thinking they can’t be gender non-conforming, and that instead they have to ‘become’ the opposite sex.
I also see a lot of men taking advantage at the expense of women by claiming membership of their sex class, in business, in sport, in shelters, in prisons, in politics – and as a man it appalls me.
They do not seem to care that men oppress and abuse women, and that it’s not even about transwomen – it’s about the bad men who will take advantage of the freedom to ‘be women’ if that right is extended to any man.
I have written things which have had an impact on the debate. I also tweet furiously (but politely) under a pseudonym.
Businesses which were implicated swiftly dissolved their relationship with mine. I believe under pressure from their internal LGBT reps.
MC, Centrist dad
This matters to me because I am a woman. I’ve experienced life as a woman both good and bad experiences. I have daughters. I fear for their safety if men can put a dress on and enter a space where they are vulnerable- like toilets or changing rooms. I feel we are opening the door to predators and perverts who will use and exploit this “self-identify” rule.
I also take great offence at the idea men can be women if they wear a dress/lipstick/pink – it’s a sexist theory that otherwise intelligent people are going along with!
I have liked and retweeted JK Rowling’s tweets with comments. I have read different sides of the debate to clarify my own thoughts.
I have been called a TERF. I’ve been added to an online list of TERFs which I found really quite unnerving.
Lisa, Writer
This matters to me because I am extremely worried that young women in particular are being led down a medical path that includes surgery and hormones. Lots of adolescent girls go through a phase of being unhappy about their bodies or anxious about their sexuality, and instead of being helped to come to terms with that, they are being told that they are “really” boys and that they should irreversibly mutilate their bodies. I find that absolutely shocking.
I am also hugely concerned at the idea that men, simply by claiming to identify as women, should be allowed into women’s refuges or prisons, into women’s changing rooms or toilets, or to compete in women’s sports. It feels like the biggest attack on women’s rights I have seen in my lifetime. It’s horrifying.
I’ve written articles, I’ve donated to crowdfunders, I have spoken out on social media (though not much in real life), I’ve written to my MP, I’ve written submissions to public consultations (e.g. on the proposed GRA changes), I’ve attended a trial of a woman prosecuted for wrongthink and I’m involved in one of the campaigning groups for women’s rights.
I’ve had people be a bit rude to and about me on social media, but no actual threats. I am self-employed so it’s possible I’ve lost work, but I can’t be sure.
Hannah, Writer
Women need their protections in law upheld. I have a teenage daughter and I want her and her friends to have freedom to do what they want, safely.
I’ve written to venues about the importance of single sex facilities for women, I’ve joined campaigns to support women’s causes, I am supporting charities that acknowledge the importance of single sex provision for women, I am talking about this to my friends and colleagues.
I am cautious and have not spoken up much; where I have politely stated my opinion on twitter I’ve had some responses with implied violent threats.
CJC, Middle-aged mother and manager in the arts
As a writer, I refuse to be told that black is white. The truth is important to me, the safety and dignity of women is even more important to me. Combined together, I would go to prison to defend them.
I’ve basically gambled my career on it.
I’ve lost two major jobs, I’ve been sued, I’ve been visited by the police. Various forms of harassment that have continues over the last two years.
Graham Linehan, Comedy writer
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
The Gender Dissidents Survey