Tag: sports

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Media and Arts

I just didn’t want to participate in the charade

Privacy while undressing/getting healthcare is important to me. I don’t want to participate in someone’s fetish. Men don’t belong in women’s sports. Women’s rights in general matter to me.

I donate. I offer my services to GC orgs for free. I raise awareness of people around me. I’m active on social media.

I get suspended on social media on a regular basis.

This is not a really a consequence, but a decision: I didn’t join women’s groups in my industry, even though I’d LOVE the support and the connections that are being made there, because they’ve apologized for using the word “female”, they accept both TW and TM and they center gender ideology in their definition of women’s groups. I just didn’t want to participate in the charade.

Sarah

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Media and Arts

Many young people are being almost encouraged into a trans identity

I’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

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Parent

I don’t want to be referred to as a menstruator

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

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Healthcare Media and Arts

Obviously lesbians can’t have penises

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

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Media and Arts

It feels like the biggest attack on women’s rights I have seen in my lifetime

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

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Parent

I want my daughter to play in sport that is fair

This matters to me as I don’t want women and girls to be silenced and I want my daughter not to be called a cis. I want my daughter to play in sport that is fair. I want the same for other girls. I don’t believe you can change sex at any point. I don’t want men to be able just to say that they are women same as me. I hate institutional capture where people seem to have lost the power to use their brains.

I emailed the BBC about their use of assigned at birth. I wrote to MSP and MP.

Claire B

Categories
Voluntary sector

I’m dismayed that decent people who think they’re being liberal and welcoming are unaware of the cost to women.

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

Categories
Media and Arts

Men shouldn’t be able to self ID their way into women’s spaces, awards, jobs

I care about protecting women’s sport, and I dislike how it’s become a mockery – odd kids donning dresses and deciding that’s enough to make them a woman. I don’t particularly mind if a fully transitioned trans woman shares a bathroom – but I also understand that plenty of people would be frightened or worried about this – but men shouldn’t be able to self ID their way into women’s spaces, awards, jobs etc.

I’ve just spoken to friends.

A university friend has been dismissive of GC people and I like and respect him, which makes me start to doubt whether I’m being fair.

V, Not very vocal supporter of women’s rights.

Categories
Students

Women are born, not worn

Because as a woman, I want to keep my dignity and safety and having to share locker rooms, hostel rooms, sports etc. with biological men and having to call a biological man she/her even if that biological man rapes me and then decides he feels like a woman, takes away my safety and dignity and humanity.

I have been tweeting, sending letters of complaints to businesses who have come out as anti-women and I have designed stickers in support of JK Rowling that can be bought on redbubble https://www.redbubble.com/people/RadFemmeDesign

Stella, Women are born, not worn

Categories
Students

I find transgenderism borderline cultural appropriation

I find transgenderism borderline cultural appropriation. Men with no idea about any issues women face pretending to be a parody of women. The invasion of women’s sports diminishes any illusion of fairness. The invasion of women’s privacy is an attempt to role back decades of fighting for male-free safe spaces (no concern for female trauma victims or women who just want privacy). The policing of language is dehumanising. All of the above I find offensive and distasteful and a regression of women’s rights.

I’m now a gender crit in Twitter and a member of r/gendercritical. Planning a slogan campaign for next year at uni.

All my accounts are anon.

TS, U.K. uni student observing the changes in women’s rights with concern