Tag: women's rights

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Every single one expressed concern and also fear /reluctance about speaking out

It feels like a step backwards in the fight for women’s rights. We need safe spaces. We are harassed from a young age. We are oppressed from a young age. We have to constantly work to get what men have easily. To open up access to womens rights to anyone declaring themselves as women, is to redefine the meaning of women and to dismiss and undermine our oppression, our needs, our history

I’ve spoken to women in my family ages 15 to 85 to find their thoughts. Every single one expressed concern and also fear /reluctance about speaking out.

I’ve raised the issue in local political party and with close colleagues.

I’ve posted on social media  – initially to defend transexual women, then to enquire about this new definition of trans and then to speak out strongly against it.

I’ve been called a bigot, right wing, terf and added to block lists on social media.

I’ve had my photograph taken at a demo by a man I do not know who did not introduce himself or request the photo. The photo was one of several posted on social media with comments calling women in it terfs and bigots.

c, Woman from Glasgow

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Others

I want all trans people to be protected from male violence, but not at the cost of women

I am concerned about fairness. I am concerned about how easily and quickly women’s rights have been handed over. I want all trans people to be protected from male violence, but not at the cost of women. We need to find a solution that works for all of us. I am also increasingly concerned about the nature of ‘no debate’ and the ideological nature of this discussion. or lack of discussion. Very reminiscent of Catholic upbringing, the idea of not being able to question something, even when it impacts me.

I have spoken to a couple of family members about this. I have been written off ‘having gone right wing.’ I have liked a couple of tweets when I felt brave.

Feeling so unable to speak about something so unfair feels awful. I have never known anything like it. I feel gagged.

My sister in law thinks I have been brainwashed by the American right. I cannot understand how. I am so left wing, so liberal! I just daren’t speak with my friends about this. I am scared that it will end my friendships.

Hannah

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Private sector

This is simultaneously deeply offensive and dangerous

I care about this because it is absolutely fundamental. We’re living in a time when our institutions – NHS, Police, Judiciary, schools, charities – have all been cognitively and ideologically captured by ideologues who assert that any man is a woman if he so claims. This is simultaneously deeply offensive and dangerous. If any man can be a woman there can be no women: no same sex females, no female healthcare providers, no women’s prisons, hospital wards, domestic violence services or changing rooms.

I have joined a real life consciousness raising group, online/irl activist groups, spoken to friends, attended the WPUK conference, and Standing for Women events, written to my MP and my local council.

I have had difficult conversations with friends who have bought into the “wrong body” narrative and think we should be “kind”. This has put a strain on these relationships but I hope I can get them to understand the reality of this situation.

Ingrid, Gender abolutionist, women’s rights advocate, realist

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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

I’m a founding member of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights

I care about women’s rights and protections. I care about truth-telling. I care about mental and physical health for all. I care about child safeguarding. I care about preserving my Charter rights and freedoms.

I’m a founding member of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights (caWsbar), non-partisan, volunteer coalition working to preserve the sex-based rights and protections of women and girls as enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I attended Meghan Murphy’s talk in Toronto and I was appalled at the hate mob that threatened us physically and verbally with misogynist slurs. I felt unsafe and rattled. I’d never felt like that before in my own hometown, which is normally safe and peaceful. As a founding member of caWsbar, I use a pseudonym to protect myself, my family and my livelihood. I hope to be “coming out” soon as gender critical.

Esmeralda Vee (pseudonym), Media worker, documentary filmmaker, mother, Canada

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Media and Arts

I nearly died from severe early onset pre-eclampsia

This matters to me for a number if reasons:

1) Because I am a sexual abuse survivor and do not want to be forced into private spaces with males. 

2) I do not think it’s fair that males are taking spaces reserved for females in leadership, training, scholarships etc.

3) My experience as a woman is totally different to that of a transwoman – I nearly died from severe early onset pre-eclampsia and then my work tried to make me redundant shortly afterwards! We are women because of our female bodies and that matters a lot.

4) The reinforcement of the stereotypes of what constitutes femininity and masculity is harmful to women. Women are not defined by clothing, grooming, mannerisms and behaviours – we all have different personalities and presentations.

5) I am utterly sick of the misinformation and inappropriate content being taught in schools and workplaces in relation to this issue.

6) I am concerned that publicly funded bodies are not recording sex, so can longer measure sex inequality.

I’ve challenged policies at work with incorrect protected characteristics.  I’ve challenged monitoring categories for a research project I am working on – sex has been replaced with gender. I’ve spoken to women and men I trust to discuss the issues. I’ve shared information on social media and written to my MP.

I have been denounced as a ‘transphobe’ on social media for stating my belief in the reality of sex and the need to record it.

M, Floating voter swayed by women’s rights issues

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Healthcare Media and Arts

No one can make make me believe it or say that I do

Transgenderism is sexist. I’ve been aware of being treated in a sexist manner since childhood. Trans activists lie, lie and lie again. They bully, harrass and intimidate everyone who dares to disagree with them. I’m also disgusted by the spineless middle-class professionals earning three times my salary who have waved it all through. I’m disgusted at those who have turned a blind eye to the abuse and slander of honest women. I simply do not believe in transgender ideology, any more than I believe that the earth is flat or a virgin gave birth. No one can make make me believe it or say that I do.

I actually find transgenderism pretty boring in itself as I don’t find it remarkable if a man wears a skirt or a woman has short hair – I care about the impact on women and children, the abusive behaviour of activists, and the ‘respectable and reasonable’ individuals and organisations who provide cover for this abuse.

I have been active on this issue since 2015. I organised a public meeting on women’s sex-based rights in my city that was targeted by trans activists. I’ve attended several other such meetings. I’ve been to see two MPs and written to them, and to other MPs and peers. I’ve written to safeguarding professionals, local women’s organisations, political parties, the NHS, local education authority and the police.

I’ve contacted journalists with stories, and if they haven’t picked them up written and published them myself online.

I’ve signed petitions and open letters and donated to crowdfunders. I’ve leafleted on the street at the time of the UK GRA consultation. I’ve posted on Facebook and Mumsnet. I asked my trade union not to redefine the word ‘woman’ but they refused to engage so I left.

A friend of 20 years instantly cut all contact with me because I posted online about Tara Wolf, a man convicted of assault by beating of a woman, Maria Maclachlan. I don’t have a social media presence any more because I am afraid that I will lose work – I don’t care about people’s opinion of me but I do care about my livelihood. I am also frightened of the unhinged and violent men within the transgender movement. When I was leafleting a young woman called me ‘fucking disgusting’. The biggest negative consequence if I’m honest is that I have lost faith in almost all insititutions’ abililty or even desire to uphold women’s rights; politics, the media, academia and the wider professional classes who attempted to impose the abusive nonsense of transgenderism top-down.

E

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Media and Arts

I do not want to be part of a society in which ideologies may not be critiqued or questioned, under threat of violence

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

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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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Media and Arts

I’m tired of being frightened into silence

I care because I’m watching women’s rights get eroded away. I want to maintain sex-based protections. I’m tired of being frightened into silence.

I have posted on sites.

I’ve been called a terf and threatened.

S, Disgruntled black woman