Tag: work

Categories
Self employed / entrepreneurs

I suspect that I am getting less freelance work from one particular organisation as a result of being gender critical

I was formed by 1970s and 80s feminism. Women had – and/or made – their own spaces. A couple of years ago I became aware that this now was seen as ‘exclusionary’. As a survivor of sexual abuse the idea of men being able to easily access spaces by saying they ‘identified as a woman’ is very frightening to me. It seemed vital that self-ID should not be introduced via reforms to the Gender Recognition Act.

As a lifelong socialist I am appalled by the way in which the Left seems to have abandoned any kind of recognition of sex-based inequality. It frightens me that girls and young women are labelled transphobic for trying to protect their own dignity, privacy and safety. It frightens me that women from conservative religious groups risk being further marginalised if they cannot access female-only spaces.


I have been fairly vocal on social media – FB and Twitter. I’ve gone to a Woman’s Place UK meeting. I made a submission to the consultation about possible reform to the Gender Recognition Act. I also wrote to my MP about this topic. I’ve also raised this issue within the religious group I belong to – the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).


I suspect that I am getting less freelance work from one particular organisation as a result of being gender critical. This annoys me hugely as I have done a lot of very good work for them. I’ve been barred from a Quaker FB Discussion group whose moderators all support gender identity theory. I’ve lost one FB friend and for a while my daughter – then a student blocked me.

Sibyl Ruth, Writer, library worker, parent and step-parent, gender critical feminist., SibylWrites

Categories
Self employed / entrepreneurs

When I’m old and vulnerable I don’t want to find my woman doctor is actually a man

I believe women have the right to privacy and to spaces where men can’t go. I also believe women have the right to be treated (medically for example) by women and to refuse to be treated by men. I do not believe people can change sex, so even if a man is ‘transgender’ he is still biologically and in reality a man. I don’t believe he should be able to hide that fact in all cases. To allow that would impinge on women’s rights in many ways.

When I’m old and vulnerable I don’t want to find my woman doctor is actually a man. Also, I have stepdaughters and I don’t want them forced to accept that men can be women and to have men invade their privacy. I also fear that ‘self identification’ will provide an opportunity for any man to invade women’s spaces in order to harm women and girls.

I have responded to the GRA consultation and I wrote to others to tell them about it and encourage them to respond. I also tweeted and facebooked about it and wrote to my MP. I’ve made contact/connected with other women – inc locally – to work on this issue together. I’m also part of a group of women working to challenge the issue in the political party we are all members of. I raise the issue with friends and family when I can. I donate to crowdfunders when I can afford it. I also sign petitions and write letters to those in/with power. When I can I share letter templates and encourage others to write/speak up too.

After tweeting about the GRA consultation, a young transwoman (a trans identified male) who works in the same field as me attacked me on social media. A long, ranty thread including accusations of transphobia etc. I didn’t know/had never met this person in real life.

Perhaps foolishly I responded (I spent an hour writing three v.careful tweets in reply). There was a ‘pile on’ against me by others in my industry – including people I did know personally. I felt bullied and it was extremely stressful.

It made me afraid – and I’m not someone who’s used to that feeling. I’m mostly confident and more than capable of sticking up for myself. I lost a lot of Twitter followers (no big deal in the grand scheme of things). Then in the autumn several jobs I usually did at this time (that I’d done annually for several years) weren’t offered. I don’t think it was a coincidence – but I can’t be sure. I wasn’t offered the work in 2019 either though.

I largely stopped tweeting about gender critical things after this and blocked the person who attacked me as much as for their sake as mine. After the original incident, the following summer, I found out the same young person was badmouthing me on Twitter again but could no longer @mention me.

They’d clearly looked back through my feed to find gender critical things (inc. shock horror a RT of @glinner!) and would have seen I’d tweeted nothing on the issue for approx four months. This didn’t stop them tweeting about me, accusing me of transphobia and telling their followers to DM them so they could tell people who I was. They and a few of their followers also encouraged people to shun me and unfollow me. Several clients and contacts unfollowed me at this point. During this time I became very anxious and depressed and found it hard to work. I was afraid of losing the work I still had and too nervous to attend industry events. It took me ages to feel strong again – thanks to connecting with other GC women and a self defence course.

“Alice Brean”, Freelance writer

Categories
Self employed / entrepreneurs

My 19 yo daughter gets upset with me for obsessing about the issue, although she is on-side

Being female is already a disadvantage in many walks of life including business and politics. Hard-fought gains are being lost as people strive to accommodate men who want something more from us. I also worry about my daughter, and myself, and other women, who may lose the privacy and emotional safety of female-only spaces, female healthcare workers, and so on. I feel upset for individual women who have lost a place in a sports team or on a podium because a man took it.

I’ve done a wide range of things. I’ve written to and met with my MP. I’ve written to my county council about their schools trans inclusion advice, several times (trying again now). I’ve taken part in London, UK and Scottish consultations. I’ve donated to several crowd funding campaigns for legal action, and to campaign groups. I help a campaign group with speeches and written submissions. I attended several talks in London organised by LAWS and WPUK. I sat in the visitors’ gallery at the High Court for the first time ever, to hear the Fair Cop case.  I have raised the issue with a group of women at my sports club, and followed up by sharing links. I’ve raised it with my sport’s National Governing Body.

 I changed from my real name on Twitter after some TRAs started piling on and were clearly looking me up elsewhere and making connections, and making references to my work.

My 19 yo daughter gets upset with me for obsessing about the issue, although she is on-side. We’ve had a few rows about it.

F, working in business and sport, DerryBanshee

Categories
Parent trans familiy

My daughter is transgender

My daughter is transgender.

I founded Our Duty, joined in with Fair Cop and others.

Too many negative consequences to list. The biggest, I guess, is not being able to work in my usual field.

Keith , Co-founder, Our Duty

Categories
Healthcare Self employed / entrepreneurs

I help run the Women’s Human Rights Campaign website

This is important to me because gender ideology is a huge threat to the rights of women and girls. I fear that gender ideology is causing us to move away from truth and reality towards compelled language, pseudoscience and harmful nonsense being encoded into law with huge consequences for society.

I have written to my MP four times. The first two times to Mark Prisk with favourable results and the second two to his replacement, Julie Marson, with poor result. I have attended half a dozen women’s meetings in London and Cambridge. I have volunteered with the Women’s Human Rights Campaign where I organised a conference for the launch of “Inventing Transgender Children and Young People”. I help run the Women’s Human Rights Campaign website and have conducted some lobbying activities across Europe. I speak regularly to most people I know, including at work, share info when I can on social media. I have also written to newspapers.

I have been more circumspect with what I post on social media recently because I am short of (freelance) work.

Kath A, Adult human female

Categories
Voluntary sector

Men are male and women are female, and those are real conditions in the world

This matters to me because men are male and women are female, and those are real conditions in the world. That has consequences that matter especially for women individually and collectively.

I’ve posted on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve campaigned with Speak Up For Women NZ

I brought Meghan Murphy to New Zealand to speak at events and on television.

I’ve fundraised for SUFW. I’ve organised ground campaigns including delivery of leaflets throughout New Zealand

I’ve had my employer tagged by a transactivist claiming SUFW supports pedophilia and was investigated twice by my employer.

I was made to unfriend and block all work colleagues.

Jenny Whyte, Feminist trade unionist

Categories
Voluntary sector

Most of the women we support feel safe knowing we only support women

I work with women who have suffered abuse in a women’s only service. Most of the women we support feel safe knowing we only support women. I worry they will feel less safe or be put at risk if people are simply able to self ID. Predators will take advantage of anything and this seems like a way for them to access vulnerable women and limit the ability of organisations to protect women.

I have followed feminists on Twitter, conducted research and shared information- admittedly not too much as worried about fall out at work.

Lauren, Domestic abuse support worker

Categories
Voluntary sector

This matters to me personally because of the way some TRAs treat survivors of abuse/rape

This matters to me personally because of the way some TRAs treat survivors of abuse/rape who are unwilling to share female spaces with those who are physically male. More broadly I’m also concerned about safety in prisons and hospital wards and the effects on women’s sports.

I have spoken out anonymously online and there have been some rather heated debates in my workplace.

IC, Cat person, feminist, abuse survivor

Categories
Media and Arts

I objected to a ‘feminist publishing style guide’ at my workplace

I’m a feminist and understand the political risks and impact on women of removing the word – woman – we use to refer to female people. Working in publishing, I see words and their meanings as intensely political.

I objected to a ‘feminist publishing style guide’ at my workplace which used gender identities thinking suggesting using terms including ‘people who menstruate’ and ‘womxn’ – in an organisation that has used the international feminist understanding of biological sex and gender as a social construct to advance women’s rights, funding progressive work over decades including my project.

I am currently watching a situation unfold with the result that my project will be closed down. I suspect my views on gender are part of the factors in that proposed closure, but have no evidence as yet that this is the case.

M, feminist working in publishing

Categories
survivor

I honestly start to cry when I realise that Stonewall are callous enough to want to take that away

After I did the Freedom Programme I noticed that I had a sort of bodily trauma response if I couldn’t control my boundaries around unfamiliar men.  Even at the door of my own house.

 Actually that experience had always been there, but I hadn’t recognised it before.  I have trans people in my life and I read them as trans people – there’s a mix of male and female characteristics there – so I get that response less but it’s still there. 

When I started to  understand what Stonewall are doing I was horrified.  Firstly, there absolutely must still be single sex services for domestic abuse victims. I honestly start to cry when I realise that Stonewall are callous enough to want to take that away.  That is nothing to how I felt when I read the Stronger Together guidance endorsed by Scottish Women’s Aid that advises actively gaslighting women who are victims of domestic abuse. 

I needed a safe space full of women to discuss and process what happened to me, and I’m so grateful to my local Women’s Aid for doing that. 

My mother in particular kept pressuring me to center the needs of my abusive husband, and it was really hard to hold my own reality.  I clung to anyone who would let me have my own reality.  Here are Scottish Women’s Aid, signing up to taking women’s reality away.  They could have said, no we won’t use our position of power to deny women’s reality or diminish the importance of their feelings about that. 

Secondly, I saw that Stonewall want to remove any safeguards from obtaining a GRC, and that this would mean male presenting male people in women’s spaces.  I can probably work with male people who have actually transitioned in public toilets.  I can possibly work with male people who have actually transitioned and are very very careful in public changing rooms.  I am willing to do that for people diagnosed with gender dysphoria.   Self ID proposes that any male presenting as male can use any women’s space without being careful, and I can’t work with that.

I have completed consultations in long rambling ways, trying to put in as much as possible.  I have spoken to people who I believe to be open to different points of view.  I have a Conservative MP, and there is the one advantage to having a Conservative MP that she actually might be receptive to this.  I am afraid I am a bit late to the party, as it’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve really been aware of this stuff and capable of actually doing anything, because I was very overwhelmed by the domestic abuse.

I’ve experienced the general of being called a TERF.  The term TERF means “woman against whom it is acceptable to perpetrate misogynistic abuse and violence”.  It’s distressing for any woman to be called that.  It does trigger something particular for me.  Especially when women use it and give validity to the idea that it can be legitimate to perpetrate misogynistic abuse.  Especially when women argue that we must accept or ignore the misogynistic abuse because of the terrible suffering of trans people. 

My mother said to me, “you might have to put up with a bit of abuse”.  That is essentially what liberal feminists are saying when they use the term TERF.  It just makes me feel trapped again with no refuge.

As an only parent, I don’t get to participate in public life very much.  I can only really go places where my son can come as well.  The only other place I could speak up is work, and I work for a local branch of a national charity that is fairly woke.  In any event the issue doesn’t really come up very often in the rural part of the country where I live. 

Kimberly