Tag: work

Categories
Lesbians

I was horrified at men approaching me on lesbian dating sites

This matters to me as I feel I would have been put down the trans route if I were growing up today. Typical gender non conforming child who grew into a same sex attracted woman.

I became single after a long relationship and after a long illness I recovered emotionally and physically to go back on the dating scene. I was horrified at men approaching me on lesbian dating sites. Most of them didn’t declare this and I worked it out.

I felt humiliated and a bit scared that I might have met someone in person without knowing they were biological men. It chilled me to the bone. I can now spot them and block them, but it was unpleasant and degrading for me at the time.

One person had been stalking me on line and in my social life – I had that experience from men in my 20’s and 30’s. I found it impossible to understand why they were there in the first place and it led me to question what the hell is going on.

I created a twitter account. I discuss it with friends and family. I also challenge the new norm at work by calling out the ridiculousness of language and mixed sex toilets.

Some friends especially the ‘woke’ younger women are unkind or think I’m old fashioned.

EJ, Proud vintage lesbian who feels like an outsider all over again but this time it’s the heterosexuals who are my allies, magdelen berns appreciation society

Categories
Healthcare Public Sector

The civil service is not impartial while it unquestioningly adopts Stonewall’s ideologies

Women and children’s safety and well-being is being rolled back. In plain sight. The civil service is not impartial while it unquestioningly adopts Stonewall’s ideologies. Women – and lesbians in particular – are afraid of speaking up. I have questioned us using Stonewall for gathering adult experiences on child sex abuse and been accused of being homophobic as a result.

I responded to GRA consultation. I’ve written to and met my MP. I’ve said no at work to the expansion of harmful practices as regards children (giving them unlicensed drugs), and blindly following Stonewall and Mermaids.

I have been accused of being homophobic and of not caring about trans people.

I care because I want to use spaces such as changing rooms, toilets, etc without being harassed and/or intimidated.

I have responded to my child’s school’s consultation on PHSE. I have reminded local organisations about the Equalities Act 2010.

A, terrified public policy woman

Categories
Healthcare survivor

There is a special bond that forms between women in the absence of men

My adult life has been marred by bullying, invariably by men, especially those in positions of power, but also from those with whom I was intimate.

I experienced verbal and psychological abuse from my husband, directed at me and my children. I was fortunate to be directed to my local DV shelter by a friend. We did not have to move in, but received help from the wonderful women who worked there.

As I age, I find more and more relief in the company of women. There is a special bond that forms between women in the absence of men. The space feels safer and warmer, and women respond differently to one another when not subjected to the male gaze.

That women who need single-sex spaces for recovery can have that taken from them by the insistence by men who claim to be are women is almost impossibly painful. Those spaces have been set up by women, for women. I feel so angry when men demand the right to enter.

I have responded online to consultations, written to MPs and MSPs. I have donated online to campaign for women’s rights. I have spoken out on social media, using my own name, despite threats of violence, and to my career.

Until last year, I was tied up in an unhappy marriage and too unwell to travel. Now coronavirus is interfering with my freedom, but I hope to join up with other women in the near future, either to meet with  ReSisters group, or attend an organised meeting.

I have received public threats on Twitter, both of physical harm and threats to my career, one of which was a credible threat to report me to the governing body of my profession, which fortunately was not carried through.

I am fortunate to have lived in a place where I was physically out of reach for physical threats or UK police reports and therefore I have felt able to speak more freely than otherwise.

Sarah, 50ish human female

Categories
Lesbians

One girl refused to go on a second date with me again because I was same-sex attracted and outspoken about it

This matters as I want to find a wife, raise a family and I work in STEM. This matters because the same arguments that were used against me as a child (that female brains are not suited to certain activities) are now being used to ‘prove’ certain men are trans women because they like ‘girly’ things.

I have discussed it with a close friend and my brother and touched on it at work.

I have been harassed on social media and one girl refused to go on a second date with me again because I was same-sex attracted and outspoken about it.

Elizabeth, Lesbian, Switzerland

Categories
Men

The transactivist movement fails a basic test of morality

The erosion of women’s rights should matter to everyone. Firstly, anything which restricts and diminishes the potential of half of humanity is, self-evidently, a massive setback for all. More drastically, hard as it may be to imagine, the erosion of women’s rights should matter to everyone because the ideology driving these attacks is not based on reality. 

Any time adherence to an ideology is prized more highly than adherence to the truth, bad things – some times truly terrible things – follow.

Further, the transactivist movement fails a basic test of morality-  considering the consequences of one’s actions for others.  Theirs is not a demand for fair treatment. This is not zero sum. As many women have highlighted, what could be more misogynistic than the erasure of women as a category? 

Sadly, I have done not nearly enough to raise my voice, though I am working towards it. I am full of admiration for those who have.  I’ve lost friends already by refusing to go along with what I know is wrong. 

I’ve been excluded from groups and have lost friends as a result of speaking out against the erasure of women as a category.

Will W, musician, educator, coder, Spain

Categories
Private sector

I was fired from work

I believe that it is important that ALL human beings have rights. Women need to be united.

I explain, talk and discuss the issue with friends and family and also at work.

I have being cut off from social gathering by co-workers and I was fired from work.

ClavelVerde, Latino woman over 60 working in Tourism, Mexico

Categories
Healthcare Private sector

I work in a field that is full of trans-identified males

I care because if I had been born 10 or 20 years later, I am 100% certain I would have “transitioned” and would most likely now be among the growing number of detransitioners. I am horrified at the glorification of mutilation of women’s and children’s bodies as a “brave” “choice.” I am terrified for my own daughter and I hope that by the time she is old enough to learn about this shameful chapter in history, it will be just that: history, relegated to the dustbin.

I have not done nearly as much as I would like to. I work in a field that is full of trans-identified males and their vocal allies, and I cannot afford the career and economic consequences if I am blacklisted in my profession due to being smeared as a “TERF.” I am active on social media, for a time under my full name, but now under just my first name.

I have been very fortunate thus far to have avoided being targeted or doxxed by trans-rights “activists.” However, I am very afraid for my and my daughter’s future if I ever am.

M, concerned single mom, Germany

Categories
Lesbians survivor

I keep telling them that they are allowed to refuse care that makes them discomfortable

My family consists of my sister, my mother and my grandmother. I have no living male relatives. I am a lesbian who has been sexually assaulted, my mother has been harrassed, my sister and grandmother have been raped, my girlfriend has been raped. My sister has mental and physical disabilities and needs professional support, so does my grandmother.

I want to stand up for their right and my right to places that are free of male people, I want to stand up for their right and my right to refuse being treated or cared for by a male-bodied person, without fear of being accused of unjustified discrimination or gaslit into “embracing their discomfort” and accept a male person as female.

My sister also has a schizophrenia, she relies on strong medication to maintain a grasp of reality and live a mostly independent life. Messing with her knowledge and perception of reality, particularly with regard to the demographic that deeply traumatized her body and mind, may threaten her mental health and independence.

I do not fight for or against trans people, I fight for acknowledgement of reality on which legislation can be based that includes safeguards and exceptions to protect the weak and those who cannot fight for themselves or have trouble articulating and defending their needs.

I am following the debate and arguments in social and mainstream media. I do not live in an anglophone country, but the issue is arriving here, too, and I’m getting ready to engage those parties involved in the legislative process. I monitor guidelines at the institutions that provide care for my loved ones and I keep telling them that they are allowed to refuse care that makes them discomfortable.

Some friends from an LGBTQ friendly hobby group have cut themselves off.

Anna V, middle aged woman working in IT, Germany

Categories
Others

I used to be a trans ally, 100% about TWAW

I used to be a trans ally, 100% about TWAW. However, back of my mind was always “where does this logically take us” Then I read about terfs, and how horrible they are. I discovered I agreed with everything they said. Men are not women, porn is not empowering and sex work is not like other work. Then I read all the hatred towards these woman and started getting filled with despair and depression. I just could not believe the world had gone so haywire. I started getting enraged.

I care because our rights as women are disappearing, how men have colonized women and taken our sports, and have taken over and bastardized feminism. All their pushing for sex work and kids to be in states of perpetual puberty. I could not stay silent anymore.

I started off anonymously on Twitter, then was banned after I refused to call a man who posted a pic of himself with an assault weapon and the words Kill Terfs, a woman. I was banned. His post stayed.

I then started talking at work, here and there. I started talking to my girlfriends and my sisters. I started posting GC stuff on my facebook and then I started challenging the pro trans people I met. I met up with a rad fem group where I live and attended a Megan Murphy talk at the TPL, which was protested by 1000 men and antifa screaming Shame in my face.

I post all the time about this issue so people can see what is happening to women and understand this extreme misogyny is not a vulnerable minority, it is a men’s rights group with a ton of power. It has nothing to do with the left.

I have been banned twice from twitter, once over the man with the gun and the second over the man who claimed JK Rowling was a pedophile. I refused to use pronouns. I have been called a Nazi by an old friend. A long time love called me a transphobic bigot and I continue to be told “I am obsessed”. Of course I am, we are fighting for our very rights. I have also been shunned professionally by a VP who I attended rallies with. Suddenly I was a right wing bigot.

Deanna S, left wing socialist GC\Radfem. Never backing down, Canada

Categories
Private sector

Finding out that a trans-woman who had lived as a man for the first 40+ years of her life had gotten a place on the programme hit me hard

This matters to me because I have seen real world examples of trans-women taking places in positive action programmes in my workplace. The purpose of these programmes was to address the lack of women in our industry, it had always been expressly for women only.

I was unable to gain a place because I was on maternity leave and was told it was too complicated to facilitate my attendance because I would not have enough ‘keeping in touch’ days. It was suggested that I defer to the subsequent year. By the time the opportunity came again I was so busy trying to balance full time work and being a new mum that I couldn’t take the extra burden of attending this programme in addition to everything else.

Finding out that a trans-woman who had lived as a man for the first 40+ years of her life had gotten a place on the programme hit me hard. It seemed wrong, unfair. It was at that point I started to read more into gender theory and since then I think it’s fair to say I’ve become firmly gender critical. Although I have other concerns, this was my main one.

I’m too scared of the potential consequences having seen women in the public eye treated appallingly for speaking up.

Lucy