AIBU to consider leaving our knitting group over its new policy?

If you can't see the difference between natal females and natal males, I am not sure how to help you.

One sex class is responsible for violent and sexual crime, for dominating social spaces and for disregarding boundaries. Transwomen and other men belong to that sex class

In my experience of trans people, transmen tend to be identifying away from something while transwomen are identifying towards something. Transmen are trying to escape womanhood and what being female has cost them. Transwomen are running towards a concept of femininity in their heads.

It's understandable that some women find a concept of womanhood being based on oppressively stereotypes offensive.

Re. the Rachel Doezale case: she was a member of the privileged class (white) identifying into the oppressed class - just like a transwoman (man, privileged) identifies into the oppressed class (women).
This is not OK.

On the other hand, a transman is a member of the oppressed class (women) identifying into the privileged class.
The oppressed class (women) are not threatened or disadvantaged by the transman, and neither are the privileged class (men) threatened or disadvantaged by a transman.

However, some men would not like a woman (a transman) in their male-only spaces and I totally respect that.

If it meets twice a week I think one women only session and one everyone session (men included, some crafty boys might like to join the hobby ) is fair enough and people can choose which night they prefer

This. It would be unlawful.

You can not call yourselves a women's group if males are permitted to join.

Other men would also have to be permitted if they wished to join because you couldn't allow some men to join and not others.

It would become a mixed sex group, which is fine if it's what the members want, but it would no longer be a women's group.

The woman claiming to be a man is actually a woman. So trans or not, she is fine to have around - because she is a woman.
The man claiming to be a woman is actually a man. So trans or not, he is NOT fine to have around, because he is a man.

It is not the trans that counts, it is the sex.

Edite to explain further:
Transmen are not a threat. Men (as a class) are.

What is the difference though in a woman claiming to be a man and a man claiming to be a woman.
Explain like I'm 5 because I just don't get it. You either accept that someone can be trans or you don't

The problem is that this chair wants to advertise being "inclusive" and if you disagree the young members may judge you. There's no avoiding the fact that younger members may agree with her. Also if they publicise it then some men are likely to come along.
FWIW I belong to a similar group and one woman brought her frock wearing husband along. I'm torn. He's a nice enough bloke, doesn't push the trans thing but I feel bad for her and fundemtally uncomfortable with it. Plus a good percentage of the women are performatively friendly with him.

🤣 come off it, lets not play the "No one can tell" fantasy game

This.

It's not prejudice it is the preference not to have men aping women wanting to join the group to get validated as women - because that is what they will do. Perfectly reasonable.
And she would accept a mixed group with a vote for it (and probably leave) but not a women's group that includes transwomen who are men because that would be a mixed group pretending to be a women's group and I think it would be unlawful unless non-trans men are admitted. You cannot admit 'some men' and not others.

Is it certain that there aren't any transwomen members already? Unless I have a very naive idea of what a women's knitting group gets up to behind closed doors, it's hard to see how a biological man whose appearance, demeanour, voice etc. seem feminine would be out of place.

I'm glad you understand so clearly.

Yes, many women find the whole idea of transwomen inherently offensive, because putting on 'woman face' and then claiming to be a woman is offensive. If they just claimed to be transwomen (as a distinct thing), not actual women, that would not be offensive.

However, other women couldn't care less what transwomen wear, or how much make up they put on, as long as the transwomen understand that they are not women, they are men.

Yes, many transwomen are sexual fetishists. Unfortunately, as there is no practical way to separate out the fetishists from those with gender dysphoria or gender dysmorphia, all transwomen have to be lumped together.
And of course women don't want men with sexual fetishes in their spaces.

I'm not sure this counts as 'othering' or prejudice so much as common sense - if you can't separate out the fetishists, all men have to stay out. Or if is a mixed sex group, we have the choice to join or not, and if we join we are prepared for men being in the room, some of whom may be fetishists or predators.

Women are intimidated by men regularly. Women are intimidated by men dressed as women, regularly. men dressed as women are in fact clearly psychopathically abusive, regularly. Women are intimidated by the double agents that are women advocating for the men dressed as women.

it’s time to take care of the women, and the leave the mentally ill and the Stockholm syndrome behind.

women deserve safe spaces. The women who have been bullied into submission by men wearing women’s clothes, into thinking they have to let them in, are basically women that need to be deprogrammed. As that usnt going to happen, they have to be ignored, as we ignore all the ‘ care in the community’ unfortunates wandering about talking drivel.

"meat suit?"
You talk about trans women having issues but yours are clearly on show here and say a lot more about you then it does about them.

There are certain types of trans 'women' that like to muscle in on women's groups to validate themselves.

Say not happy @Solentseeker use your voice. Bloody men like that want to intrude on everything

That seems entirely reasonable and had not occurred to me, thanks. But a women's group is for women, the real kind, not deranged men who treat their bodies as a meat suit and clothes horse.

Several years ago I was in a women’s discussion group on a topic of common interest.

A trans-identified man joined without any of us being warned in advance (the group didnt advertise for new members: we’d started as fellow students so knew each other & arranged to meet regularly after graduation: he was I think the second or third person to join by word of mouth from existing members).

I was disposed to give him the benefit of the doubt, which evaporated as he quickly became dominant in every discussion (though he often had nothing relevant to say & hadn’t bothered to look at what we were going to discuss).

He also kept bringing the conversation round to Trans issues, whether or not it was relevant, & talking over or interrupting anyone who tried to get back on track.

I know I was not the only person fed up with this: a couple of women quietly dropped out, but a friend challenged him - not on his presence, but on his conduct.

He immediately demanded she be expelled for “transphobia” & absolutely would not let it go. He said she made him “unsafe” & should leave right away. He appealed to the rest of us not to condone “transphobia”.

I backed her up (she had not alluded in any way to his being trans) but everyone else just looked uncomfortable.

She & I said we’d leave that one meeting, as there was obviously bad feeling & an impasse.

The woman who’d introduced him then sent us a hand-wringing email, saying she was taking no sides but asking us to apologise for having upset him. She appealed to me to encourage the other woman to, basically, repent.

We said we’d been open-minded at the beginning but that it was evident his presence & behaviour changed the dynamic in ways that were uncomfortable, & that we felt it was no longer a women’s group.

She never replied, & blocked us on social media.

So we didn’t return.

Several other women in the group got in touch & told us that he had talked of going to the owners of the space we used & tried to get the two of us banned from it (for all purposes!).

I guess, reading between the lines, that he’d also threatened to get the group banned from using the space if he didn’t get his way, which may have explained the discomfort.

That was my first peaking in real life, as it were. Lockdown intervened & the group no longer meets: I believe it never recovered.

Whataboutery in full flood. Yes, men kill men. But men kill women at the rate of 3 a week in the UK, women do not do the same. And TiMs are wearing woman face; they will also dominate a conversation and make it all about them because they are narcissists (and probably AGP). OP wants a vote. That seems entirely reasonable.

TiMs in a women's group to not wanting people a different colour to you in a group (although that would be legal if it was e.g. a Caribbean women's group).

A Caribbean women’s group is legal, but must also admit white women from the Caribbean (of whom there are many). Associations are not lawfully permitted to select members by colour.

Probably not ok as the group would be admitting mentally unstable, narcissistic men as well as the common or garden lot.

If the trope specifies black and brown people, slavery is older than that sort of racism. Ancient Sumeria had slaves, as did Aztecs in the 15th century and Native Americans - far earlier than the Aztecs presumably, as they already enslaved other tribes before a Pilgrim Mother set foot somewhere in the region of Plymouth Rock.
I agree it's egregious to liken not wanting TiMs in a women's group to not wanting people a different colour to you in a group (although that would be legal if it was e.g. a Caribbean women's group).

Talk over them loudly. If challenged, say 'Oh, were you saying something?' and then continue?
Realistically, that's not happening. Poor you. Can you start another group?

If transwomen join there's a good chance they'll make the group all about them. The whole dynamic will change.

Is everyone else in the group okay with this? Or are you all too scared to say anything for fear of being branded a 'radical feminist'? 🙄 What's the general vibe about your chairwoman?

No.

It’s a women’s group, which is entirely lawful (as a group solely for people of Afro-Caribbean heritage is entirely lawful) & including men changes both its nature & its founding purpose, & would make it unlawful to continue advertising it as a women’s group.

There are mixed-sex “knit & natter” groups all over the place, but oddly enough, men who claim to be women do not target them.

The analogy you draw is based on a racist trope as old as slavery, by the way, that black & brown women are just like men.