Artistic Director of Queer Up North speaks out on trans activism, Stonewall and women's rights

Welcome to MN
Keep writing!

Thank you Jonny, both for the article and your post here.

Thank you Jonny. It's very much appreciated.

Hi everyone. I just wanted to stop by and thank you all for reading the thing I wrote and for all the supportive comments and debate on this thread. There's one depressing truth I want to acknowledge up front: it's 24 hours since the piece was published and I have had only two or three abusive tweets. I know only to well that a women writing the same words as me would have had the whole abusive Twitter pile-on by now and god knows what else. The contrast is so stark. I can write what the hell I want and be left largely alone - a woman would be up to her neck in abuse by now. And we all know the reason why...

Anyway, thank you. You've all been very kind and I'm grateful.

Gosh, doesn't he come across as a wise and civilised person?

I really enjoyed it, thanks for posting OP

Miranda Yardley article:

'Ma Vie En Rose: Ruth Hunt’s Rose-Tinted Trans*Goggles and the anti-Woman Politics of Stonewall'
(extract)
"I first spoke with Stonewall’s Ruth Hunt just over three years ago when the organisation announced it would be engaging with the transgender community. This resulted in the forming of the Stonewall Trans Advisory Group, you know that motley crew of transgender tyrants, including the self-styled (styled as if it were 1973) answer for any heterosexual woman who wishes to bring out her ‘inner lesbian’, Alex ‘Beardy’ Drummond. cheeky wink

Ruth, bless her fighting heart, has been defending transgender activists to an extraordinary degree, indeed there appears to be no transgression she cannot overlook with her inbuilt sense of forgiveness which seems divine in breadth and depth. She has embraced the very dogma that makes real life discussion, debate and compromise with transgenderists impossible, dogma which positions the interests of the T in ‘LGBT’ in opposition to anyone who considers biological sex to be important in any material way: trans women are women, no debate, end of.

Quite aside from it being cruel to humour delusional claims of one being something one is not, positioning one’s acceptance of an individual on a lie is outright dishonest. And anyway, what is a lesbian and gay group doing when it considers the thoughts and feelings of personal identity more important than the reality of our sexed bodies?

‘Trans women are women’ is a profoundly anti-woman statement, denying any questioning of this or debate is outright the sort of social justice fascism that typifies the regressive left and has led to the ongoing battle of self-identified women with penises against actual women, you know the sort with uteri and ovaries." (continues)

mirandayardley.com/en/ma-vie-en-rose-ruth-hunts-rose-tinted-transgoggles-and-the-anti-woman-politics-of-stonewall/

^picture & embedded link of the Stonewall Advisory Group from article.

GayStar News article published the week before Pride London:

'Prides slam Stonewall for failing to support them, demand apology
In a survey of UK Prides, the country’s leading LGBT charity was rated just ‘three out of 10’'
(extracts)
"Pride events across Britain are calling for a public apology from leading LGBT charity Stonewall, GSN can exclusively reveal.

They are also demanding the charity changes its ways, with one Pride accusing it of ‘acting like the bloody LGBT police’. Other Prides accuse Stonewall of taking credit for their work but failing to support them." (continues)

"The biggest take-away from the comments from Prides which completed the survey is that Stonewall should work in partnership with them.

They want the charity to show ‘humility’. Some indicated Stonewall currently tries to control what Prides do. One called on the organisation to ‘Stop acting like the bloody LGBT Police. They need to “get over it”.’

The UK Pride Organisers Network report makes several recommendations.

They ask Stonewall to share the profits from Primark between Prides and organisations working in Turkey, Myanmar and China.

In addition they want Stonewall chief executive, Ruth Hunt, to say sorry. They want her to acknowledge ‘the disquiet among Pride organisers about their conduct’ and commit to working with Prides in future.

Moreover, they want Stonewall to promise they won’t take any future sponsorship or fundraising deal that ‘includes the word Pride’. This is likely to prove a difficult pledge for Stonewall to make, given their need to fundraise." (continues)

www.gaystarnews.com/article/pride-stonewall-support-apology/#gs._PTIESc

I'm not done with Stonewall yet. Not by a LONG way ;-)

recent Spectator article 'The limits of Stonewall’s tolerance' by Josephine Bartosch

(extract)
"Instead of listening to the concerns of the women protesting, or acknowledging that there is a discussion to be had on this subject, Stonewall simply stuck to its line that transwomen are women, dismissing any deviation from this as ‘transphobic’. Stonewall’s chief executive Ruth Hunt said that the lesbians involved in the protest ‘have deserted the fight for LGBT equality’ and ‘have no place at Pride’. So much for ‘Acceptance without exception’.

Thankfully, Hunt’s outrage that there are other perspectives on transgender identities is not shared by all of those originally involved in setting up Stonewall. Simon Fanshawe, one of the co-founders of the charity, argues that Stonewall has ‘a historic responsibility to enable calm reasoned debate’. It is hard to see how Hunt’s response meets that test. Fanshawe says he fears that voices – including those of transgender people, some of whom prefer to describe themselves as ‘transsexual’ – are in danger of being drowned out by the reaction of the likes of Stonewall. He says:

‘Some transgender people are proud to identify themselves as ‘transmen’ and ‘transwomen,’ not simply as ‘men’ and ‘women’ and they feel marginalised by the language and ideology that seeks to diminish this difference. I do not wish to invalidate anyone’s experience, but by not acknowledging there is a debate to be had Stonewall are failing in their duty to LGBT communities to enable self-determination for all trans people.’

So why are alternative voices being ignored? A brief glance at the Stonewall Trans Advisory Group perhaps offers an answer: those who were born male appear to outnumber females by about two to one (a similar ratio to MPs in the House of Commons). Do those who sit on the advisory group have to hold the view that stated gender identity takes precedence over biological sex? It would seem so. Take Alex Drummond, for example, a transwoman who claims to be ‘widening the bandwidth of how to be a woman’ by sporting a full beard alongside the accoutrements of femininity (skirts and make-up). It is not transphobic to suggest that someone with a male body who wears female clothes has no place identifying as a lesbian; it is simply a different perspective.

In an interview in the Guardian in 2014, Hunt said: ‘I am not interested in being the thought police.’ Yet four years on, lesbians who fail to accept male bodied transwomen like Drummond as women are demonised by Hunt as apparently ‘working against’ the LGBT community." (continues)

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/the-limits-of-stonewalls-tolerance/

Thank you, Johnny Best.

God I want to give him ALL the cookies. Someone hold me back.

Claire Fox (Academy of Ideas, Radio 4's Moral Maze etc)

Excellent. I love that he rubbishes the link that is always made between trans rights and s 28. They are nowhere near the same. Fair enough if women were calling trans people disgusting and calling for their prosecution, I would get it. We are simply asking to be allowed to have separate spaces, legal protection for our sex-based needs, and the ability to share our experiences and define ourselves as a group.
Imagine if I demanded that able-bodied people should be allowed blue badges if they identified as disabled. Or that a black student group were being prejudiced by not letting white students who identified as black in. Hopefully I would be told to get to fuck.

Re Sarah Brown's blog, there's an interesting pack of alternative truths about the Tara Wood case here.

Really good read and the comments are interesting too. Thank you for speaking up Jonny.

Great article, thanks OP.

Very well written essay. Thank you OP for posting this.

This thread has cheered me up. And great points Datun

Thank you for this thread. It was well worth reading.

What a brilliant thoughtful article - which deserves a much wider readership!

So wish it had been published in mainstream press.....

Thank you Johnny Best. A great, balanced article.

Excellent

Yes excellent article. The comments are interesting, too.

One commentator said that women are oppressed on the basis of their biology, but also their gender expression or gender identity.

I've seen this lack of understanding before.

It means that if men express femininity, they can claim they are now oppressed on that basis.

Quite failing to grasp that the gender stereotypes relating to femininity are the means by which women are oppressed, not the basis of it.

They see only too well the disadvantage of gender stereotyping for women. They see it. It's right there.

But then decide that it's innate, rather than imposed.

And therefore, if they display the same gender stereotype in, it is also innate, and that's why they are oppressed.

They are directly responsible for perpetrating the oppression of women. Using their bloody gender stereotyping as a tool.

It's infuriating to see such idiocy in action.

I loved the way that JB wrote this article. The tone of it. The balance. The reasonableness. The humanity.

I admired the way he unwrapped the arrogance and defensiveness of a once admired organisation. (Stonewall only replies to mainstream media now? Do me a favour!)

That no-one can argue with the final paragraph: a conclusion to which the writer has steered us skilfully and defly - well, that's an achievement. Beautiful, thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Hats off to you, JB.