Stonewall is basically lobbing for the removal of girl’s and women’s boundaries and rights and to change the definition of woman itself, they follow a cult like ideology, which is not based on reality or reason. They also get an enormous amount of funding to take the position they do, so will not waver much from it, unless they think they can negotiate some things in exchange for others. Therefore, even if you get them to agree to discuss things, at best what would happen is that they would try to talk women into giving up certain rights. For example, they may eventually have to concede that women should be able to request a female HCP, but they will continue to push for access to women’s changing rooms, toilets or to make them all unisex etc. Their objective is to erase as many of women’s boundaries as they can get away with, so that a subset of men have the ‘right’ to enter women’s spaces etc, that is at the heart of the ideology they subscribe to.
It is clear that female rights are under siege by those who follow this anti female ideology, lobby groups like Stonewall are one of the agents who are holding our rights hostage. I understand some think they can negotiate with these lobby groups to get some of our rights back, but I don’t think that is the best way of tackling this and I do worry about some women being eager to be conciliatory to these men and their lobby groups. I am a lesbian and think Stonewall’s reputation should suffer as a result of them campaigning for this anti female and anti lesbian ideology being written into law. I am not willing to negotiate with them about what a woman or lesbian is, or willing to concede certain sex based rights in order to retain others, which is the best any discussion with them could hope for.
I think a nation wide debate on the underlying ideology that they build their demands on is key, as well as a nationwide discussion of the material consequences of enacting laws based on that ideology. They will never agree to that, as their ideology cannot stand up to scrutiny, and the disastrous consequences to women and girls of enacting laws based on this ideology, become obvious when it is openly discussed. I don’t think there is anything to loose by proposing a public debate. Of course they will refuse, but if the aim is just to get it on record that they refuse to publicly debate then it may be worth while.
I personally won’t sign anything that posits men as a type of woman though, i.e. that refers to them as “transwomen”. Males are not a type of woman like lesbian women, heterosexual women, black women or white women, they are a type of man. That needs to be made clear before I am able to sign any letter about it. Once we to refer to men as if they are a type of woman, we loose the ability to define woman, everything else stems from that. As long as males are not referred to as a type of woman then I would be willing to sign a letter proposing a debate. They consider this “transphobic” though, in other words unless one agrees to the ideology that posits men can be a type of woman then they dismiss you as bigoted out of hand. It is just a way of shielding the ideology from criticism in my honest opinion.