Action Aid - no such thing as a biological female

So I gather Action Aid still peddling nonsense? arragh! most of my donation money is going to GC causes. I had to rewrite my will recently as I had left a substantial amount of my estate to Engender an organisation I volunteered for many years which is now totally enthralled to trans and done nothing to protect womens rights in Scotland. I eventually settled on leaving money to Rape Crisis in Cape Town in the hope my money might go further there.

My son has Asperger's and he's very naive. A few years ago, he kept getting stopped in town and was signing up to all these charities. I had to keep calling them and cancelling. I got so fed up that in the end I wrote to the charities commission. They all got a bit freaked when I told the what I was doing. The bastards new he was vulnerable. He has had it drummed into him now and wont sign up to anything but I still have to keep an eye out, but it shows how far removed they are now from the 'doing good' that used to be the case

I think it's worth pointing out how many charities don't employ anyone at all and how many don't employ anyone who earns above £60,000 (I believe the figure is less than 1% for this latter point).

Apparently trust in charities is at an all time low and its not hard to work out why.

I think the problem ultimately lies in the fact the mega charities are less charities and more corporate entities and pr machines now. And if we think about it in these terms, it makes a lot more sense.

Corporate entities are focused on figures and targets rather than perhaps social aims.

RTB, thank you so much for that epic piece of work.

I second that. I hae become quite the cynic in the past decade, including the charity business. I thought nothing can surprise me. But that Live Aid basically bought Ethiopia's dictator an army to finish off his enemies - wow. That's a whole new level. I am floored.

The danger is that the Act could be used to stop criticism of the sitting government during an election campaign which limits its public accountability.

I personally think it might be better to have some obligation to have some sort of political declaration in the aims of a charity and how much is directly spent in this area with it being separated out from 'charitiable spending' in accounting.

This way its more transparent without it tipping the balance in favour of the state and big business.

This is a really good idea. Campaigning work is important and valuable, but we should know what is spent on this work, and what is spent on the ground, when a charity fundraise on the latter and are silent on the former. With Action Aid, who claim to work with the world's most marginalised, the reality in terms of lobbying spend in the UK is astonishing, and quite honestly feels pretty deceitful to me. It's hardly something they flag up, is it? I don't want to fund a protest against Trump - what's the point, we don't exactly have a vote! - if that's money that could be going on education for girls instead, or healthcare in the Global South. If people want to donate to that sort of stuff then there are orgs who are upfront on that being their aim.

There needs to be honesty and transparency, if appealing for funding.

Jesus, I am so done.

RTB, thank you so much for that epic piece of work (I know what you mean about something being obvious in ten mins but taking hours to write up clearly).

Between you and Maya Forstatter, I'm cancelling a DD that has been in place for literally decades.

Nobody wants trans people to have terrible lives, not at all, but denying basic biology is insane. And it's your biology that lands you in the shit if you're born female in many, many countries.

I'm reading this open mouthed. Including the live aid stuff. I knew there were some problems, but I had absolutely no idea of the profound mismanagement of the entire thing.

Red you're absolutely brilliant at this. Your understanding of the wider issues is phenomenal.

I'm wondering, if stupidly denying that biological sex exists, by a charity who relies on it for donations, is what will precipitate some clearly overdue scrutiny into exactly where the money goes.

Many charities worry me. They feel impregnable and unaccountable and very, very powerful.

Have just caught up with this thread - massive appreciation of the hard work done by @RedToothBrush for their breakdown, and also for the info about Ethiopia etc.

Am also reassured by others confirming I'm not alone in my feelings which I posted last night.

I have been looking into so much stuff over the last few days that are essentially dismissed as conspiracy theory territory, even when supported by actual documented evidence, and a common thread of them all is that it is largely women and children of both sexes who are the victims / survivors.

It is interesting that even when clear patterns are identifiable, the overall message is that because we are evolutionarily wired to see patterns as part of instinctive risk assessment, it just indicates confirmation bias - it all gets bounced back as some kind pf psychological failing on the part of the observer aka you can't trust what your eyes, brain and ears are telling you even when it is blatantly true.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe that evidence is important, and that some wilder theories are more than likely not true - but they should be properly, transparently debunked, not just have the "you must be mentally ill if you think that" - which is what dictatorships and the Eastern Bloc did very successfully. That immediately shuts down these things through fear, and makes the initial suspicions loom larger IMHO.

I am wary of large charities myself because of much is what is written here, and from hearing the experiences of friends who have worked in charity shops etc.

There is a saying "just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" - which again, sounds utterly tin foil hat. I do wonder though, I do wonder.......

One should definitely read actual accounts of the big charities. Its eye opening stuff.
I worked in a charity shop as a volunteer for reference purposes. Quite a while ago now. But discovered how much the one shop manager was being paid by accident. So later I trawled through the accounts that are freely available online and discovered a huge amount of money raised was spent on swanky offices and wages, a bigger still amount was either reserved for future projects and/or invested to create a return (income from interest and the like) and some money went to the actual cause.
A lot of charity shops dont make enough to pay the one shop managers salary. So I came to the conclusion the shops are there to promote the charity and not much else. And the more I hear of the prices being similar to high street new, the more I believe it's just an exercise to keep the charity at the forefront of everyone's mind.
So in conclusion I give directly to the food bank and a tiny toy library locally. The big ones can shove off.

I was approached years ago as a local volunteer for Action Aid, they wanted people to leaflet locally, so asked donors from each area. I liked their grassroots approach and I did volunteer for a couple of years and have followed their work.

I am not supporting toilets to make girls and women's lives safer if those toilets are not safe spaces.

As they quote in the report into the need for women's safe spaces, sometimes men use crises to exploit and abuse women.

You might think that would have taught them something.

I have had it with this crap. Fuck Off Action Aid.

I am in touch with a project that gives women a particular skill to have goods to sell - which they then vote to spend their co-operative earnings on toilets. I will support them instead.

When you spend your days struggling to survive and wondering if you will eat then you don’t have time to wonder if you should change your name and grow your hair.

This is what really does get to me. Not to trivialise the whole trans issue, but it's such first world nonsense

It absolutely is first world nonsense. Girls in these countries don't even have sanitary pads let alone a gold lame purse to purse to express their gender identity.

Let Amnesty, Stonewall and Liberty etc take on gender issues. They have more than enough money.

Please for the love of god don’t dilute girl and woman’s issues with this.

I think they're mixing up trans women and men? No trans woman/girl will have her vulva mutilated because they don't have one. No trans woman/girl will be banished to a hut because she has a period, because they'll never have one.

This is just proving that this is all a men's rights movement, because no one is giving a shiny shite about trans men, who are actually female. It's all about the trans women and validating their womanliness. It's not about making trans men comfortable at all.

I'm no expert but I'm willing to bet that when you're being beaten, having your genitals mutilated, being kidnapped, sold and trafficked, raped, and having your unborn daughters aborted, the last thing you're worrying about is whether someone, somewhere in an immensely more privileged position than you, is being gendered correctly.

And what a fucking sad sack that ONE person who wrote to them was, if it's true.

That doesn’t really make sense. If they are dedicated to helpinggirls- how many trans girls will fall into their scope in the countries they work in? Are we to believe that counties where they work they have the same stats? What about female babies and toddlers - if it’s all about gender then how do theyknow?

They seriously don't even think about it do they. I mean how many men are actually self identifing into these situations. There may be a bunch of idiots on twitter claiming they wish they could have an abortion or periods but how many would
really show up to have their "large clitorises" sliced off with rusty razor blades where are all the self identifying women in countries where it has such horrifuc connotations to be female?

And yes transmen/boys will need help cos no one's gonna give a shit how they identify when they marry at 13 and end up with birth injuries that mean they become doubly incontinent...they are back out on the streets regardless..

Just use your brain action aid. Seriously

The danger is that the Act could be used to stop criticism of the sitting government during an election campaign which limits its public accountability.

I personally think it might be better to have some obligation to have some sort of political declaration in the aims of a charity and how much is directly spent in this area with it being separated out from 'charitiable spending' in accounting.

This way its more transparent without it tipping the balance in favour of the state and big business.

I think I agree with all of this RTB. It's the old question of how not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. When (to take one eg) the Tories introduce universal credit, and it screws the poor over big time, I would expect charities like Shelter and the foodbanks to have something to say about that. It's arguably their job to have something to say about that. It's how to stop that reasonable level of intervention being hijacked by other political lobby groups (particularly entryist lobby groups who realise their own cause, as a stand alone, wouldn't garner that much support, but if they can attach it to something else and get the two considered as a block, it's game on).

I also agree entirely with what you have to say about traditional liberalism (in the tradition of Mill through to Rawls) with its emphasis on checks and balances and resolving issues of competing rights as being a powerful force for good in preserving free, open and democratic societies. (Part of the reason for the shitty mess we're in is that liberalism has been subjected to its own form of entryist take over, in the form of libertarian hyper-individualism. Such that now "liberal" becomes a slur associated with fringe nutters and left-wing, as opposed to right-wing, authoritarianism.)

That doesn’t really make sense. If they are dedicated to helping girls - how many trans girls will fall into their scope in the countries they work in? Are we to believe that counties where they work they have the same stats? What about female babies and toddlers - if it’s all about gender then how do they know?

Do they also included trans boys who will be at same risks as the girls?

They sent this to me - no mention of trans boys/men. I guess that if biology isn't real then they don't have to worry about trans boys I guess because they can simply opt out of womanhood... is that what happens? If I opt out of being female do my periods and threat of rape and risk of pregnancy stop?
This is what frustrates me so much with the scoring of woke points, and science denial, it makes no freaking sense!

I've set up a monthly donation to a charity linked a while ago, and I donate food & money to the local food bank, that's enough for me!

Thank you for bringing this to my attention

I wonder how charities feel about crowdfunding sites? The growth in this area has been massive. Obviously there are standard concerns about fraud and the crowdfunding companies take a cut but to some extent any money you give goes more directly to the source you have chosen.

A couple of weeks ago Dr Jessica Taylor from Victim Focus ran an emergency CF for a single mother in dire straits. It reached target in a few hours and less that 24hrs later we had photo evidence of the food and children's clothing our 20 quid donations had supported.

I suppose you can get into arguments about structural poverty and long term solutions but there's something more satisfying about donating 20 quid to this young mother and seeing a tangible outcome that donating the same 20 quid to a large charity where your donation is much less definable in terms of impact.

Not quite sure where I'm going with this ramble but it occurred to me that the nature of charitable giving is changing massively due to tech.

Red thanks for your reply to me upthread (work got in the way!). I should have been clearer that I'd emailed them this morning before I read your detailed analysis. I will definitely be looking in more detail in future at what charities say they do in their marketing blurb compared to what they actually are doing, and as others have said, think in future I'll be going with smaller organisations rather than the big corporates.

[quote titchy]@RedToothBrush you're good, really good. I know you said you're just standing on the shoulders of other investigative journalists, but you're doing so much more than that.

Would you consider some sort of website or blog or something that pulls everything corrupt together in one place in a format that's easier to read and type into that MN?[/quote]
I've thought about it over the years. I've never done it, because my thoughts and knowledge on the subject develop and evolve with time and I'd rather get people talking and debating the issues rather than just spouting what I think.

Ultimately MN has a bigger reach and thats the important thing. These issues are fairly circular and come around multiple times, so I think repetition of the points and repeating the process over and over is more effective in the long run.

Its about getting people to engage with the idea and understand the underlying principles about liberal democracy, institutions and power structures thats important - and how that feeds into feminism and why there is a need for feminism rather than having a set opinion, idea or view. Getting people to think about "How does this affect me in this situation?" rather than presenting something in a much drier and unconnected way.

Feminism is a feature of liberal democracy. If liberal democracy dies due to a more authoritarian approach then the aims and ambition of feminists dies with it. (Liberal democracy should not be confused with 'Liberal Identity' which is just a belief system within authoritarian Identity Politics)

Liberalism is all about checks and balances and limiting how much power any one individual or institution has, by a process of constant revision and questioning.

No one is wholly evil or wholly good. As the saying goes "the road to hell is paved with good intention" and its something we should always reflect on and be wary of.

If you don't know something, go find out about it. If something doesn't add up, investigate it. We all have power if we think about this and simply learn to ask questions rather than accept what we are told.

This section of MN is all about that in many respects.