Action Aid - no such thing as a biological female

Fucking love the Baroness.

The Baroness put it nicely on twitter (nail on head)/

“I would not bother with your ‘listening process’ @ActionAidUK if I were you.Who will believe you now? Even you yourselves are muddled and confused.Who is a ‘Rights holder’ for heaven’s sake? The same as your Stakeholders; or are they différent holders;and holding what? Thin air?“

Actually it’s quite depressing. Haven’t they got anything better to do than debate this? Action! Action! Action!

@SerenityNowwwww
Satisfying isn't it ?

That's a lot of people to 'listen' to in order to decide if female bodies exist.

That's interesting, because my partner who donates to them got the standard form email basically saying 'we are committed to trans women and trans girls so suck it up.' He asked for a substantive response but heard nothing. There was no indication this was a 'mistake'. He's looking elsewhere to donate his money now.

I'd like to see the minutes of the most recent trustees meeting

I’d like to see the part of the process document that said that women and girls were still at risk worldwide, and that one of these risks is coming from first world gender politics.

Ah ha ha I smell the smell of a whole lot of execs shitting themselves as they watch the direct debit cancellations roll in.

So. Still.... nah. Too little too late.

So perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye?

Nah there isn't.

We have seen this happen time and time again with dozens of organisations. Probably more. We have seen it with politicians and every single person who requested and paid for this " training". Everyone of them ends up backing themselves into this corner where unavoe to answer basic questions they double down and find themselves claiming babies have no sex, sex doesn't exist etc

Sure, there will be some unsuspecting sod they throw under a bus as they try to come back from what is clearly a ridiculous statement but let's not pretend this was all some misguided intern who posted it in the 30 seconds their supervisor was on the phone.

This is exactly what everyone was warning them about and I'm done giving these idiots the benefit of the doubt now.

Interesting, though Happy. Sounds like there might be some tension in the organisation.

I do wonder how much contact Actionaid employees and volunteers have with the woman and girls they are raising money for and championing? Is it possible that ActionAid UK staff have next to none and their concern over feminism is purely western focused on pomo bullshit and they merely outsource the difficult work with women and girls to completely separate individuals.

I think it's entirely possible, as with many other charities.

In my answer from Action Aid

The document that has been quoted from recently was part of that process and was one view. It was shared in error and we are investigating what happened.

So perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye?

I do wonder how much contact Actionaid employees and volunteers have with the woman and girls they are raising money for and championing? Is it possible that ActionAid UK staff have next to none and their concern over feminism is purely western focused on pomo bullshit and they merely outsource the difficult work with women and girls to completely separate individuals.

That was my first thought on reading the latest statement.

this is the problem with a great many of the larger charities. It's a 9 to 5 job with targets and sales and advertising stuffed full of people on a moral crusade who think roughing it and deprivation it is a weekend at Glasto without their mobile phone.

This too.

this is the problem with a great many of the larger charities. It's a 9 to 5 job with targets and sales and advertising stuffed full of people on a moral crusade who think roughing it and deprivation it is a weekend at Glasto without their mobile phone.

This ^^

As a charity focused on changing the world with women and girls, we do not always have the capacity to respond to complaints which are not directly about ActionAid’s work.

That paragraph is rather more revealing than you might think. I refer to how the charity seems to operate financially.

As a charity they raise money to lobby in the UK and then effectively outsource a lot of the actual project work via the parent organisation and then onto smaller projects.

Thus a lot of the work on the front line isn't done by action aid UK but a third party. Which it appears from that disclaimer, they take no responsibility for.

I do wonder how much contact Actionaid employees and volunteers have with the woman and girls they are raising money for and championing? Is it possible that ActionAid UK staff have next to none and their concern over feminism is purely western focused on pomo bullshit and they merely outsource the difficult work with women and girls to completely separate individuals.

You essentially have chuggers who just raise money and get paid for it and they don't ever see what the money does or where it goes or even why it's needed.

So this is yet another example of privileged middle class Brits just having no clue about the reality of life in developing countries (just as privileged middle class have little contact with the lived experience of women and girls living in deprivation and in abusive relations in this country).

Instead we end up with this almost colonial attitude where we are more advanced and progressive because we recognise the existence of trans people which the 'savages' don't because they are 'yet to be civilised'. The view of the world that actionaid uk employees have is UK focused and inward looking rather than viewing global issues and having a broad open view of the world as it is and what the problems that exist elsewhere are.

It's the same old pattern repeating over and over.

I think this is the problem with a great many of the larger charities. It's a 9 to 5 job with targets and sales and advertising stuffed full of people on a moral crusade who think roughing it and deprivation it is a weekend at Glasto without their mobile phone.

Their entry on the charity commissions website is

ACTIONAID UK IS PART OF AN INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION WORKING IN 44 COUNTRIES. WE PROVIDE SUPPORT AND HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE TO PEOPLE LIVING IN POVERTY AND ON THE MARGINS OF SURVIVAL. TOGETHER WE DEMAND ACTION AT LOCAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LEVEL. WE DON'T WALK AWAY UNTIL WE'VE ACHIEVED LASTING CHANGE.

So they know what people means.

Here is their complaints procedure, although I'm sure the walking donations is complaint enough:

How to get in touch
You can contact us by email, phone and post and we advise you to get in touch with your feedback in the way you are most comfortable with.

You will receive a response from Louis, Cordelia, Nick or Anela – our dedicated Supporter Contact team. If you choose to phone us outside of our working hours or our lines are busy, please leave us a message with your name and number, and we will make sure to call you back.

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 01460 238 000 – lines are open 9am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday.
Post: Supporter Care Team, ActionAid UK, Chard Business Park, Jarman Way, Chard, Somerset, TA20 1FB
How long it will take us to respond
Once we’ve received your complaint we aim to respond within two working days and provide a final response within 10 working days.

This is our sincere intention and we stick to it whenever possible. We will always let you know if we will need more than 10 days, for example, if it’s a complex concern needing investigation with a third party.

What we will do
We will share the lessons we have drawn from your complaint within ActionAid to make sure we learn from the experience. We welcome suggestions about how you think the issue you raise could be resolved.

As a charity focused on changing the world with women and girls, we do not always have the capacity to respond to complaints which are not directly about ActionAid’s work.

We ensure our resources are used efficiently, meaning we cannot engage in lengthy debates on issues unrelated to our work.

We record every complaint we receive and will use your contact details to provide you with a response.

Should you wish to make an anonymous complaint, we will not be able to update you but please rest assured that we will treat this with the same care and consideration as any other feedback, and will feed your comments into improving how we do things moving forward.

Please be aware that while we always listen to complaints and respond with respect, we may not always be able to make changes. If we cannot, we will explain why.

with great sadness I'm cancelling my direct debit-and will let them know exactly why. If gender identity is protected over sex, then women and girls aren't protected.

Oh, and I got a complete non-answer from ActionAid. I asked them directly to clarify what they meant about biology and they didn't deign to reply.

Well, they do have to arrange their meeting about whether women exist, so I'm sure they're just busy with that...

A friends mum and aunts did this too - left their house and hid up in the mountains. Dammit if only they knew they could just say ‘Hi I’m Marco and this is my brother Franco’.

So a little girl of 10 who cuts off all her hair and tries to look like (even says that she is) a boy to avoid rape or marriage in a war zone is 'technically' not under their remit?
A distant relative of mine actually did this during World War II. Her older sisters had to leg it out of the back of the house into the woods when the troops came calling. There are some hair-raising stories from that side of the family, with the women completely unable to 'identify' out of any of the shit that came their way.

Oh, and I got a complete non-answer from ActionAid. I asked them directly to clarify what they meant about biology and they didn't deign to
reply.

I still worry for girls in need who are 'gender non-conforming' (and therefore labelled as trans boys/men by their reckoning) - which could mean many different things across the globe. So a little girl of 10 who cuts off all her hair and tries to look like (even says that she is) a boy to avoid rape or marriage in a war zone is 'technically' not under their remit?

They really haven't thought about this have they?

If they think the issues are too complex for them maybe they should just ask some of the recipients of their aid to explain it to them using very small words.

Exactly.

Why don't they ask those people how they know whether they are male or female - they will soon find out that it really isn't that complex and never has been.