What's going on with Genspect?

Yes, Repeal is the next thing, and removal of PC of GR. Repeal has to happen as the GRA is just awful law, every which way you look at it.

If those who compromise over having our language stolen at all, and the GRA, are the voices that are heard we will never leave the mire. To suggest it is sinister to say this is another version of #BeKind and #NoDebate.

I am not thinking of this as a feminism movement but one trying to reclaim truth, safeguarding and scientific rigour. So I come at it from a different place. But when you have people who have stood up and said as part of their campaign “I am happy to use preferred pronouns and keep the GRA so long as men have to get a diagnosis and it only applies in a few situations” how do they then move to “preferred pronouns is lying and destroy female language, and the GRA must be repealed” and retain credibility? Yet the latter situation is where we must go. Using language demanded by TRAs, and the fact that GRCs exist, regardless of who has one, is what has destroyed women’s rights. It is the wedge.

All of what you've said @wizardofsoz is what I was thinking of. Can't see it ending well.

I agree with you about GenSpect, @ResisterRex I've been watching and listening to Stella O'Malley for years, uncertain about where exactly she stands. I'm none the wiser. She's said some shocking stuff: most recently I see she was (rightly) criticised for asserting that lesbians got the same sexual charge from wearing male clothing (I'm presuming shirts and trousers) as autogynephiles posing in women's underwear.

This response from her didn't help:
https://stellaomalley.substack.com/p/so-ive-been-publicly-shamed-again

I don't have a problem with people making mistakes: this area is a minefield and full of bad actors and we've all encountered people who seemed amazing until suddenly they weren't. But SOM's insistence on being the victim here is concerning.

Feminism isn't protection of safeguarding. Safeguarding is not protected by a movement.

And as to the original Genspect issue, had they had a safeguarding approach, it would not have happened. SSA point out it's a culture and I would add that you can only legislate to a point. The particular approach that would have helped them is safer recruitment - which is underpinned by legislation yes - but it's ongoing reflection, practices and culture.

https://x.com/safeschoolsuk/status/1723794527813587166?s=46&t=WHoOZZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

But I don't think Genspect is a child safeguarding organisation. I'm not entirely sure what they are, who funds them or what their real purpose is. Regardless, I don't think they get it and I don't think they ever will, hence I think feminists buddying up with them are potentially making a mistake.

Glad I'm not alone, @YourPithyLilacSheep So many of the women who signed up for TWAW were the same 'feminists' who back in the noughties told older lesbians that their feminism was old-fashioned and laughable and needed to be more accommodating. Those new 'feminists' went on to destroy every single women's and lesbian network in my area in the name of inclusivity. Now the tide's turning and they're looking for new opportunities. They're welcome to come to the events I'm involved in, to participate, to come up with their own ideas. But telling those of us who've led this for years that we need to stand down so they can take over — no way.

Brava @wizardofsoz

I think this is a very long game, and it's not just about the incursions of extremist gender ideology. Indeed, I think that extremist gender ideology was able to take hold because many women of the "liberal feminist" generation (so about 20 years younger than I am as a 1970s women's libber) took their eye off the ball, and thought that they didn't need to be feminists any more. That women like Julie Bindel - and before her, Germaine Greer, and so on - had done the work, and we were OK now.

So I welcome the peaked GC women (some of whom are feminists, but not all) but they might do well to learn a bit of women's history, I think, and also understand that the fight back against transactivism is only part of the struggle.

This is real fifth column stuff.

SaffronSpice · Today 13:00

I think what needs to happen is as things get corrected the ‘old guard’ of GC have to step away and let those not trapped by earlier argument become the louder voices. This may seem harsh to those who feel they were on the front line and want to feel the satisfaction of having shifted opinion to their position, but however successful we were at getting the troops off the beaches at Dunkirk, it took D-Day to win the war.

I find this really sinister. 'As things get corrected'? With the implication that women have gone wrong along the line and have to drop out if they've misjudged something? Purity spiral stuff? 'You once said xyz, so you need to retire, grandma, and let the bright young things who know better take over'? Fuck that, @SaffronSpice No one's trapped. The path from where some of us started 18+ years ago has never been a clear straight line. Just because Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce have had changes of heart and mind along the way, as the facts have accrued and knowledge increased, doesn't mean they're trapped or tarnished.

Are you one of the new wave of recently signed up GC women who managed to ignore all the concerns I and my cohort of tedious old-school feminists were raising over the years. Are you one of the women who, a few years ago supported men in women's DV shelters and women's centres before seeing the way the wind is blowing and deciding that now is the time to step up and take over from the nanas? I'm seeing you all over the place. I'm hearing conversations among the young grifter-women who have been taking public money to inculcate GI and are now planning to set up new training companies and new versions of feminist and women's networks to replace those they helped destroy when they went in preaching TWAW and Stonewall Law.

JB's been fighting for women for nearly 30 years. What have you done, @SaffronSpice ? We've been in this battle ever since the first men who said they were women rocked up in our unions and workplaces and universities and on the boards of charities 18 years ago and started telling us that TWAW and they were here to educate us. It's been a long, slow learning process: we've had to try and second guess the agenda and the psychology. We've had to learn the language — it's only in the last 18 months or so that we've been permitted to write AGP here on Mumsnet. How bloody dare you tell us it's time to retire and let you take over just as the battle is won and when we're the reason the UK's known as Terf Island. Without us the UK would be Canada or New Zealand by now.

'This may seem harsh'? Not harsh. Foolish and disingenuous and patronising. Show the women who've got this far the respect they deserve.

You posted this: think we've lost language to object to things being socially unacceptable

And also this:I think an area where difference will persist and has to be lived with is in personal use of preferred/ requested pronouns. Although a decision on how this is managed in schools and workplaces is required.

Not only have we lost language to object to things being socially unacceptable, you are suggesting we have to live with losing language to describe the thing at all.

My point is broadly @ResisterRex that feminism is more than protection of safeguarding. There's a bigger picture about the analysis of the position of women within the power structures of our society.

But that where most (maybe all?) feminists converge is on the idea of girls/women as a sex class. I tend to agree with Professor Stock on the "legal fiction" of the GRA.

we do not accept the redefinition of what it is to be female and a girl or woman

I'm not sure about this. I think this is where splits are. If you are OK with the GRA then you do accept a redefinition of female. And this is when effective safeguarding ceases to be effective.

Losing a focus on safeguarding is how things like the dice game end up in schools. We thought sex education would be a good idea but its execution has made children less safe. Tackling that from a perspective other than safeguarding is the wrong approach in my view.

I don’t know JB’s whole history but years ago in this whole debate wasn’t there a perceived need not to be seen as or dismissed as transphobic in order to be heard?

Yup. (And Ms Bindel has been an activist feminist for over 30 years).

But those of us who've been hauled over the coals of a disciplinary, or had it threatened, or lost our jobs or livelihood will know what it costs in all sorts of ways, to speak out as Julie Bindel has. And she's been doing it for a very long time.

Like it or not, feminism is a set of beliefs (even an ideology, some might say) and it's open to interpretation. We need clarity and reality, not navel gazing endless essays tweets and glossing over reality with politeness about pronouns.

Thing is, feminism/s were/are about a lot more than combatting extremist gender ideology. And the women some posters are suggesting are the "old Guard" who need to step away, such as Julie Bindel, have always fought on a much broader frontier than simply combatting the social/legal impacts of gender ideology.

And one woman's navel-gazing is another woman's plan for action. All political movements need both theory and practice - strategy & tactics, if you like.

However, I think where we all can agree is that we do not accept the redefinition of what it is to be female and a girl or woman. As one organisation pithily and effectively puts it: "Nothing about us without us."

This board used to feature a lot on safeguarding

Quite a few of the safeguarding posters were banned weren’t they? Though on the thread about that Family sex show, there was an amazing poster discussing grooming and CSA that opened my eyes. Explaining how grooming manipulates by using the language of pleasure and the subsequent confusion and harm it creates for children.

The talk about ‘beliefs’ surely came from the Forstater judgement, which has become the only legal basis for anyone who believes in sex to be protected at work. At the time I thought how odd that knowing the material reality of biology had to be somehow transformed into a ‘belief’ in order not to lose your job.

I don’t know JB’s whole history but years ago in this whole debate wasn’t there a perceived need not to be seen as or dismissed as transphobic in order to be heard? On the #bekind ascendancy. In those days having DH agree they weren’t a woman was revelatory and perhaps the likes of JB, I don’t know, perhaps even appreciated DH saying that?

Certainly it’s only been because of the increasing transgressions of TW in sports and prisons and undeniable safeguarding failures of young people that we’re getting back to sex and safeguarding. Though I feel like GI and trans inclusivity is a race still running.

A long winded way of saying that going back to sex and safeguarding is a way of refocusing the conversation.

My personal take is that we should tolerate a multiplicity of beliefs and faiths in a free society, but we should not base laws on any entity which cannot be physically proven.

That’s really well put, @ThatLuckyDog And I agree that a lot of women, who are only alerted to the dangers of extremist gender ideology in the last 6 years or so, don’t necessarily have a longer understanding of feminist ideas, philosophies, theories or history of activism.

But that’s OK - to each according to her needs, from each according to her abilities.

Varieties of feminism exist in a broad grass roots movement and there’s room for a multiplicity of views and actions.

I wish Kemi Badenoch had mentioned safeguarding when she was doing the rounds to promote the Tories’ election campaign pledge re clarifying the Equality Act to mean biological sex.

I agree. I also think the EHRC has got parts of this wrong and should be deferring to safeguarding experts in some areas. Or at least consulting them. I wonder if KB did not mention it as it's not her remit, and would risk having a complaint made against her before officially on the ballot paper? But I'm guessing

And others

Gender recognition certificates - that it is ok for some men to pretend to be women, and hide the fact that they are men, in certain circumstances

Destroy the meaning of female language by using it for men.

Absolutely agree that we need to emphasise safeguarding in our arguments. I wish Kemi Badenoch had mentioned safeguarding when she was doing the rounds to promote the Tories’ election campaign pledge re clarifying the Equality Act to mean biological sex. Her legalistic points were correct but she neglected to mention the holes in safeguarding that a less strict interpretation of the Act has caused.