Hypothetical question for gardeners

No, I wouldn't care. My £10 is to show solidarity and appreciation for them speaking up.

I've always assumed it had evolved from a request for people to dig deep for someone.

"gardening" has been a recognised euphemism on this site for so long I cant even remember when it started - but before 2023.

This is fantastic! Thank you for explaining @RethinkingLife 💐

We can’t directly talk about nor link crowdfunding requests. So, FWR talks about people who need support for their allotments to deliver a good crop. So, we garden for them, sow a few seeds etc.

In the past (when we were very heavily moderated) we were warned that discussions of carrots, onions, seeds etc would not always be acceptable.

Can anyone provide a sidebar for those of us who don’t understand the use of the word gardener here please? I’ve done a Google search to find out and I’ve found a thread from Mumsnet from 2023 related to Sybil Ruth’s tribunal case which mentions gardening too but no germination of the term.

The only thing that disappoints me with crowdfunding is when the outcome is announced on twitter before a message is sent to donors. It ought to be at the same time or if the crowdfunding site introduces a delay before the announcement on twitter.

Additionally, as has been mentioned, the process is the punishment. I can't imagine how stressful it must be in some of these cases, especially those where trans activists are gunning for them and their families, sometimes over years.
If she's filled with righteous feminist fury and wants to fight for the ruling, I'll cheer her on but if she's stressed and exhausted and wants it to end, I'll cheer her taking the settlement too.
I would absolutely hate to know a woman is struggling with that kind of pressure, really wants to settle so she can get on with her life but doesn't because she feels she can't let the side down.
It would be unfair of me or anyone else to ask her to pay that kind of price.

Also a no from me. The money is freely and gladly given.
A court case and ruling is obviously a wonderful thing in that there is publicity and precedent, but it also is very hard on the individual woman who has already been through enough that she has to start legal proceedings in the first place.
Besides a settlement sends a message too. Discrimination is costly.
I'm more than happy for the women in these cases to make the choice that's right for them.

Like others, I donate when I can as a gesture of support for these amazing women who are walking such a difficult path, putting their head above the parapet.

I don’t feel disappointed; every chink in the armour is worth it as far as I’m concerned.

I would be mildly disappointed, in the sense that I would like the claimant to achieve all that they were hoping to do by bringing the case, but there's no guarantee that taking it all the way to tribunal will do that anyway. If they've got to the stage where they feel unable to take it any further, especially if it's someone like Sarah in Brighton where the case has dragged on for YEARS then I can understand them settling and hope they are happy with the outcome rather than just wanting it over with. (NB I have no idea who the person involved is, just using Sarah as an example as she was the first person whose case sprang to mind as a particularly protracted one).

Every time the other side wobbles in its confidence in its case and settles then that’s a win. It’s a win in the context of the individual case and the broader picture. It’s not that long that everyone was so convinced in the rightness of TWAW that challenge was virtually impossible. That’s no longer the case, and cases going to settlement are evidence of that.

Plus no matter how confidential, word will spread, and people will increasingly think twice about firing women for telling the truth.

As some pps have said, any donation I make is without strings and is to show my support as well as help with legal fees. I would not have a problem with anyone in one of these situations opting to take a settlement rather than carry on going through what must be a very difficult process. As I have read before on here - 'the process is the punishment' and if the person decides they can't take any more punishment then I respect and accept their choice.

My answer is no. I am not disappointed. Every case fought potentially helps knock a stone out of the wall as far as I am concerned. 😉

If the person you're supporting got what they consider an acceptable outcome then that's fine.
It's not like you can put money towards it and then complain if the outcome isn't exactly how you wanted it to be?
The whole thing could've been dismissed and the money lost. So at least something positive came out of it.
I guess I'd want to know out of curiosity the details but if I'm not legally entitled to that info then too bad.

I don’t blame anyone for settling. They’re fighting on the front line for all of us, under colossal stress. Big thanks to anyone who dares. Even a settlement is a small victory.

I hope that, if all their costs are covered, they donate the remainder to a similar crowdfunder.

I often think of this passage from Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

West is listening to her husband conducting an intense political argument with a Yugoslavian.

Just then my eye was caught by two large, loosely formed spheres in neutral colours, one blackish grey, the other brownish black. These were the behinds of two peasant women who were employed by the municipalities to weed the flower-beds at the corners of the square. They were being idiots, private persons in the same sense as the nurse in my London nursing-home, who was unable to imagine why the assassination of King Alexander should perturb anybody but his personal friends. They were paid to pull up weeds, and they wanted the money, so they continued to pull them up, even when the students raised a shout and brought some gendarmes down on them not fifteen yards away. As I looked at those devoted behinds, bobbing up and down over their exemplary task, and the smug face of the automatic rebel, I thanked God for the idiocy of women, which must in many parts of the world have been the sole defender of life against the lunacy of men.

My donations are always given as a sign of my gratitude to the woman standing up to fight. And to show her she isn't alone. No strings.

When I pay into a legal crowdfunder it is to show support and also hopefully to allow the woman involved financial independence in the case i.e. I want someone to choose to settle or not based on what is right for them, not based on whether or not they can afford to continue.

I have given. It's a gift with no expectations or strings attached. The process is often the punishment. If settling works best for them then that's fine with me.

This - a settlement is a win in my book, too. No individual woman should feel as though she has the weight of responsibility to fight on ‘on principle’ and on behalf of other women. She needs to centre her needs (which is what the movement is really about at its core). Each win, even via settlement, still helps the cause.

I would imagine the money in a fighting fund for legal fees was for legal fees, but that paying for legal fees was only a small part of the financial implications of being in that position - if she settled and spent the money on rent/food/wine/holidays then great.

Exactly this.

No. It's a way of showing support. Even if a case is settled out of court the organisation has been shown that they need to stop bullying those with gc views. To have got to that point the claimant has to have stood up in their organisation to express those views, received negative outcomes such as being called bigoted or pushed out of their jobs, to have decided to fight through the courts and made this public. Every one of those steps takes much more bravery than I possess. I'm so grateful to everyone who stands up for gc views and very happy to express that gratitude financially - it's the least I can do. Obviously there may be others who disagree but I'm pretty sure most of us appreciate the stress being in this situation causes. Good luck to your friend op.