Women’s institute announcement

'it’s a very large organisation so I’d be surprised if they weren’t given sound legal advice'

Recent Youtube interview 'This Isn't Working' with Maya Forstater and Neil Morrison, HR professional, is interesting on this. The NHS and public sector have been misrepresenting the law and the EA for years. See also all the many ETs of recent years.

Thank you, I tried to compose a reply to that but was stumped. No one in most if the last century cared a jot about lesbians in this sense. They simply didn’t feature to most women (unless you were one of course, and your personal life was tricky as a consequence). The idea that women worried about predatory lesbians in public loos is laughable. Those of us born around the middle of the last century tended to - and still tend to IMO - be more relaxed and accepting of other people’s sexuality than those who followed. (At my girls’ school, “crushes” on other girls, which occasionally became mildly physical, were pretty normal and not seen as any indication of future sexual orientation.)
What I did notice was that it - “you’re a lesbian/lezzer” became an occasional taunt among schoolchildren in the mid nineties, used towards girls who were somewhat gender nonconforming, like my DD, probably because prior to that most children hadn’t even heard the word.

'Sound legal advice'. Is it the same sound legal advice Fife NHS were given? Or the Darlington Trust? Or all the NHS organisations who took sex out of their list of protected characteristics?

I imagine you've all seen this before , but I came across it again on my YouTube travels yesterday.
The sheer gaslighting was astonishing.
I'm not a consumer of rubbish day time TV but I'd like to think that the majority of those who were watching were thinking 'shut up you fools and stop talking rubbish.

@GreenFriedTomato I know it's just a random sample but I think the Australian's repsonse speaks to the culture of female self-effacement here.

Yes, that’s true.
It’s people my age, who I can remember in 90’s, who absolutely feel uncomfortable with transwomen in women’s spaces but thinks that’s a sign of their own bigotry. And I know they weren’t “interrogating their own discomfort” in the 90s. Maybe I’ve gotten it wrong with homophobia because with my closest TWAW (but actually feels unsafe) friend it was actually racist comments I remember (now I’ve been pushed to explain myself!). Does the experience of discovering that you’ve been (illegitimately) prejudiced in the past make someone distrust their own gut reactions today? But you’re right, younger women haven’t lived through that same change in mores, and still articulate the sentiment that, if you feel uncomfortable with a male person in women’s changing room (for example) you should interrogate why. Rather than trusting your own reactions. And the unconscious, automatic tendency to centre and prioritise male people’s needs would explain overriding one’s own inner knowing. And better explains why some women are digging their heels in.

The Australian is lying or nuts. Or has got very confused by overweight men with moobs.

The Russian response is .... very Russian.

@TheCourseOfTheRiverChanged I don't see anything in there about their attitude to lesbians. And if they were young women, doesn't that suggest it's less likely to be a matter of compensating for their earlier attitudes (if they are young, they will have had less time to change their minds about things)?

And that was quite a long post, but I wanted to add that my favourite response has been from indonesians.

Many men dress like ladies and that's ok, but they're not real ladies, that's just silly

An acceptance of men not conforming with gender norms and wearing typical women's clothing and make up, but there's no suggestion or forced belief they are women.

Just like it should be in sane normal societies

I'm many hours late replying to this but I think it was the 'we are a sharing a pizza NIGHT' that made me think, this person is an absolute moron, or a dedicated, persistent troll.
So, I went into the sea and stuck my head underwater for a few hours. Did me the world of good and shut out the noise for a while.
I met a few clownfishies on the way. Feisty little things they are. They always square up to you like. 'oi! Get out of our space/anemone'!
I always indicate that I didn't mean to invade or upset them by swimming away.
They are clearly just bobbing around, actually changing sex and have no idea of the celebrity status they share in the make-believe human sex-changing transworld.

I'm on holiday at the moment. I just did a mini survey with random guests and passers by.

Questions were.

Do you have transgender males in your country? Men who say they are women?

Do you think that they are women?

Slovakia- yes, some men have feelings that they are of the opposite gender but they are not real women. It isn't a problem in Slovakia.

Russia- no this is bullshit. Not in Russia

Indonesia- yes some men dress like lady and have lipstick. but everyone know they are men and sometimes they go in lady places but all the lady kick them out.

Australia-: well it's delicate. I believe in women's rights. But people come in many forms. And there are studies about women who are stressed during pregnancy, and as a result their babies are born transgender because of the stress, the hormones are damaged and they are born as boy and girl so it's not their fault and they should have a life just like us. And i've been on nudist beaches and seen people with natural breasts and a penis so I know some people are born both ways , and if I were to go to prison which is never going to happen anyway, I'd rather be in a cell with a man because I've been attacked by women but never by a man.

England: I'm sick of everyone talking about this shit. I don't care.

I know that a poll of 4 people is no kind of poll, but the Australian woman made me want to stick my head underwater again.

I was actually attempting to understand what might be going on for TWAW “inclusive” women, alongside the existence of women who’ve been socialised to defer to male needs.
I was involved with an Australian women’s organisation, set up for survivor’s of sexual and domestic violence. They had three separate anonymous votes in the noughts as to whether membership should be based on sex or gender identity. “Sex” was the resounding reply every time. Then in the early teens the board and executive changed the organisation’s policy documents to allow male people to apply for membership if they claimed to be women. It was all done very quietly. I’ve only just registered that this would have been at the time that Australia’s sex discrimination act changed, which makes me feel less betrayed by the women who did this, I think their hands were tied if the organisation was going to continue to exist other than as a private, informal network. I didn’t have lots and lots of conversations about it with women members who saw this as justice being done, so I can’t claim to have great insight into their thinking, but I have spent lots of time thinking about it and trying to figure it out. Also, it was young, wide eyed women from the nice suburbs who tended to see inclusion of transwomen as progress. All the older women in the organisation were properly old school second wave feminists – if I’m honest they’re much more hard core than me!

Alas I was thinking the Wokemen’s Institute.

Utterly abhorrent.

Any evidence for this caricature of older women? Or is it just supposition.

The WI could keep their name and go mixed sex - but they'd have to change their charity commission registration and everywhere they use the term "women" - and they would have to include all men, just not the ones in frocks and lippy.

That is a special rule for the PC of Race.

The WI doesn't know that though. And, I know the law is on our side, but if there's widespread civil disobedience, will institutions legitimise their lawbreaking by only consulting existing members/making consultations non-anonymous, so gc respondents know they're in for a punishment beating?

Market research would be useful, so we can quantify who wants what.

WI- Woowoo Institute. Problem solved

In fact I really don't want the WI to be mixed sex. I was planning to join a few years ago and didn't because they are mixed sex. If they confirm that they will be women only from now on I will be joining.

I don't think spannasaurus is saying that the WI should become mixed sex and keep the name, but is merely curious about the technicalities.

I suspect that if they did open to all they wouldn't want to lose the name recognition. The best solution in that cicumstance would probably be to make the well known initials the formal name, so it's still the WI but the letters don't actually stand for specific words.

[Edit - crosspost]

How about calling it the Ladies' Gender Ideology Club, for men who think they are women, and women who think that men who think they are women, are women?

The trouble is that the men who think they are women only want to join the club of the women who don't think that men who think they are women, are women.

It's so sad 😂

But does the law prevent them from calling themselves the Women’s institute?

The YMCA now provides services for a variety of people, but hasn’t changed its name.

It's not important that it keeps that name. I was raising a question about whether it needed to.
I'd rather it stayed a single sex organisation

I'm sure that's true of some, but I'm not convinced it is sufficient to account for anything like the number of transmaidens we see in practice.

As I remember it at the end of last century (goodness that makes me feel old): a lot of men were uncomfortable with gay men (a mix of fear and disgust); nearly as many men were uncomfortable with lesbians (but in a different way - rage at being denied); a smaller but not insignificant number of women uncomfortable with gay men (disgust, but not the fear men felt of them); and very few women who had a problem with lesbians (the most common sentiment I remember being expressed was closer to envy than discomfort, from women who were sick of men).

No, I didn't misread it. The point is that if 'women' means 'mixed sex group' at some times but not others, women's protections in law are destroyed. This has been repeatedly explained through the thread.

Why is it so important to you that it remains called women but permits in some men, rather than changes its name to honestly reflect the mixed sex membership?

@WhatNextCatsAsDoctors

Can I just ask what you think the legitimate aim is of a group for trans women and women?

Are you thinking something superficial like make up tips?

Or are you thinking what a lot of TRAs claim, that they both suffer from misogyny?

I don't see that they have any commonality at all. But perhaps I'm missing something

It's not prejudice, though. Men constitute the predator class. They're responsible for 98% of all sex crimes, 90% of all violent crime.

It's not prejudice, it's reality.