An update to the WI Announcement thread. My DH just got a reply to his application to join them.

It will be interesting to see what happens next because I do think that politically this is one area that is vulnerable to change. If enough people persuade the Government that there are a sizeable number of women who actively want ‘trans inclusive, male gender exclusive’ associations, then I can see that a change could be made to the association part of the Equality Act to allow such organisations to exist. The recent Women and Equalities Committee seemed to focus on this.

If they took this path would that only be for people with a GRC? If it’s self ID then it opens the way for people to join nefariously, which would probably be the argument against it in parliament

Have a lovely holiday - heartfelt thanks to you and your incredible husband.

Changing the constitution would require a formal consultation and vote ( we just had one for other issues )

this would be needed to remain a mixed organisation and include OPs husband (and trans inclusive if that were at all legal - I assume not )

However to remain a single sex organisation (that I assume the majority of members would want) , would necessarily exclude trans and only admit biological women . This would require a change to the Diversity Equality and Inclusion policy and accompanying glossary only . This would not require a vote . They have changed policies several times and have been approved by the national board of trustees only Eg DEI before they admitted trans; the recent update to the social media policy.

if the OP needs funding , there has been an offer that the OP knows about and would need to follow up with that organisation .

edited for punctuation and spelling mistake

Thank you and DH for doing this. I am very fed up with all organisations that have decided to completely ignore their founding principles like this and allow themselves to be hijacked (Girl guiding being the obvious other one).

It will be interesting to see what happens next because I do think that politically this is one area that is vulnerable to change. If enough people persuade the Government that there are a sizeable number of women who actively want ‘trans inclusive, male gender exclusive’ associations, then I can see that a change could be made to the association part of the Equality Act to allow such organisations to exist. The recent Women and Equalities Committee seemed to focus on this. Such a change would however also need to protect the right of female only associations to exclude males if they wanted to.

But then you end up with the mess that you have at the moment, with the original associations hijacked. And organisations could change their constitutions one way and then back again depending on who was in charge at any given time.

With the WI I think that if members were put to a vote they would vote female only. But it may not need a member vote to change their constitution, I don’t know.

In the long term I can’t see how this will play out.

But thank you for forcing clarity on this. Shout if you need funding!

OP I too am in love with your husband, I'll buy you both a pint.

Have a lovely holiday.

https://fairplayforwomen.com

Don’t know whether you know if this organisation. They may be a useful ally or the website may provide useful info (in a back-to-front ) way. I know it’s aimed at women’s rights, but that’s exactly what you’re defending as well (in a back-to-front way).

@KnottyAuty oh I’ve tried.

but it’s all biased advice.

stonewall law has a lot to answer for. (It is of course totally unbiased!!!)

Not sure if you’re in a position to say this but it’s only (slightly) unclear for the 8400-ish GRC holders across the UK. Everyone else has to be provided with single sex toilets under Workplace Regs. What unisex they choose to offer their self ID crowd is up to them but other employees can’t suffer a detriment. If they are still struggling tell them to google the LSE talk with Akua, Naomi & Ben.

My friend (a solicitor) sits on the DEI committee at their firm and thinks the Supreme Court judgement is “unclear” so they are delaying a firm wide response/ policy rewrite.

so fuck knows what legal advice the WI will actually get.

why have people gone so stupid over this issue. A law firm who can’t interpret the sodding law. It is madness.

This bit was really interesting : In addition, this policy will also amount to direct belief discrimination. A requirement that a male person must identify as a woman to be included is direct discrimination on grounds of a specific variant of gender identity belief, namely the belief, held by a male person, in being a woman

I just read this on sex discrimination and it speaks exactly to the circumstances of WI being trans inclusive but male exclusive, so I thought I'd share here: https://knowingius.org/p/are-trans-inclusive-policies-lawful

Hi @Another2Cats
you will hopefully recall we pmed each other a few weeks ago

the firm of solicitors the WI use is Bate and Wells as you say based in London. They seem to use them for everything eg recent changes to the constitution nothing to do with Trans.
But Bate and Wells credentials are pinned firmly to the trans mast on their website . Their section on “Gender Equality” tells you everything you need to know about how they view about the the trans community being a persecuted bunch whose feelings should not be undermined by pesky biological women .

I also found out that the WI does not have any legal person on their staff . You would think that the Head of Legal and Governance might be a solicitor or something the answer is no she doesn’t ( but does have a qualification in open water diving and interior decorating so I am sure they are useful ……) Therefore the WI has no one internal to critically or rather legally analyse anything coming from their “legal advisors” .

Anyway it would be good to touch base, at some point soon as we did before with various developments. But thought others would find the above interesting too do write it here .

It's great you are highlighting this. Keep up the good work

We only went live with it this morning, but we've got some horrible stories already. Enraging ones

I’ll do the usual public service announcement that shared google docs are not secure & can/do track the identity or emails of people contributing to them.

Eg: www.locklizard.com/document-security-blog/how-secure-are-google-docs/

Well done. Have you had many responses?

Well done. Good luck!

We're collecting anecdotes about mixed sex WIs if women are able to share

Mixed Sex WIs Survey

Hello, we've been agitating about this and have formed our own GC virtual WI - if you want to join us send me a DM, I might be a bit slow in replying.

Ah, but would you trust those counting not to do an Edward Lord and simply throw away the papers that didn’t agree with the centrally desired outcome?

It all depends just how captured it is.

As a current WI member, together with the current annoying doublespeak, I would want a secret ballot of every member. The voting slips could be sent out with our monthly magazines. I would not trust my WI, with most of the committee being very woke, to vote in accordance with the majority of our branch members.

I do wonder though how many of the current membership are happy to have men in the WI. And if it was a blind ballot (I don't know if it is), people could vote without fear of any untoward personal consequences.

I'm not convinced that the Charities Commission would block a change to being a mixed-sex organisation, if the change was voted for by a majority of the current membership under the existing constitutional rules which will include a section on rules to govern future changes to the constitution.

To look for similar examples - there used to be numerous women-only colleges at Oxford and Cambridge - there are none left in Oxford and only 2 left in Cambridge (both of which admit Transwomen). One by one each womens' college held constitutional votes to become mixed-sex, and were able to do so despite being founded as charitable institutions founded specifically for the education of women. I remember one such vote happening at an Oxford women's college when I was an undergraduate, and if I recall correctly I think it was explained that the reason that the college was significantly poorer than other colleges is because the college was unable to apply for various funding streams for academic advancement because their single-sex status made them ineligible, if those funding streams had incompatible policies which meant they had to be open to anyone of any sex, so even though the college members voted "No" on that occassion, the college kept on holding votes over and over again every few years until eventually they got a "Yes"

After checking using AI, the WI selection process is something like this

If your eligibility is not immediately clear to you from your feelz then you need to use the sorting bag of gender yarn.

The sorting bag contains all the odds and ends of left over wool from past and present members' projects. You reach inside, rummage around and pull out a piece.

If it's pink then you can join.