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

If the WI doesn’t sort this out soon then there are going to be a lot of very upset biological women 😡
I know they are trying to appease their younger members but this is all just a mucking fuddle!

I wouldn’t like guess what the CC would actually say, but they should say don’t be bloody ridiculous. If the WI according to its stated aims is no longer required, surely it should be closed as a charity. If someone wanted to set up a WI-type-thing to include men that should be a new organisation with god-know-what charitable objectives.

To clarify, I personally really don’t want this to happen. I want the WI to go back to being a women’s organisation and carry on doing what they do, without pandering to men. I always thought I would join one day but don’t fancy it under the current conditions.

I am not sure how the Charity Commission think / work, but how do others think they would react to the WI coming to them and saying "we no longer see a need for a women only institute like ours used to be, but we believe that we should be able to offer the same sort of provisions on a mixed sex basis for men and women and believe that we should still retain charitable status"? Would they be asked to demonstrate that women are no longer in any need of things like the WI to themselves? Would they be able to demonstrate that a mixed sex hobby group deserves charitable status?

Good quesion. I'm not sure exactly what the WI use as a sorting hat

I'll do some research and get back to you

I’ve got trousers on, wearing a brown jumper, haven’t got makeup up on, was just talking to my son about basketball, so guess I’m not living as a woman so does that exclude me?

Dirty cash I want you, dirty cash I need you. Whoa-oh.

WI membership is open to all women who live as women, including transgender women.

Is this criteria actually there to exclude women who don't live as women - i.e. transgender men, biological women who identify as men?

It seems like the membership they are after is 'people who we think look like women' - very stereotyping and regressive

I reckon they are going to clarify that they are a women’s organisation after getting legal advice, possibly waiting until the EHRC guidance is out. Alternatively they will go to court and lose, with the same outcome. That way they get to return to common sense but without being seen as the bad guys.

I know they should be sticking up for women and should have been all along, but I doubt they want to risk the ire of TRAs. There is a thread about a rabbit rescue organisation being targeted FFS, imagine how viciously the WI would be attacked.

They have the law on their side now. They can take legal action which could cost the WI. Money talks.

Didn’t the membership already try to oppose mixed sex and got nowhere? Unless they vote out the executive and wrest control they may have little say

We could run a sweepstake; I reckon WI will go mixed-sex.
This is a bit defeatist.
Either: women could re-join and swing the vote.
Or past members could organise a class-action to threaten to sue but will agree to drop it if WI agrees to abide by the law and its single sex constitution, as evidenced by removing membership from non-females.

I agree. I think lots of women’s organisations will be lost this way sadly. The boards and top ranks were infiltrated by TRAs so theyre unlikely to be ejected. And theyre unlikely to resign. Hopefully new organisations will be set up to meet women’s needs where demand is high but it’s unfair that women have to start again from scratch. I wonder if the government can be lobbied to set up a compensation/support fund for single sex groups they allowed to be destroyed by being unclear about the law?

I agree.

The process of successfully poisoning a women's resource has involved getting rid of anyone who holds any actual values around women, and so what is left of the leadership is usually activist controlled. I don't think there's going to be a way back to women-centric for any such organisation, how can there be when they now exist by believing that women-centric anything is a sin? Anything that held out in non-compliance is either infamous either through being smeared and subjected to the Daily Hate like JKR, or was destroyed entirely.

It will eventually (eventually) be realised that anything the TRAs controlled, including all policies, is compromised past repair and has to be begun again from scratch by those who themselves aren't compromised by Stonewall lawed activist training, involvement with rainbow points schemes, or having Nigels of their own.

I hope WI stays for women too. And if some of the gardens I've been working on find another gardener over the next few months I'll gladly put some efforts into jam-making and flower-arranging.

I think you're right. But also there maky be a schism, and there'll be a "people with a feminine gender" institute (which in the small print of the constitution will say that actually anyone of any sex or gender can join) as well as an "actual-female-people" institute. They'll need a joint custody arrangement for the word "Woman" - perhaps it can mostly stay with the "actual-female-people" institute, and visit with the "people with a feminine gender" institute Every Other Weekend plus one day Midweek.

This reminds me of all the student societies for Greek/Polish/Russian/Chinese students at University Freshers Fair who each insist that you don't have to be Greek/Polish/Russian/Chinese to join - because it is a condition of being an SU Affiliated society that all societies must be open to any student unless they are for a Protected Characteristic and nationality isn't a PC.

@AmaryllisNightAndDay I so so hope you are wrong. I know there is a full process they have to undergo to do this, to be compliant... but sadly if lots of members have left because of their policy of having men, it means that those left are more likely to be pro. Hmm. Are there enough to vote against???

And @Gundogday that is fascinating about Inner Wheel - I see they were brave enough to be female only from 2022. That is truly stunning and brave - and it sounds like they didn't get any kickback for it. One of the very few organisations I have heard about who used the exception, and didnt have a massive "transphobia" pile on

It depends how deeply the TW are embedded in the organisation. They're not easily going to accept being sidelined. Plus they will have a fuckton of "progressive" female supporters who will rally round. And they will have their own story to tell the press - look at the evil Supreme Court forcing us not to be the lovely tolerant open WI that we want to be.

We could run a sweepstake; I reckon WI will go mixed-sex.

Thank you to you & your DH @Another2Cats - let’s hope the WI remember who they’re actually there to support and see sense soon!

This is such a shame. As a teenager in the 1980s our daughter was a member of the Girls Friendly Society branch at our local parish church and gained so much from it, including taking part in a GFS working visit to a parish in the Caribbean. The presence of even one boy in that group would have changed the way it interacted, as would that of a male leader, however either identified. Sigh...

This is great thank you OP for pursuing this.

Would at any point it be useful for more of our DHs to apply to join the WI?
Put the pressure on. Create a story. Maybe a class action?
A group of men exposing the insanity of the WI would be glorious.
Like Man Friday but the men doing it.

Thank you and your husband for doing this, @Another2Cats.

My local WI has several transpeople who were born male and now wish to identify as women. The WI’s unwillingness to protect women’s spaces was the reason I left, and I was gutted.

New organisations are already forming. I’m thinking of MoMa, a new breast feeding organisation. It was set up because the founders didn’t accept the trans policies of La Leche League.

https://momab.org.uk

It is not unlikely that we'll see all the captured women and girls' organisations become openly mixed sex - and they will have to be, they cannot limit it to some men, it's all men or no men. That's very sad, that's a large chunk of women and girls' history wrecked by this wretched political movement, as so many things have been wrecked by them.

But this is now the point where new organisations can start that are entirely for women and girls, uncaptured, and will not be able to be shut down, deprived of spaces, attacked and harassed etc because of legal protections. All those things will happen: we're basically going to have to fight the 1900s achievements for women all over again, against balaclavas and mindless bawling of silly mantras and all the rest of it. But legally it will have to stand, and the women who set such things up will do it with the determination to see it through, and the women in those groups will be ones who do not think the first job of a woman is to be kind dick pander to men. The future women's movement is going to be a lot tougher and a lot more bloody minded, and will put up with a hell of a lot less shit than the previous one.

I don't think this is fair though. There are no clubs for girls only now as all of Girl Guiding, Girls Brigade and Girls Friendly Society take boys who think they are girls. It's sexist, and teaches girls they have to give away their own spaces and ignore their safety and boundaries.

And this

innerwheel.co.uk/equality-diversity-policy/