To just hand over my women's meetup group to a trans member?

[Mallorie]

I run a women-in-[industry] meetup group (it's a traditionally male-dominated industry, but don't want to get more specific than that as this is outing enough as it is). I didn't found the group but took over organisation duties when the founder (a good friend) moved abroad.

It's not closed to men - men have been speakers before, and a handful of men will usually attend to support friends/colleagues or just because the speaker or topic is interesting. However, the point of the group is to offer education and networking opportunities for women in our industry, and to encourage women in adjacent industries or in the early stages of choosing a career to consider joining our industry.

The group has grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple of years so I asked for a volunteer to help me with planning and running the meetups and specifically to help start an annual mini-conference. I see now that my mistake was asking in a public forum rather than approaching a few people personally, because a transgender woman we'll call Alex immediately and rather forcefully volunteered - basically they were like "YES I've got this! I've been waiting for this opportunity, I've got so many great ideas, when can we start?" No one else really volunteered and I didn't feel like I had any choice but to let Alex help. Alex is only recently transitioned and I have known them as a tall, big (rather obnoxious blowhard) male for a few years , Alex looks exactly the same but now wears earrings and patterned blouses. Anyway.

Alex's 'help' started with a bullet-pointed list of all the changes in language we needed to make on the group website and any/all tweets, emails, agendas, and presentations to include all 'self-identifying women and non-binary people', a list of rules for attendees and speakers about inclusive language, and a list of themes for upcoming meetups based around dealing with transgender issues in the workplace. The dates and details of the conference haven't even been discussed yet, but Alex has already written a sort of manifesto about how it's a conference for all self-identifying women and non-binary people. The actual industry education and discussions around the actual work that we do in the industry seems not just secondary now, but completely forgotten - Alex's eyes glaze over when I mention anything concrete, for example the details of an expert in a specific technology who has volunteered to speak at the next meetup.

Alex and a younger contingent of the meetup group are super excited about all of this and have taken over the conversation on social media. No one is saying anything against the new regime, and I don't feel like I can without opening a can of worms that could damage my career - something I can't afford to deal with. So I'm thinking about just handing over the reins to Alex and focusing on my own career.

It breaks my heart because I've made so many good friends in the group, and it has genuinely helped support and improve the working lives of lots of actual women, but the women who I suspect feel the same as me about this new direction are silent - probably like me, they're afraid of the repercussions of speaking out.

I wish I'd never asked for help, and that I'd pushed back with Alex from the start, but I feel like it's too late now.

[titchy]

It is very important that nobody ever uses language in a way that makes others uncomfortable

Alex says she's a woman, so she's a woman.

I assume with the obvious contradiction of those two sentences in your post you're being sarcastic? Hard to tell sometimes!

[SchrodingersFrilledLizard]

Some very good suggestions for you, op.

And to reiterate: transwomen are transwomen. They are not women.

[donquixotedelamancha]

I assume with the obvious contradiction of those two sentences in your post you're being sarcastic? Hard to tell sometimes!

Yep. Sarcasm. Thought I'd laid it on thick enough. My point being that the PP who wants to police others language and Alex are doing the same thing.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Re pronouns, this is an excellent article (however the source and the author may not be)

thefederalist.com/2016/10/18/shouldnt-use-transgender-pronouns/#.WmeBZJMgqr4.twitter

[TefalTester123]

Might it be possible to conduct a small survey of members as to the issues that are deemed important to the group, perhaps as a write-in, rather than a box checking exercise, perhaps with a few suggestions (but not specifying trans issues as a possible). Hopefully only one would write in 'trans issues', then you would have the evidence you need of where to direct meetings/speakers/conference.

[Ereshkigal]

I'm not sure I believe you as this seems taylor-made to stir up the usual crowd.

It seems perfectly reasonable and true to me. It's my experience of what is happening with practically all specifically women's or feminist groups. It's colonisation. Its transactivism at the grassroots.

[CircleofWillis]

quixotedelamancha surely you are policing my policing of language?
I know for a fact that you don't know what I believe regarding Alex's actions and whether I believe transwomen are women. I know this because I do not what I believe myself. I am reading, and researching and following arguments and will hopefully understand enough to form my own view.

My point about Kool-aid was an attempt to inform people unfamiliar with the tragedy the connection between this now common phrase and an atrocity which still reverberates in my father's homeland (Guyana) to this day. It was unrelated to this argument but still vivid in many people's memories.

[OliveBranch3]

For the OP:
I can see your problem, you don’t want to alienate a core group of women/a similar group of people unrepresented in business and the workplace, but at the same time, by allowing Alex to focus only on these groups she’s alienating cis women who have been in the group for a while and are there to discuss, debate and learn.
The best solution would be to give Alex a bit of priority. Talk through her ideas for conferences and the issues she wants to raise for trans/non binary folk. See what she has to say. Probably the best way forward then is to clarify and allocate time for her within the group to hold trans centric conferences for instance. Do however just reinstate that while trans centric/exclusive topics are of course important, they can alienate the cis women of the group. Inclusivity seems to be key for your group fighting a cis male dominated industry. In order to prevent being seen as transphobic (which I hope you aren’t in the first place!) don’t go on the attack and don’t feel threatened. Alex is working for the same reasons you are. To improve inequality and fight injustice, but because trans topics are often so overlooked she’s most likely to on instinct want to focus as much as she can on those issues.
Compromise, communication and co-ordination are key!

[Terfinater]

Transwomen are women

Does it then stand that women are transwomen?

[MakeMisogynyAHateCrime]

I really feel for you OP.
I was “asked to leave” a similar group (which I had previously set up and successfully run for 6 years), for the medical field, for not agreeing with every topic being turned over to a discussion of trans rights.
I was threatened with all sorts of action and told I would be reported in my place of work. In the end I left my career for very different reasons but I still have contact with a few former group members who have since apologised to me for being rail roaded into letting the swift and aggressive changes happen to our group.
They are now setting up another group but are worried about being labelled TERF on social media and would like my advice. Funny how they were so free and easy when the same action and name-calling when it was aimed toward me.

I wish you luck OP because I think you have quite the battle on your hands.
I’d think long and hard if this will have any impact on your career should Alex decide to “call you out”.

[Ereshkigal]

Personally circle, I'm not a fan on "drunk the kool aid" since reading more about Jonestown. It seems many of the women were likely coerced to go along with it due to fear though so... maybe it is appropriate but not in the way people mean it...

I mean exactly that when I use it. I don't throw it around, but I do think the trans movement is destructively cultish.

[OliveBranch3]

Now in response to those having a- I think the term used was bun fight- about trans rights.

I fear no amount of level headed argument will appeal to your logic but that’s never stopped me before. Trans women are women. I know people get angry when people say that and I can see why. You’re afraid and that’s reasonable. You’re afraid that trans women are really just men in dresses using it as an excuse to hurt you or your children or your friends. And those people do exist and they’re awful.

But they are not trans women.

Trans women are the women who have suffered night and day wishing and praying that they could be “normal” feeling unbearably uncomfortable in their own skin. It’s torture. It’s not a tactic.

I know it’s scary, you are part of the most powerful force on the planet - the sisterhood of women - and someone from the outside is trying to make their way in. But I assure you the trans community are not trying to infiltrate or corrupt anything. They are trying to live, to get by, to exist without being pointed out or shunned by slurs, without being sexualised, without the fear of being beaten and raped for walking down the street. Sound at all familiar? We’re both fighting for the same thing.

I know you’re not hateful people. I can see from the amazing things you all do on a daily basis, running businesses, raising and protecting families, breaking the glass ceiling and fighting for people who can’t fight for themselves. I can see deep down none of your cores are completely filled with hate an intolerance. You’re clever, strong and kind. So why are you letting misinformation cloud your judgement?

You of all people should know your sex doesn’t define you and make you less of more than anyone else so why are you going back on that in this case? Beyond that, you should know womanhood is so much more than having a vagina/womb/ovaries. In fact is womanhood even definable? It’s a state of being, a state of identity. Without referring to any biology can you define what it means to be a woman? Because I assure you any definition will not be comcrete and could be applied to any trans woman.

I don’t want a fight, I want the opposite, I want oppressed groups to work together for equality not apart. Let’s celebrate human beings in all their technicolour and look beyond our differences no? It’s that what it means to be civil and rational?

[BeyondWitchbitchterf]

Olive, you seem to be making the mistake of thinking women are against transsexuals, rather than us being against the transactivist movement.

There are even transpeople on mumsnet who agree.

I'm a woman, to me that means nothing but my biology. There is no mysterious feminine hive mind.

[FirstShinyRobe]

Vom

OP, I don't blame you if you bail, however perhaps you can really focus on the reasons for the existence of the group and continually bring discussions back to those. Then, as others have said, suggest that there's probably a need for a spin off group and let Alex crack on. Alex won't, though. Because that's not really what Alex is there for.

[starrysights]

Olive, how do you define ‘woman’?

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Trans women are the women who have suffered night and day wishing and praying that they could be “normal” feeling unbearably uncomfortable in their own skin. It’s torture. It’s not a tactic

All of them?

So Lian (formerly Ian) Huntley is a tragic suffering transwoman?

How about www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/prison-guards-forced-call-inmate-6061525.amp

Or

www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/4390490.Cross_dressing_Burnley_burglar_jailed_indefinitely/

Without referring to any biology can you define what it means to be a woman? Because I assure you any definition will not be comcrete and could be applied to any trans woman

Well no, as woman = adult human female, a biological categorisation. That is what woman means.

[HairyBallTheorem]

Transwomen are transwomen (where by transwomen I mean the old fashioned type of gender dysphoric transsexual), Olive and that's fine. They deserve to live free from harrassment and with equal rights to employment (barring a very tiny handful of sex-segregated occupation), housing (barring a very few single sex environments where people share sleeping accommodation), a political voice.

What they don't get to have are women's rights. Because women's rights (access to abortion, equal pay, protection against getting sacked when we get pregnant, access to contraception) are rights we need because of what is done to us because of the ways our biology makes us vulnerable. They have nothing, nothing at all, to do with our "gender presentation."

As for the sexual fetishist end of the trans movement, the "Marie Deans" of this world, they can fuck off to hte far side of fuck and when they get there fuck off some more.

[JennyHolzersGhost]

This is hilarious. I had no idea I was a member of the most powerful force on the planet. I thought I’d been systematically discriminated against my whole life.
Olive are you perhaps confusing women with the US military ?

What makes me a woman is my biology, by the way. Something I had no choice in. If you’ve lived your life without your biology impeding your life choices then that’s great for you but some of us haven’t had that luxury.

[Starfish]

Wow, the transphobic Mumsnet echo chamber is loud tonight.

Alex is probably not deviously scheming to take your precious group away from you. SHE is probably just excited about getting the chance to attempt to educate people (for all the good it does concerning delightful people such as yourself, OP) about a cause that is clearly a very personal one and one she feels incredibly strongly about. Granted, probably going about it the wrong way, but god forbid you actually treat her like a human being and sit down and talk to her about about the whole thing.

[MakeMisogynyAHateCrime]

Without referring to any biology can you define what it means to be a woman?

Why should we exclude biology from our realities? I’m raped because of biology, I’m paid less because of my biology (not because of a feeling or how I dress), I’m disadvantaged when starting a family because of biology, I have shitty medical treatment because of my biology, I have very specific female related illnesses and issues...because of biology.

Why should we be forced to define ourselves without using biology?
Why am I told I must leave an activism group that centres women in medicine because I mentioned the following topics - abortion, miscarriage, prolapse and birth? Stop trying to deny us our biology.

[MissBeehiving]

It is not transphobic to state that the term woman is defined by biology.

[ALittleBitOfButter]

I left my local women in business group because of an agp dominating it. If they feel they can come into women's spaces then they're not the kind of transwoman i support.

[OliveBranch3]

Itsallgoingtobefine I’m more referring to the trans folk you meet in your everyday life rather than in prison such as perhaps

www.lavernecox.com

Or, maybe I don’t know me? Shock horror, I’m non-binary. And speaking of, starrysights, I can’t. Simply and plainly I’ve never been able to and I feel it limits and divides us. But I also understand it’s important to many people because it’s part of their identity.

You don’t get it, or you don’t care, I understand. I hope something will eventually change your mind.

[ALittleBitOfButter]

You have no hope OP of getting through this. He will magic up a victim mentality if you don't completely toe the line. You're supposed to accept "trans to the front or it's not feminism" in all women's groups now. Fabricate a time consuming project or a dying relative and withdraw.