To think it is not at all sad that the Women's Institute is now only for actual women?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

“Incredibly sadly, we will have to restrict our membership on the basis of biological sex from April next year,” Green said. “But the message we really want to get across is that it remains our firm belief that transgender women are women, and that doesn’t change.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/03/womens-institute-no-longer-accept-trans-women-members-april

Tellingly - they still think women can have a penis.

The WI could have, and i am baffled why they didn't, changed to include men and women. And i will be interested to hear why they didn't take that actual step.

Because that is not and would never be what the special men who claim to be women want. The goal is to infiltrate and be included in a women only space to use the women there as tools for validation including bog standard men who do not claim the specialness of a woman identity and being honest and clear that the space is mixed sex completely blows out of the water the purpose for the special men claiming to be women being there.

Women being allowed to meet without males being present?! Whatever is the world coming to? And don’t even get me started on those uppity Girl Guides. Thinking it’s ok to not centre men and boys’ needs, the brass-necked cheek of it!

How do you feel about the people who can’t join because of the trans women in the voluntary group though? The Muslim women, the women who have been abused? It’s a voluntary group that is closed to those women who may desperately need female company.

It was a waste of money, I agree, because it was perfectly obvious what the law meant by sex and that it didn't mean gender identity. But here we are, because people and organisations chose to willfully disregard the law and it took the Supreme Court to tell us what we all already knew. I hope we will never indulge such idiocy again.

But this makes no sense.

The law already allows them to have an organisation that is for males and females. That is perfectly possible if they want.

It's also possible to have an organisation for one sex, if the aims of the organisation make that important.

What they cannot do is have an organisation that admits women and some men, and excludes other men for no reason.

You can't tell men they are not allowed to join, while allowing some "special" men to join. Because if some men can join, it means that being single sex is not important.

If that is true they just need to vote to admit men.

They're simply not important, because trans rights trump everything and everybody. MEN are what matters.

Martial rape being illegal doesn't affect me personally. Abortion being legal doesn't affect me personally. My vote has never counted in a general election due to FPTP, so arguably, women's suffrage, to me personally, is irrelevant right?

But as a feminist, I give shit about women's rights outside of my personal bubble. The hypotheticals matter, for myself, for my friends, my family, for my daughter - for all women. And the legal framework around women's rights provides the context in which we all have to live. And I prefer a context, in which the term woman, is meaningful. In which women's rights and protections actually matter on a level playing field. In which we are not second fiddle to a minority men's rights movement.

Could not disagree more. If we can protect women from even one incident like this then it has been worth it.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/courts/819644/mum-of-supermarket-toilet-sex-assault-victim-warns-freed-attacker-could-strike-again/

men like this will no longer be able to access vulnerable women in women’s refuges. Worth every penny.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/fife/832849/warning-as-transgender-sex-offender-placed-in-womens-hostel/

This is nothing to do with the ruling classes. Quite the opposite, actually. You only have to go back to the days of Theresa May's government to a time when every major political party in the UK had signed up to the 'transwomen are women transmen are men nonbinary people are valid' mantra. The sex realists have organised at grass roots level. It's only now, very belatedly, that the Tories have jumped on the bandwagon. The Labour Party seems very torn. The SNP and LibDems are basket cases on this issue. The Greens north and south of the border are engaged in a last ditch rearguard fight against reality, while also expecting us all to follow the science on environmental issues. Science isn't a pick and mix section! You follow all of it, not just the bits you like the sound of.

@PacificState
‘Most British people think that tolerance and inclusivity are important values, and I think we're in danger of getting on the wrong side of that’

Why is it that ‘inclusivity and tolerance’ is always used as an argument that women have to give up their rights to single sex spaces, organisations, healthcare, sports?
The phrase ‘be kind’ seems to mean the exact opposite, and often actually means ‘let me have my way bigot’

You might well be right that we have passed Peak Gender Fluid, but people who strongly and consistently feel themselves to be the other sex have probably always existed, and these are the people who tend to have the most public sympathy (because lots of them are demonstrably sincere).

I know '80yo transwoman' sounds like something dreamed up by a PR expert, but most ordinary Brits are probably like 'oh no, that's sad' when they hear this story. That will be a very common response. I think this story is going to make lots of people feel a bit uncomfortable about what's happening (in terms of the SC judgement roll-out).

Bloody hell. I'm so sorry you had to hear that.

But this isn't the "strategy", it's quite literally the law. Women haven't made the law - they were driven to clarify it by egregious breaches of their rights and protections. Trans groups have failed to advocate for laws which would make it legal for organisations to discriminate against non trans identified people in the category of sex. Truthfully, I think any such laws would have harmful implications for women through the loss of protected women's spaces - what's the precedent? Women and girls are already disadvantaged in access to so many activities, many if which at the grassroots level start off as "voluntary" and "fun". We know that girls are disadvantaged in sport by the simple presence of boys.

Are you advocating that we dismantle the definition of sex in law?

Should Park run have a men's race, a mixed race and no women's race? Is that fair to women to be treated in that way in public life?

What law change are you advocating? Genuinely? What's your proposed solution to this?

Our WI has a number of members who have been/are married to domineering men and WI is a safe space for them to socialise. They are able to speak without being spoken over or belittled. Others have experienced abuse at the hands of men and don't want to forced into sharing a space with men.

If WI opened up to men some husbands would insist on coming and that couple of hours a month of being free would disappear.

This availability of this type of space, especially for older women who feel trapped in their marriage, is so important and always seems to get overlooked in these sorry, not sorry statements from the likes of WI and GG.

Well, because most Brits aren't feminists in any meaningful way, and don't see female people as an oppressed class that is entitled to advocate for its own interests. Is the honest answer.

I'd like to elect a different public too, but I can't seem to find the right box to tick.

If we keep talking about little old ladies in hospital wards and women in rape crisis centres and teenaged girls in changing rooms, the public will understand and share our concerns. If we say 'female people have the absolute right to exclude male people in pretty much any setting' (and I personally have a lot of sympathy with that!), the public will lose sympathy very fast. Most women don't agree with that!

I'm given to understand that it's very common indeed in politics and trades unionism for women trying to raise sex-specific issues to be told there will be time for all of that when the struggle is won, and meanwhile maybe they could make a round of teas and stuff a few more envelopes.

Excellent point.

I don’t think women are trying to create women only spaces everywhere, but there is, and should be, a move towards protecting those examples where a female only space is needed.
the law allows for that, the only trouble is that organisations like girl guiding, the WI, the NHS etc have not been following the law.

One thing that has changed a bit, but needs to change a lot more IMO, is how we talk about violence against women and girls. I'm involved in a project around an ending VAWG strategy at the moment and the strategy document barely mentions men. Of old, men's violence has been presented as though it is like the weather - an inevitable thing that women have to work around. Even when we talk about VAWG, it's presented as this nameless threat.

The fact of the matter is, men continuously attack people all day every day. They abuse, rape, kill, maim, terrorise. All the fucking time. They simply cannot be trusted in any situation - if there is potential to take advantage of a situation and hurt someone, a man will do it at some point. Allowing them any leeway for any reason is stupid - all the facts say that you have to be on guard all the time waiting for the next incident.

If we were more open about this fact, there wouldn't be such mealy mouthed nonsense around things like this. Women need exclusively female spaces because men are such a fucking disaster.

I completely hear what you're saying but we have a situation, where regardless of public opinion, the law has been clarified. The WI cannot legally admit only trans identified men. So there is absolutely nothing that GC feminists can do about that, short of campaigning against laws which protect women - which obviously they aren't going to do. I guess you could say, shut up and stop acting happy about men not being allowed in the WI. I think a better public communication strategy is to be honest about why this matters, to be reasoned, to have open debate - rather than being secretive and disingenuous. Its working for women so far.

Agreed. VAWG is itself basically a euphemism. There's no epidemic of women being violent towards women and girls is there? It's literally framing the problem around the victims. The problem is male violence in general, which is particularly extreme against women and girls.

Ironically you quite often get people saying that misogyny isn't a real problem, because men and boys are also attacked, killed and sexually assaulted (also almost exclusively by men)... Completely missing the point that this is just another branch of the male violence tree 🙄

And they can invite males to their hen nights and book clubs if they want to. Do you really think the Supreme Court judgement affects these?!

What women were objecting to was not being able to have a solely female organisation without having to include transwomen. Now we can.

mixed sex organisations are perfectly legal and always have been. And now we can also have single sex organisations which were technically always legal but some had interpreted the law wrongly.

and can you really not see why women are upset about violent men like this holding women’s parkrun records ?!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/23/transgender-murder-parkrun/

there are several categories transwomen can run in at parkrun that don’t require them to say they are male or encroach on the rights of females.

You appear not to have grasped that For Women Scotland crowdfunded to pay the legal costs. Most of those who contributed are not wealthy. J. K. Rowling, who I think did make a very large contribution, has (as has already been pointed out) given away enormous sums for good causes, including setting up and running a women's rape crisis service which would be guaranteed to be genuinely women only - staff and service users. This makes it possible for deeply traumatised women to access their services, so there's one of your concrete benefits right there. JKR also pays all her taxes. She must be single-handedly funding a large chunk of NHS Scotland.

Ha ha ha ha ha - stick to your corner little ladies.

Given poll results I think general consensus is with women’s spaces being women only. Hardly a secret in the corner view.

I know it's the law right now, but all it takes is a majority in Parliament and a different kind of government and we could have a new law that eradicates 'female' as a legal definition. I'm advocating for a strategy that recognises that possibility and seeks to mitigate that risk. A laser focus on crucial single-sex spaces (healthcare, sexual violence, any space where people undress or sleep or live in close quarters), and whatever is necessary for correct data collection so that we can accurately assess how women are faring. Single sex sports as an issue has basically already been won (not without a massive fight, of course.)

In terms of what a redrafted EA should look like - that's really hard. Maybe an explicit categorisation of services in which bio sex is critical, and services in which bio sex is non-critical? Absolute hornets' nest, I'll grant you. I hope gender critical people with good legal brains are thinking about this, because you can bet your ass the TRA lawyers have a redrafted bill ready to go.