AIBU to consider leaving our knitting group over its new policy?

[Solentseeker]

I’m in a women’s knitting group. It started as just a group of friends and extended from there. We meet twice weekly in an hall that has to be booked and paid for and go on trips etc so it has become more formal over time and has a treasurer, secretary, social secretary etc. I and two other friends were founder members but we take a back seat in the organisation now. We attract lots of younger members (30-somethings!) which is great. I (early 60s) love socialising with people, hearing their views etc.

The new chairman (woman) has recently decided that we should announce that we are ‘trans friendly’ and try to attract trans women and non-binary people. Apart from the fact that I don’t know what non-binary people are other than people who don’t sign up to gender stereotypes (most of the women currently in the group don’t go in for nails / make up / fake tan etc anyway so what’s the difference?) I don’t want men in the group, trans identifying or otherwise. I’ve been sexually assaulted a few times in my lifetime, as has another of the founder members. We’ve also always appreciated having a space away from the male gaze and voice, where women can have their voice centre stage for once. I know a number of the current members are also extremely concerned about this new push and would feel pushed out too if any men join.

I have no desire to ‘out’ myself as a ‘TERF’ by complaining or pushing back as it would in their eyes make me a ‘bad’ person and I always try to do good by everyone. I just disagree wholeheartedly with the idea that men should be treated as women because they say so. It seems so seething misogynistic. I’m deeply sad about the whole situation and think I’m going to have to leave the club, because the current chairman seems to stand for things that I don’t. I appreciate women’s rights and they don’t seem to give a fig. What do politics have to do with knitting? Do I just leave? Do I wait and see whether any men try to join before leaving? I can’t be arsed to fight back even though I would have a LOT of (currently silent) supporters.

The group can already include people who are trans. Transmen are welcome.

Not everything is about making men feel special.

And that's fine, but only transmen if it's called a 'women's group', and if they want to admit transwomen then it needs not to specify it's a women's group. And they should vote on that. Anonymously, so they aren't browbeaten or embarrassed by the new leader.

Knitting is knitting. However, there being a club for women doesn’t exclude anyone else from knitting or starting/joining a club that isn’t specifically for women.

OP, I am in an organisations for women that includes transwomen (in a male dominated field). The TW dominate every meeting/group they are part of and its so tedious and depressing.

But she's OK with trans men
So if I've got this right...
Women = OK
Men = OK (just not at the start of the thread)
Women claiming to be men = OK
Men claiming to be women = not OK

No.
If it's a women's group-
Women = ok
Transmen = ok
Non binary biological women = ok
Men, non binary biological men and trans women = not ok

If it's becomes a unisex group-
all= ok

But if it changes from a women's group to a uni sex group the women should be able to vote. It's shouldn't be a stupid hybrid situation

Women claiming to be men are women, so fine.

If it is opened as a mixed sex group then also fine, she can decide if she wants to leave and/or set up a women's group. Which would include transmen if they wanted to join. She may not want to leave, but it needs to be honest about what it is.

That's how I read it.

Ask for a vote on the topic.

But, as @BillieWiper said: "I don't know how she intends to market the group specifically to trans people? In most areas of the UK they really are very few and far between".

I am assuming the group does not currently advertise for new members - I don't think @Solentseeker has said. I suppose they could start advertising, specifically in order to state transwomen are welcome, but if they don't need more members to pay the hall rent, why advertise at all?

Assuming that it is the case that they don't need new members, raising the issue of transwomen is just displaying politics for the sake of it; virtue signalling.

No she specifically went from I don't want men to I'd be open to having men in the group and I know a few transmen and they're OK but she definitely doesn't want transwomen
I wasn't talking about groups in general I was talking about her knitting group and her attitude

But she started in her opening post with I don't want men. Then changed tune to men would be OK
So if men would be OK and women would be OK surely one claiming to be the other would also be OK

So suggest that. Anyone welcome.

No. There's an honesty in the first point, not the second. A mixed group would be ok but she might choose not to go or to go, and to set up another women's group if she doesn't want to. A group that claims to be for women and isn't is just lying and I get that.

Not if you're like OP and those sharing her views though - there's a lot coming at the situation from the view that they're "performing woman face" and get offended as they feel mimicked, and/or that they're sexual fetishists.
So they don't want them around.
Others coming at it with the view that we're all people, don't see a problem and find it daft that some are OK with men in the group, and women, but just not trans women.
It's the definition of othering and prejudice. "I don't mind men being in the group. Or women. Just not you."

Op is considering trans women to be men, she said if you want to invite men then invite them all. Not just those who identify as women. But fundamentally invite any men changes the dynamic of the group and some members will be uncomfortable. She never said trans men aren't welcome as they are biologically women

Apologies if someone else has already suggested it (I've only read your posts in my lunchbreak), but could you suggest, that as this could be a significant change to the group, that there is an anonymous vote by your members, to decide whether this should go ahead?

After all, it's a big group & one person should not be making decisions for everyone else.

DO NOT let the new Chair count the vote, unless it is done in front of the whole group.

We're all people but not all people are women. We're all animals too but I wouldn't be able to take my pets to the doctors when they're ill, they go to the vets.
Men also can have their own support groups. I have no problem not letting me in

No.

It’s a women’s group, which is entirely lawful (as a group solely for people of Afro-Caribbean heritage is entirely lawful) & including men changes both its nature & its founding purpose, & would make it unlawful to continue advertising it as a women’s group.

There are mixed-sex “knit & natter” groups all over the place, but oddly enough, men who claim to be women do not target them.

The analogy you draw is based on a racist trope as old as slavery, by the way, that black & brown women are just like men.

If transwomen join there's a good chance they'll make the group all about them. The whole dynamic will change.

Is everyone else in the group okay with this? Or are you all too scared to say anything for fear of being branded a 'radical feminist'? 🙄 What's the general vibe about your chairwoman?

Talk over them loudly. If challenged, say 'Oh, were you saying something?' and then continue?
Realistically, that's not happening. Poor you. Can you start another group?

If the trope specifies black and brown people, slavery is older than that sort of racism. Ancient Sumeria had slaves, as did Aztecs in the 15th century and Native Americans - far earlier than the Aztecs presumably, as they already enslaved other tribes before a Pilgrim Mother set foot somewhere in the region of Plymouth Rock.
I agree it's egregious to liken not wanting TiMs in a women's group to not wanting people a different colour to you in a group (although that would be legal if it was e.g. a Caribbean women's group).

Probably not ok as the group would be admitting mentally unstable, narcissistic men as well as the common or garden lot.

TiMs in a women's group to not wanting people a different colour to you in a group (although that would be legal if it was e.g. a Caribbean women's group).

A Caribbean women’s group is legal, but must also admit white women from the Caribbean (of whom there are many). Associations are not lawfully permitted to select members by colour.

Whataboutery in full flood. Yes, men kill men. But men kill women at the rate of 3 a week in the UK, women do not do the same. And TiMs are wearing woman face; they will also dominate a conversation and make it all about them because they are narcissists (and probably AGP). OP wants a vote. That seems entirely reasonable.

Several years ago I was in a women’s discussion group on a topic of common interest.

A trans-identified man joined without any of us being warned in advance (the group didnt advertise for new members: we’d started as fellow students so knew each other & arranged to meet regularly after graduation: he was I think the second or third person to join by word of mouth from existing members).

I was disposed to give him the benefit of the doubt, which evaporated as he quickly became dominant in every discussion (though he often had nothing relevant to say & hadn’t bothered to look at what we were going to discuss).

He also kept bringing the conversation round to Trans issues, whether or not it was relevant, & talking over or interrupting anyone who tried to get back on track.

I know I was not the only person fed up with this: a couple of women quietly dropped out, but a friend challenged him - not on his presence, but on his conduct.

He immediately demanded she be expelled for “transphobia” & absolutely would not let it go. He said she made him “unsafe” & should leave right away. He appealed to the rest of us not to condone “transphobia”.

I backed her up (she had not alluded in any way to his being trans) but everyone else just looked uncomfortable.

She & I said we’d leave that one meeting, as there was obviously bad feeling & an impasse.

The woman who’d introduced him then sent us a hand-wringing email, saying she was taking no sides but asking us to apologise for having upset him. She appealed to me to encourage the other woman to, basically, repent.

We said we’d been open-minded at the beginning but that it was evident his presence & behaviour changed the dynamic in ways that were uncomfortable, & that we felt it was no longer a women’s group.

She never replied, & blocked us on social media.

So we didn’t return.

Several other women in the group got in touch & told us that he had talked of going to the owners of the space we used & tried to get the two of us banned from it (for all purposes!).

I guess, reading between the lines, that he’d also threatened to get the group banned from using the space if he didn’t get his way, which may have explained the discomfort.

That was my first peaking in real life, as it were. Lockdown intervened & the group no longer meets: I believe it never recovered.

That seems entirely reasonable and had not occurred to me, thanks. But a women's group is for women, the real kind, not deranged men who treat their bodies as a meat suit and clothes horse.