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.

I can’t force anyone to do anything. However, I’m not going to pretend that an OP asking AIBU to be sexist and insist we exclude men from a knitting group is being reasonable or rational.

I would feel the same as you @Solentseeker

It's not just golf, that's just one example. It's improved now, but many years ago, as a woman interested in role play games like dungeons and dragons, I struggled to find a group that wasn't men only. I felt excluded, was not-so-subtly being told that D&D wasn't for girls. Not many women were into it 30 years ago precisely because we were made to feel it was a 'man's thing'.

Unsurprisingly, now the RPG world has opened up, many more women do it. It wasn't that women weren't interested, it was just that we were made to feel we shouldn't be.

Same with many sports, including football, which women were banned from even playing for 50 years. My Dad's Sunday league club was hardly full of networking execs. Didn't stop the league preventing women from using the pitch.

It's not always overt. It's the subtle suggestion that some hobbies/sports/games aren't for women. It's taken some bloody brave women to fight this.

Just as I don't want young women to feel their gender is a barrier to them doing sports or hobbies they enjoy because men don't want them there, I don't want to simply repeat the same mistakes in reverse.

I want the younger generations, who you claim to be interested in, to keep breaking down those barriers, not simply create reverse versions of them.

It's not simply a matter of, 'they can create their own groups', it's the subliminal messaging. Knitting's not for men. Football isn't for women.

Believe it or not, men feel intimidated, just as we do, by gender-gatekeeping in hobbies.

Why must we keep up the divisions which means nothing changes. I'm a rape survivor. I still don't want this perpetuation of division.

You're moving the goalposts quite a bit. From, should I wait and see if any men/trans/non-binary people join? To men dominate the conversation, to many women are victims of sexual violence, to we'll be seen as freaks if we don't agree that TWAW, to men will want to walk us home...

You do seem to be hitting all conceivable goalposts on this one.

The new chair is clearly far too stupid to fulfil her role and instead wants to appear to be inclusive and progressive when in reality she has been captured by the idiots and is an apologist for the misogynists.

Trans women are men every day of the week and actual women - biological females can expect to have spaces which are occupied by other biological females only without feeling like they are being unreasonable.

Push back hard on this stupidity.

Join a nunnery then. If you’re that afraid such that you can’t cope.
I say this as a survivor of sexual violence starting at age 10 and repeatedly as an adult. I’m not special, I am constantly in therapy and on medications to manage my cPTSD. At some point you have to own the fear and not let it own you and feel entitled to make the world keep all possibilities of creepy to dangerous men from ever being in your presence.

as for the what if. Yes it could happen. A creepy, dangerous man could pop up anywhere at anytime. Standing in line for a coffee, at work, in a parking garage, walking anywhere, riding a bus, train or plane, even an Amazon delivery man could be like that. Given the high rates, excluding men from knitting isn’t going to make you any safer or feel any safer. As with any creepy encounter, you act if it happens. But you can’t spend your life implementing irrational and ultimately futile avoidance tactics based on prejudice.

I’ve said I’d RATHER it was women’s only all along. I’ve given my reasons for not wanting men:

Dominate conversation.
Less of a safe space.

Ive said my objection to the stance that transwomen be automatically welcomed is that they’re MEN and letting men in should be a full club decision.

Sorry if you don’t think I’m working from a fully prepared script.

You seem to have missed the key point that transwomen are men.

The op likes it as a women only group. She thinks changing that to mixed sex, whether by advertising to invite transwomen, or other means, would not suit her.

She's allowed to feel that. She's allowed to leave.

Contrary to some on this thread, she is also allowed to set up a new women only group if she wants to.

But why do they when we don’t have to? When we could stay women only?

Which does not say trans people are bound to be loud. Noone has said that, if they had, that's what you would have quoted.

Well you do you, but I certainly wouldn't be part of any group that included trans identifying men. I might be prepared to accept the odd male knitter,but I will not validate any trans identity whatsoever, since the vast majority of so-called 'trans women' are actually heterosexual men with a particular sexual fetish and I can't be doing with any level of trouser filth or perviness. And I wouldn't be shy about voicing my views either. You know it really sticks in my craw when something as innocuously innocent as a knitting group has to involve itself in the trans nonsense - why can't women just be allowed to have something for themselves without having to consider the needs of fucking men?

It’s just that trans women are men, and men in the whole love a bit of mansplaining.

Totally agree and yes I have also played D&D since the 2nd edition…that’s 1989. I used to do live role play as well as a teen…we’d draw lots to run our PC or be an NPC. We’ve faced so much that I can’t stand to see us advocate to turn the tables on men. It’s beneath us.

I would suggest that it is put to a vote that men are allowed to join the knitting group. If that doesn't go down well then I would simply make a WhatsApp group and start over again at people's houses and keep it to women only.

I don't see anything wrong with a woman's only knitting group.

My (straight) DH does.
It's not just women who can knit, or enjoy doing so - that's a very outdated attitude

It’s a knitting group. Members shouldn’t have to pass an ideology purity test or DNA sex chromosome test to join. All that should be left at the door to just enjoy knitting.

Everyone has on occasion unintentionally explained something to someone who already knew the information and more. It’s not just men. Think of all the unsolicited advice older women feel a need to give to young mothers.

That's one view.

Other views can be held, expressed and, ultimately, allowed.

It doesn't get us any further forward. It's just a different route backwards.

Because the cultural attitude that a knitting group should only be for women and any men who want to join are immediately suspect of ulterior perverse predatory motives is outdated, paranoid/prejudiced and sexist.

Ofc you are free to be as unethical and immoral as you want to be, but cannot expect to be immune from critique.

Curiously, irrational fears are usually trotted out as justification for discrimination between different groups of humans. It starts small but engraining it in our culture ultimately seeds violent discriminatory practices.

I would just wait and see. I suspect having knitting as a common denominator will build all kinds of bridges with people, whatever their gender. If you don’t like it then you can leave, but don’t leave what you don’t yet know.

Yep it’s like that old king of the hill game. So we fight and fight and one day swap a king of the hill for a queen of the hill by fighting over a pile of dirt.

Ultimately, we create a lot of churn but end up back where we started.

Yep. Four legs good, two legs bad springs to mind.
You don't end oppression by becoming an oppressor. It's not more ok just because the new oppressors were once oppressed...