Team Smash The Patriarchy needs Mumsnet input/representation

[JenniferJames]

We are hoping to have someone familiar with Mumsnet liaising with you on what the majority feeling is here and getting a list of your priorities for the outcome of GRA changes. The crowdfunder women are all Labour women, so any representations organised by us will take place within the confines of the Labour party.

However as this affects all women and is such a cross-party issue, we hope that people will lobby within their own parties, or their own factions within their own parties... and we can compare notes!

This is part of a piece on self-id from Bella Caledonia, it represents a good starting point for debate... bear in mind the debate has to end up with solutions and it's up to us to work that out together.

This is early days and we are all building this movement organically... let's see where it takes us.

Will check back and keep you posted Mighty Mumsnet.

Jennifer xx

----
CONSULTATION RESPONSES
So how do we address all of this?
Below I will outline my suggestions for consultation responses and I contend that these are all absolutely necessary if we are to protect women and girls. Not one of these suggestions threatens trans rights. Equal does not mean identical. Trans women are not female. Trans people have their rights to live as they wish, love who they wish, and have the same legal protections as everyone else. And they should have the spaces and services they need; everyone supports that.
None of this requires women and girls to lose our rights.
Our rights are only threatened because trans activists don’t want any distinction made between trans women and women. But we are not the same and pretending otherwise erases the female sex class, preventing us from addressing our sex based oppression, and what could possibly be a more heinous act of misogyny than that? Surely no-one in the Scottish government believes that women don’t suffer as a result of our female bodies.
So firstly I suggest we call on the government to establish the following principles as an underpinning to any legislation affecting women and girls:
• Females suffer exploitation, discrimination, injustice, oppression and male violence due to their reproductive sex. And as such, female bodies have a political significance that they need to be able to talk about, organise around and address as a distinct reproductive class of people.
• Females deserve equality, to participate in society, to be safe, and to have their welfare valued. The government should monitor and address females as a sex class on all of these measures, however ‘woman’ is defined in legislation.
• Trans equality should be based on trans as a characteristic, and not on erasing the female sex as a characteristic.
• Females are not to blame for the climate of male violence they live in or for the effects. Victim blaming is never acceptable, and legislation should reflect this.
• Females should be able to set their own boundaries around their own bodies; understanding that anything less is in direct contravention of the principle of consent.
• Females should not be forced to adopt trans ideology/biological essentialism/genderism. There can be no assumption that women as a group identify as the feminine gender that is coercively imposed on them to subjugate them; and women who do not subscribe to genderism and instead contend that for them a woman is simply an adult female, must be able to assert this (that’d be most of us).
• The government should not work with any LGBT/Trans organisation that deems exclusive same sex attraction as inherently objectionable.
In order to work with the above principles, the government should identify and pursue the necessary Scotland specific exemptions/amendments to the Equality Act before making any changes to the GRA.
In addition, before moving to a system of self ID the government should do the following:
• Carry out Equality Impact Assessments (EQIAs) on how the proposed changes to the GRA will potentially affect the equality, participation, safety and welfare of women and girls, understanding that trans inclusion has already had an unmeasured impact.
• Inform and consult with women on sex segregation and male bodied trans inclusion to properly gauge how to protect women and girls on the aforementioned measures. Most women don’t realise what is already happening, and a recent Panelbase poll found that women in Scotland are 3:1 against male bodied trans people having access to female only spaces.
• Draw up the necessary Scotland specific exemptions/amendments in response to these assessments and consultations, in order to ensure women and girls are protected, and secure these with the UK government before moving forward with self ID. FAILURE TO DO THIS IS ABANDONING WOMEN AND GIRLS ENTIRELY.
• Draw up guidelines on how to implement Equality Act exemptions, so businesses and providers can do so without fear of legal action.
• Be aware that the Engender led women’s organisations’ joint statement saying that these changes posed no threat to women’s equality, was released without any of these organisations consulting their members regarding the GRA beforehand, and indeed without conducting and concluding their own research on how these changes will specifically impact on women’s equality. Not only this, they have not consulted with women at all despite being asked to do so and choosing to speak for us, and nor have they carried out any other work in order to gauge how women and girls are already self-excluding/are otherwise affected. Furthermore, when approached by victims in relation to this proposed legislation, they refused to engage with their concerns. I know – I am one of them. Therefore we should call on the government to understand that these organisations cannot possibly represent women in this, and since they came to their position before carrying out the work necessary to come to said position, the government should assess any cited research/data itself, rather than rely on the interpretation of women’s organisations.
Lastly, there are a few additional suggestions for steps the government should take in relation to other parts of their proposals:
• Carry out its own research on dysphoria in young people and on desistance, not least because – as the NHS notes – studies show that most children diagnosed as transgender grow out of it, with all of the studies undertaken on this showing anywhere from a 63% to 88% desistance rate. Within this the government should properly research suicidality; follow up interviews usually halve the percentage for suicide in studies, and controls are used to filter out other factors so results can be instructive as to the causes. The study referenced in the consultation was neither followed up nor controlled. The government also needs to be clear on how transition affects mental health, including for the majority who desist, and who – due to affirmation – didn’t receive the right support when they needed it. Only then can the government assess the potential impact of reducing the age limit for a GRC.
• Unless the government wants to assert that a woman is someone who identifies with being submissive, and a man is someone who identifies with male supremacy, they should not introduce a third legal gender. It is reactionary in the extreme to uphold the idea that women and men identify as/actually are the gender imposed on them, and this should not be assigned to people as part of any legislation, and providing trans services does not necessitate this either.
• Immediately move to introduce misogyny as a hate crime. Women are being targeted for violence and abuse at unprecedented levels, just for being women. We are even becoming targets of hate for talking about the meaning of our bodies, and naming male violence. We are an oppressed and marginalised group and deserve the same protections all other such groups have.
The Scottish government consultation has been written with a very clear bias, and the fact they haven’t carried out a single EQIA regarding how these proposals could potentially impact on the equality of women and girls is simply indefensible. Surely it’s in no-one’s interests that the government moves forward with legislation without understanding how to protect the largest marginalised group in our society. So let’s make sure that happens.

Also, many people who work for local and national government would support this, but are scared for their jobs if they speak out.
Civil Service rules forbid active political campaigning and employees have been disciplined or sacked for making "transphobic" comments on social media such as face book.
A close friend feels they are unable to make their feelings known publicly or to even attend a "Women's Place" meeting (there was one fairly local to us) as it could put their job at risk.

TallulahWaitingInTheRain yes. This is my fear. I saw a conversation involving a child protection barrister on Twitter a week or so ago and I thought she was very complacent - basically saying "Our safeguarding procedures are much more robust than other countries, the family courts are excellent at mediating contested child protection issues, and if there was a problem we'd see it and deal with it. Nobody is reporting via safeguarding, ergo there is no problem." I feel there is real institutional complacency here - transactivist orgs have successfully infiltrated and suppressed all dissent so the safeguarding issue is that nobody is reporting safeguarding issues.

The fear that politicians, civil servants, academics etc.. have about speaking out is why we need and need to support good journalism on this issue whether it comes from the right or the left. They are pretty much the only people with any power to speak out about this and reach a wide audience. Unfortunately the best examples so far from The Times have been behind a paywall.

I'm no fan of the likes of Dacre or Murdoch but if they decided to really push the issue of exposing what is really happening it could make a huge difference. Of course they are wealthy men so they may not care one iota because there is a lot of satisfying misogyny to be had from watching trans vs women.

the safeguarding issue is that nobody is reporting safeguarding issues

Exactly this

The law is also forcing doctors to comply - I have posted before about how it is now a criminal offence to disclose a trans person's biological sex without permission for medical reasons.

Someone may have already asked this question TheXXFactor, sorry if I missed it. Is this confined to transpeople who have a GRC?

( I suspect not, but I'm just checking).

This stuff is just fucking brilliant! Well done people. What we at the crowdfunder end can do to help is offer any Mumsnet activist 'working party' use of our crowdfunder platform on this to publish for donors who are likely to be active anyway... via updates for the crowdfunder, or via a link to survey.

If you guys hammer out democratically between yourselves exactly what you want published and email it to the me at the crowdfunder address I will amplify it. Decisions are yours to make. The only limit is yr imagination.

The working parties I've been on, in political activism, have three or four people, each of whom feeds in from the wider group. When finalised, the party circulates to the wider group to check. This is not prescriptive, btw, just a template.

In Mightiness.

The criminal offence is confined to people with a GRC, Datun but the GMC guidance is much wider and specifies that patients do not have to have a GRC in order to demand that their sex is changed in medical records.

Sorry to be the voice of pessimism, but we are straying into policy making / manifesto creating territory here. Which might be the right thing to do (and I' don't disagree with much of what has been proposed per se), but I'm not sure that it will get much traction outside of the narrow circles that are already aware of what it going on.

For example, proposing that there should be no medical intervention before 16 yo. Well, yes, I agree. But to get others to that place first we need to get them to understand that drugs are being used off label for far longer than deemed safe in older patients. And that delaying puberty does have irreversible consequences, both physically and mentally.

And all this takes away from self-ID, which is what I see as the most time critical and pressing issue at the moment.

I contributed to the crowdfunder and intend to do so again as as far as I can see it is the only really organised opposition to the GRA review etc. I am tremendously grateful to everyone here who contributes to all the threads and is involved in organising the protests.

But I think it is essential that it is not seen as attached to one political party as it is an issue for all women regardless of their political allegiance.

Maybe we need a new cross party organisation? I think this has already been said but I struggle to do all the quoting as very new to Mumsnet. I agree with all the suggestions for Mumsnet representations but maybe we could have people from all the main political groupings?

On a personal note I feel utterly betrayed by the Labour Party and will struggle to vote for them if they continue down this road.

Not saying anything new, just adding my voice as it is the only place it is likely to be heard.

all this takes away from self-ID, which is what I see as the most time critical and pressing issue at the moment

I'd agree that self id is a separate issue from the transing children issue. Perhaps we need a separate thread.

I can't agree, though, that self-id is more pressing. Children are being fed drugs with long-term side effects which may include osteoporosis, cognitive impairment, autoimmune disease and heaven knows what else now.Young people are being chemically castrated and having healthy body parts amputated now. Children with mental health problems, abuse histories and asd are being misdiagnosed and denied appropriate treatment. For me this is the emergency, although I also care very much about female spaces.

Hi everyone, I have been quietly plugging away in this thread, trying to bring ideas together for a workable cross-party campaign that potentially swerves a lot of the mindfucks.

For focus, I am not going down the medical ethics root with this one, since it confuses the anti-self-id reasoning and looks like it is just 'anti-trans'. Obviously medical ethics and transing children are hugely important issues - particularly on a parenting website.

But anyway I pulled together what I posted here in a pdf - I'd appreciate your feedback. Is anything key missing (apart from the transing of kids obvs)?

hang on I can't post that on MN

The easy win at the moment is self ID - that drops the scales from people's eyes & allows them to peak-trans.

The forced trans-ing of children follows on easily from that I think - once you have peaked you get past the 'anything said against trans-ing is transphobic!' thing and are more open to the horror of what is being advocated for kids.

Screenshots?

Here is a link to it I hope it works

Link works

Yup, Guardian - that works. I'll look at it properly later, thanks for doing this.

Faith - exactly. The key barrier at the moment is that not many people dare to put their head above the parapet because of the risk of being branded a terfy bigot and shot down. And self-ID has been the slippery slope that has led us there and to the place where doctors, counsellors and teachers don't dare suggest that there may be another reason for a child's issues, because at the moment if a child says that they are trans well, then they are trans!

Succeed in rolling back the self-ID narrative, and we can succeed in challenging the pernicious narrative around children

I'm so confused by this thread. I don't understand what the proposed deal is supposed to be between MN FWR and the AWS crowdfunders.

I think I'd prefer, if we are going to try to formulate a coherent, unified MN position on this, that we do so independently. I'm not sure how useful that would be in any case, for two reasons:

1. MN is fast getting a wonderful/terrifying reputation (depending on your point of view) for being one of the very few places where this debate can happen and I think it's vitally important that debate continues here. Having a unified position would detract from that IMO, even if I agreed with every part of it.

2. It would be reinventing the wheel. A Woman's Place have come up with their '5 reasonable demands':

1. Respectful and evidence based discussion about the impact of the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act to be allowed to take place and for women’s voices to be heard;

2. The principle of women only spaces to be upheld – and where necessary extended.

3. A review of how the exemptions in the Equality Act which allow for single sex services or requirements that only a woman can apply for a job (such as in a domestic violence refuge) are being applied in practice;

4. Government to consult with women’s organisations on how self-declaration would impact on women only services and spaces;

5. Government to consult on how self-declaration will impact upon data gathering – such as crime, employment, pay, and health statistics – and monitoring of sex-based discrimination such as the gender pay gap.

I think these are wide enough, clear enough and reasonable enough to attract lots of support across the political spectrum.They are mostly about consultation and allowing respectful debate and once that starts to happen, all the individual policy points people might want to campaign for will start to be hammered out.

The Woman's Place demands are not complete on their own though as there is nothing in there about harm to children. It would be good if someone like Transgender Trend could work on 2 or 3 supplementary points in a similar broad vein.

I have been lurking and reading these threads for a few days and thank all contibutors for helping me understand these issues. Guardians document is great but I think it needs to explain the difference between sex and gender

I'm with you pencils, there are groups out there getting to the nitty gritty of the detail & the policy - I think MN by contrast is the perfect place for getting 'ordinary, everyday women' on board & leading them to peak trans.

The 'feminist critique' & feminist/gender critical theory & language sails across most people's heads & is too much - can also be off-putting as it's overly intellectual & difficult to connect with (I switch off with all that for example, but am fully on board & engaged with the self-ID & potential harm to children stuff)

One thing MN can be proactive with is encouraging the ordinary, everyday people to email their mp - I did, spurred on by others on MN who had.
It was just a few paragraphs, and not heavy on gender critique - I just wanted to register my voice & hopefully add to a growing body of voices (if you see what I mean?).

The more women we can encourage to do small things like that the better imo - one voice is nothing, but thousands of voices can be heard.
Grand gestures & overt/visible activism are great obvs, but the small actions of individuals will be the difference if enough people join in.

Thanks Janie - I realise I forgot what we discussed upthread, that it should say as a footnote that because gender does not have a definitive meaning, we are sticking to biological sex for clarity..

'I don't understand what the proposed deal is supposed to be between MN FWR and the AWS crowdfunders'

No 'deal' just a wish to seize the opportunity to work together where we can. This means simply an offer of involvement, and the opportunity to use our crowdfunder platform and/or find good homes for any possible left over crowdfunder cash.. if that's what MN ppl want

and for you xxxxx

Hi Janie, how about:

Why the right to choose ‘sex’ and not ‘gender’ segregation?

Sex is the fixed biological description for male and female bodies and there is no definitive meaning for what gender is.
Some people use the word gender interchangeably with the word sex, others use gender to mean sex roles and sex stereotypes and others use it to describe an inner ‘identity’ by which someone defines themself.
This campaign is concerned exclusively with the right to choose the segregation of males and females according to biological sex and therefore only uses this term to avoid confusion.

PencilsInSpace I agree that we don't want to be reinventing the wheel.

That's an excellent document guardians. And we need to frame this around both the current law, which is not being invoked, and customs and protocols which are being defied.

We need to be very specific over equality law and separately the gender recognition act implications.

Children is also a separate issue.

Because it's about ethics.

I don't see any reason why this can't be a multiple stranded campaign. Even if it gets broken down into bite-sized issues.

There are several things at play.

Customs and protocols that are being breached, because they can be , legally. Toilets, women being able to talk about their biology, the renaming of terms, etc.

Exemptions to the equality act that are not being invoked in terms of sport, overnight accommodation, and shop changing rooms. (There are explicit exemptions that exclude trans-women).

The changes to the GRA in terms of prisons and all women shortlists.

The assumption that the equality act is self ID by any other name.

One way to do this is to concentrate on the exemptions, because transactivists act as though the EA is weighted in their favour, when it's not.

One way to get this out there is firstly understand what we can demand within the law, and what we might want to demand that is not the law. Although, I believe, public opinion is the only thing that is needed for the latter. We've never needed to make toilets and changing rooms illegal to the opposite sex. And we still don't. Public condemnation will be enough. And enough women who are disadvantaged. The EA says they can't be.

A Woman's place UK and Fair Play for Women are already involved in activism.

Mumsnet, as a resource, has a very special USP.

The 12 million women who use it.

This IS about those women. About women as foot soldiers.

Exemptions can be invoked. All a shop, for instance, has to do is demonstrate that they were as fair as they could be, on a reasonable basis under the EA.

One woman complains, that may not be enough, if five women complain, it will.

A shop can then make up their own protocols. The protocols could be no transwomen, and this is why. They only have to be able to justify it based on balancing the needs of the two conflicting cohorts.