Offering services to trans identified males does not in any way mean that they have to take on biological essentialism in the way they have, i.e. you don't need to say transwomen are the same as women, you can say we offer our services to transwomen, and offer that in a way that doesn't exclude women - so that means having the option of female only spaces & services as well as those that are trans inclusive. For eg, Zero Tolerance holds sessions for victims of DV, and they open all of these to transwomen, rather than have some female only for those who don't want to be around men at all. Further, they imply that those who don't like that are transphobic. None of that is necessary, they can fulfill their funding obligations while making sure they offer women female only spaces within that. They just need to offer the service, they don't have to offer the service the same way to everyone that uses it all the time, hence the exemptions in the Equality Act to cover all of this. They do not have to take on trans dogma to offer what they legally have to, and yet they do. Then they refuse to engage with women when we contact them with very basic questions. Here are the questions I sent all of these women's orgs a few months back in relation to their support for the GRA changes, and not one of them answered any of them:
Regardless of how your organisation defines 'woman', do you think that your organisation should still acknowledge females as a distinct reproductive class of people who experience hardships and oppression based on our biological/reproductive sex?
Do you think females should be forced into gender identity? 'Cisgender women' in gender identity ideology means 'women who identify with their gender'. But the gender coercively imposed on females is the feminine gender, and the feminine gender is how women are subjugated under patriarchy. A female saying she identifies with the feminine gender is therefore saying she identifies with the tool of her own subjugation/oppression. Feminists like myself don’t identify with gender and we want to be free to not be complicit in our own oppression. We are just females/women. We ask not to be coerced into gender identity.
Do you believe that females as a sex class should get to set our own boundaries?
Females live in a climate of male violence and the trauma this creates for the female population is both not our fault and inevitable, and we have to manage this threat. Current laws allow transwomen - i.e. males who mostly remain fully male bodied - access to spaces and services that include (but are not limited to) changing rooms, showering facilities, women's refuges, domestic violence/sexual violence therapy groups etc, and as a result many women and girls are already self-excluding. Regardless of your thoughts on the current and upcoming gender legislation more generally, do you think our exclusion is acceptable? (I would word this a bit differently now, being clear that the male body is the threat, but I will come up with something before the meeting, I just wanted to show you what they all refused to answer, even though these are mostly yes and no qns and should be easy to respond to for any feminist...)
Would you consider a board of five men and five trans women – i.e. 10 natal males - as gender balanced? If so, how do you propose that gender equality includes females, and indeed that females don’t become even more unequal as a sex class due to gender law changes? (This is especially important now we know this policy is open to self ID)
Does your organisation endorse the idea that the human brain is sexed and that this constitutes gender? Because this is a belief that says that those with a ‘female brain’ are inherently feminine/submissive and those with a ‘male brain’ are inherently masculine/dominant, and as such further cements patriarchy and female sex based oppression, and therefore is absolutely not a feminist contention.
Do you support the right of females to be exclusively same sex attracted, i.e. to not view male bodied people as viable sex partners?
These were all yes and no answers that should be easy for any feminist, yet they refused to answer any of them.