I'm not done with Stonewall yet. Not by a LONG way ;-)
recent Spectator article 'The limits of Stonewall’s tolerance' by Josephine Bartosch
(extract)
"Instead of listening to the concerns of the women protesting, or acknowledging that there is a discussion to be had on this subject, Stonewall simply stuck to its line that transwomen are women, dismissing any deviation from this as ‘transphobic’. Stonewall’s chief executive Ruth Hunt said that the lesbians involved in the protest ‘have deserted the fight for LGBT equality’ and ‘have no place at Pride’. So much for ‘Acceptance without exception’.
Thankfully, Hunt’s outrage that there are other perspectives on transgender identities is not shared by all of those originally involved in setting up Stonewall. Simon Fanshawe, one of the co-founders of the charity, argues that Stonewall has ‘a historic responsibility to enable calm reasoned debate’. It is hard to see how Hunt’s response meets that test. Fanshawe says he fears that voices – including those of transgender people, some of whom prefer to describe themselves as ‘transsexual’ – are in danger of being drowned out by the reaction of the likes of Stonewall. He says:
‘Some transgender people are proud to identify themselves as ‘transmen’ and ‘transwomen,’ not simply as ‘men’ and ‘women’ and they feel marginalised by the language and ideology that seeks to diminish this difference. I do not wish to invalidate anyone’s experience, but by not acknowledging there is a debate to be had Stonewall are failing in their duty to LGBT communities to enable self-determination for all trans people.’
So why are alternative voices being ignored? A brief glance at the Stonewall Trans Advisory Group perhaps offers an answer: those who were born male appear to outnumber females by about two to one (a similar ratio to MPs in the House of Commons). Do those who sit on the advisory group have to hold the view that stated gender identity takes precedence over biological sex? It would seem so. Take Alex Drummond, for example, a transwoman who claims to be ‘widening the bandwidth of how to be a woman’ by sporting a full beard alongside the accoutrements of femininity (skirts and make-up). It is not transphobic to suggest that someone with a male body who wears female clothes has no place identifying as a lesbian; it is simply a different perspective.
In an interview in the Guardian in 2014, Hunt said: ‘I am not interested in being the thought police.’ Yet four years on, lesbians who fail to accept male bodied transwomen like Drummond as women are demonised by Hunt as apparently ‘working against’ the LGBT community." (continues)
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/the-limits-of-stonewalls-tolerance/