Looks like the National Lottery and Stonewall have picked a side in the cotton ceiling debate

[pimmsnlemonade]

No surprises that it isn't lesbians' side - or women's generally:

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/new-lottery-bonanza-for-transgender-lobby-3bqjhr730

The Big Lottery Fund (BLF) will pay £494,000 to “empower trans leaders and organisations” in “facilitation, media and influencing”. The money is being handed to the advocacy group Stonewall for distribution to other activists, creating a “network of leaders” to lobby for change. Stonewall was central to the campaign for contentious changes to gender laws.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lottery-thousands-pay-for-former-trans-stripper-to-sway-public-opinion-6lw9xbwgr

Life has moved on for Page since then. Now in London, she is working for the advocacy group Stonewall on its “transgender leadership programme”, which is managing a new national lottery grant of almost £500,000. This was given to Stonewall to “empower trans leaders and organisations” with a “particular focus on leadership, media and influencing”.

Page’s activism in Canada may not assuage those feminist concerns. In 2012, amid some controversy, she ran a workshop called Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling. The “cotton ceiling” is a term used by some trans lesbian women to criticise biological lesbian women for refusing to have sex with them because they have penises.

A search of its grants database reveals that last year £5.5m was paid to projects mentioning the word “women’s”, the lowest for any full year since 2004. In the first 10 months of 2018, £3.7m was paid to women’s projects, suggesting a further drop across the full year.

Anyone who expected Mermaids not to get the grant hasn't grasped the fact that this is coming from government and it is going to happen regardless of public opinion.
Powerful countries don't just all decide to slyly and descreetly change laws at the same time like we have seen with self ID.
It's not going to be stopped, but people need to be aware of what's happening, it's so important.

Civil disobedience it is then (not obedience !)

Was just about to paste the same quote UsedToBe did. There's the answer to the safeguarding questions from the Mermaids threads then (they're not being tripped up on safeguarding questions because nobody is asking any before handing over the money).

Was just about to paste the same quote UsedToBe did. There's the answer to the safeguarding questions from the Mermaids threads then (they're not being tripped up on safeguarding questions because nobody is asking any before handing over the money).

Third person coming to post it.

It seems safeguarding has been recklessly left to organisations who believe it doesn't apply to them and, when forced to make any statement about it, get the most basic of principles wrong.

The tsunami of horrors that will result from the wholesale abandoning of safeguarding - it's going to be of a size that brings governments down.

Why will nobody listen?

Early this year the lottery paid for the LGBT Consortium to hire a new staff member, Matt Halliday, to draw up grant applications and work on a new funding model. Halliday left in July in apparent dismay. He tweeted that he had “written to the funders of my project with a report on my project and the things I’ve seen” but neither he nor the consortium would comment last week. The BLF said it had received no report from Halliday.

This is intriguing. What things has he seen? With the trans lobby the first thing that comes to mind is Jess Bradley type stuff but it’s maybe more likely to be financial?

Looking at Matt Halliday’s Twitter, I don’t think he’s going to come forward with anything that doesn’t support the current gender ideology.

Who in government has responsibility for overseeing the NL? Is it the Minister for Sport and Civil Society, Mims Davies? Can we contact our MPs (again), especially those we know to be concerned about trans ideology?

Who in government has responsibility for overseeing the NL?

It's the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport - Jeremy Wright.

Are there grounds to challenge this using The Equality Act? Sexual orientation is a protected characteristic.
Is this why there hasn't been any support from Stonewall over making gay conversion 'therapy' illegal?

What is a trans lesbian woman? I’m confused. It’s utterly ridiculous.

This is really important reporting from the Sunday Times- I wonder if the journalists are also aware of the ‘Dear Stonewall, please reconsider your approach’ petition to Stonewall?

(HT ecosomething for the following summary) which asks Stonewall to:

• Acknowledge that there are a range of valid viewpoints around sex, gender and transgender politics

• Acknowledge specifically the conflict that exists between transgenderism and sex-based women’s rights

• Commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate, rather than demonising as transphobic those who wish to discuss or dissent from Stonewall’s current policies

Link to Dear Stonewall petition here: www.ipetitions.com/petition/dear-stonewall-please-reconsider-your-approach

Petition is now up to 7,340 signatures- and still open for signing!

See also: Link to MN thread discussing the Dear Stonewall petition, with lots of useful links to other threads with concerns in relation to the political stance of Stonewall in this area- there are many of them, unfortunately:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/petitions_noticeboard/3384045-Petition-to-Stonewall?pg=1&order=

This includes comment on the appalling ‘response’ from Stonewall to this petition: which essentially tells us that there is no clash with women’s rights so anyone who has those concerns isn’t going to get any response from Stonewall.

Eg in the Stonewall statement:
The [Dear Stonewall] petition asks us to acknowledge that there are a range of viewpoints around sex and gender. Of course we know that these differing views exist, and have existed for many years. The petition also asks us to acknowledge that there is a conflict between trans rights and ‘sex based women’s rights’. We do not and will not acknowledge this. Doing so would imply that we do not believe that trans people deserve the same rights as others. However, we are unequivocal in our support of trans people’s – and everyone’s – right to equality and will remain so. Our motto is ‘acceptance without exception’.

Also in the same statement, the Stonewall CEO, Ruth Hunt, has a dig at Get the L Out, which is (I think) a group of six, (maybe eight?) peaceful, lesbian protestors at London Pride in 2018 who lay down in the road for a short while at the start of the Pride march, then peacefully marched along with everyone else- which they did to publicly raise concerns at the homophobia and misogyny behind transactivism. A welcome act of truth-telling. Of that, in the same statement the Stonewall CEO Hunt said:

‘We know that there is huge support for trans rights from lesbian, gay and bi communities. The #LWithTheT movement sprang directly, and organically, in opposition to horrible transphobic demonstrations at events this summer, which aimed to make trans people at the events feel intimidated but in the end motivated a whole wave of lesbians and allies to loudly say that those angry voices don’t speak for them. That’s just one example.

This is the link to the Ruth Hunt/Stonewall response to the petition:
www.stonewall.org.uk/stonewall-stories-category/come-out-lgbt/our-work-trans-equality-heart-our-mission-acceptance.

What is a trans lesbian woman?

It's a heterosexual man. The sort who, 20 years ago, would tell lesbians that they just needed a good seeing to put them right. Now they're apparently the most oppressed people to ever live.

In this case the most accurate translation would appear to be "incel". Whose quest to guilt trip women into sex the British public is now funding via the lottery. Well done, Stonewall.

Oh My God, those workshops!

I wonder how they ended up acting out a representation of breaking through the cotton ceiling?

I was just about to eat something when I read Kat's comment. Have now changed my mind.

That cotton ceiling workshop is so creepy. Along with Rachel McKinnon "learn to cope with" penis.
But aside from the obvious, something that never seems to occur to these "boundary breakers" is that perhaps no one wants to date them because they are such nightmare personalities. Self obsessed bullies. Lecturing and hectoring. Charlotte Clyme with her gold lamé pocket book which proves she's all woman. Mememememe. I mean really, who would want to even socialise with people like that let alone get in a relationship with them with or without a penis.
No wonder the ladies at the bookstore left the new boy/girl manning the telephones while they all went off for a girly lunch.

I tend to feel that raging narcissists of either sex, or indeed "gender", are best avoided.

www.gov.uk/government/people/jeremy-wright

Jeremy Wright as Dept for Culture Media and Sport Secretary of State is also a lawyer so seems good to contact as he will hopefully be able to understand the legal issues around women’s concerns.

Fuck this shit. It is sinister.

I have just remembered that Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan owns Camelot, who run the lottery. In the past I thought "oh Canadian teachers, how nice", but seeing how Canada has gone with self ID etc recently, I am now questioning it completely.

The fund is jointly sponsored by the Ontario government according to Wikipedia.

I don't know where Ontario is with trans nuttery and self ID, except that they have it, but I really think this all needs looking into.

They worry about Russia having influence over UK politics - I never thought we have to worry about Canada :(

www.otpp.com Ontraio Teachers Pension Plan

The National Lottery is funding a political campaign to extend trans privileges at the expense of women's rights.

Stonewall isn't a Good Cause, it is a lobby group. It's so-called training, along with the ploy of creating 'champions', is more like propaganda to further an agenda.

“Basically the pitch was that public donations to LGBT organisations have gone down dramatically since equal marriage, so the lottery needs to step in,” said one person who was there.

Well, who would’ve been the main contributors to LGB charities? That would be precisely the people LGB charities have abandoned once the T muscled in, wouldn’t it.

As someone pointed out on Twitter, it is perhaps interesting that both Stonewall and Mermaids were applying for "small" grants, just below the threshold that would trigger additional scrutiny...

I don't know where Ontario is with trans nuttery and self ID, except that they have it, but I really think this all needs looking into.

Now I’m wondering how this godawful Page character, who ran cotton ceiling workshops in Ontario and is slated to manage this grant, got introduced to Stonewall.

It’s probably just a coincidence, or maybe a result of a chummy networking party, but I’d still like to know how hands on the Ontario ownership of Camelot is.

Unfuckingbelievable.

However they can fund Stonewall to 'educate' all they like. They can leaflet, they can lecture, they can hold classes on strategies to pressure unwilling homosexual women into unwanted sex, they can insist the word 'lesbian' means whatever they currently want it to mean, they can celebrate homophobia until the cows come home and send me t shirts with 'you're a very bad lesbian who has biological essentialism issues and does not understand that of course a lesbians penis will be different to a man's penis'.

Will still not be having sex with anyone with a penis. Ever. Because: lesbian.

End of.

It if mermaids is being reviewed can this one be reviewed too? At least is is bringing these lobby groups way out into open, where they won’t be able to push their agendas willy nilly backed by fawning fans.