Women's charities

[Supportingwomen]

Changed names for this for obvious reasons.

I support various charities monthly and in recent years I have been switching from environmental ones to women's ones. Some considerable while ago I started supporting Womenkind Worldwide which has some laudable aims.

However, recently I thought I'd just check, you know, whether they have the same idea about what constitutes a woman as I do.

They responded promptly and politely as follows:

"As you know, Womankind are a feminist organisation working in partnership with women’s movements and women’s rights organisations globally. Our vision is of a world where the rights of all women are respected, valued and realised. In order to achieve this we believe in an intersectional approach. This is based on the understanding that women’s experiences of oppression and discrimination are unique and vary according to gender identity, race, class, sexual orientation, disability and age, amongst other factors.

We recognise that trans women experience heightened levels of violence and marginalisation in society. We work in solidarity with our partners to challenge systems of oppression that discriminate against all women and girls. Being inclusive of women in all their diversity an important part of our global strategy and our ambition to support and nourish diverse and independent national women’s movements. This includes working with women’s rights organisations who work with women who face multiple discriminations and oppressions, such as lesbian, bisexual and trans women and women with disabilities. We believe there needs to be solidarity in women’s movements and that there is room for women of all social backgrounds and identities to come together to achieve gender equality and claim their rights. We believe that trans women are women and will continue to work with our partners to dismantle patriarchy, towards a world where all women are free from violence and discrimination."

I'm gobsmacked to be honest that they include 'gender identity' in their list but fail to include sex!
And believing TWAW and thinking that is consistent with dismantling the patriarchy is cognitive dissonance of the highest order.

So I have cancelled my standing order and will be diverting to women's organisations who know what a woman is.

Depressing isn't it, I've no wish for transgender s to be discriminated against but they keep pumping out those false oppression statistics to get anything that's been put aside for women

I'm not surprised, unfortunately. Particularly international groups. Although they say they are feminist, I dont think many of them grew out of grass roots feminism, but are effectively off shoots of global development organisations.

Did you let them know that you were stopping your donations and why? And if so what was there response.

Just wondered if in fact this might be a tactic. Start donating to a women's group. then ask them about their definition of a woman. And if it includes trans, stop money and explain why.

Yes indeed. Have told them quite clearly why but too soon for a response.

Interesting tactic suggestion however.

Oh no. But there is an obvious fundamental clash of interests between being a lesbian (ie same-sex attraction) and anyone who believes in genderist dogma which says ‘my sex is whatever I say it is and you must acknowledge me in this’. Can’t they see that?
Can’t they see the issues for all women that are posed by women’s charities who have a mantra that ‘we believe trans women are women’? The needs of women are specific to their biology and to sexism (caused by gender as a hierarchy placed on female biology). Women’s needs are miles apart from the needs of transwomen

I see they exclude transmen - surely that's transphobia?

Also if you really genuinely believe that TWAW why do you need the category TW.
Surely you would only need W as a category.

TW is used because they know it’s not true, there is a difference. but they are trying to be kind and say TWAW and because of that are being diverted from their stated aim of benefiting women. They are being unnecessarily accommodating to the extent that they literally are no longer working to support the interests of women (while claiming to still do so)
I would ask them if they have actually legally changed their legal charitable aims which are registered with the charity Commission. If they are still saying they are there to support women (and don’t mention men) in their charitable aims- they can’t just change their work. They need to support women not men as set out in their legal aims. Have they consulted on this change?

This is like the girl guides who say they are there to benefit women and girls in their charitable aims yet introduced policies to let boys in.

Helpfully this charity have got their trustee role set out on their website which includes to uphold the charity’s legal charitable objects (as you would expect of a Trustee role in any charity).

Assuming that there has been no change to the charitable objects- (you’d assume not given the name of the charity but I don’t know- perhaps the Trustees could set out what they think is happening if they have in fact expanded the remit beyond the actual legal charitable objects to include men in their charity’s work and if they haven’t made this abundantly clear to donors?

Alternatively... They could be planning to change the charity’s name to Personkind and have already changed the charitable objects to include men? The Trustees could be planning new, very clear straplines to reflect the charity’s new charitable aims to make this clear. These could say something like eg ‘we support anyone Male or Female who feels they are a woman’, couldn’t they?

(Not connected to this issue directly but) There is a rather odd clause in the Trustee doc that Trustees are encouraged to donate regularly to the charity. This isn’t a requirement of charity Trusteeship and shouldn’t be, but it seems uncomfortable that they suggest it- you would be already giving up your time to be a trustee which has a cost to you- are they trying to screen out less wealthy Trustees? And does relative size of donation relate to the selection process?

www.womankind.org.uk/docs/default-source/default-document-library/application-pack.docx?sfvrsn=0