Letter from FOVAS *DAMNING* for Stonewall

[Mbwashenzi]

FOVAS (Female-Only Violence and Abuse Survivors) have just published a desperately upsetting account of the impact of sex self ID on women-only services. Worse: there is clear evidence that Stonewall have treated data provided to them by these services in a deeply unethical way.
Please read and share with everyone you can think of.

fovas.wordpress.com/response-to-stonewall-2/

(how do you make a link work doing this on your phone??)

ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving

Thanks - I dont want to sound picky but it can be really important when trying to use evidence in support of a campaign.

And this needs to be shared.

The original Stonewall report, to which the OP response refers - is it this one available here?

www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/stonewall_and_nfpsynergy_report.pdf

And this passage, on page 9 of this 31-page document by Stonewall, nearly made me throw up:

Several participants expressed concern that there are trans survivors who are being let down when seeking support, with some likening their experiences to the struggles faced by many black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women, lesbians, bi women and disabled women seeking support.

So why don't Stonewall work to benefit said "black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women, lesbians, bi women and disabled women seeking support as well, then?

Lesbians seem to be having a particularly grim time with Pride, at the moment.

It was published yesterday stumbledin but good point. Will ask for a date to be added

This is heart-rending. I hope those better informed in how you report Stonewall's corruption will do so. I imagine just framing the complaint will be quite a process.

I have never worked in the area so am a total amateur.

@Popchyk "So we're expecting women's refuges to make risk assessments, but crucially the refuge will not know the person's former name and crimes committed under that name. It seems unlikely that the person will volunteer that information. "

There was clarification, I am sure posted on Mumsnet somewhere but I might be wrong, that risk assessments to "reasonably exclude" from services under the Equalities Act (whatever the wording, sorry bit dozy at the moment) were not at the individual level but at service level, ie. in relation to the purpose of the service. Refuges were mentioned as an example.

Does this ring any bells with anyone??

risk assessments to "reasonably exclude" from services under the Equalities Act (whatever the wording, sorry bit dozy at the moment) were not at the individual level but at service level, ie. in relation to the purpose of the service. Refuges were mentioned as an example.

Yes this is right. Someone asked for official clarification and this was confirmed. "Case by case" doesn't mean that all single-sex services have to consider each transwoman on a case by case basis but that each organisation providing single sex services can decide for itself whether its core aims can be just as effectively achieved with transwomen included. Eg hair dressers, nail salons and knit&natter groups - probably fine actually. Domestic violence shelters are such an obvious example where transwomen shouldn't be included that it is used as an example in the guidance.

That is really good.

This bit really struck me

but now women are somehow to be taught that their trauma responses are not only irrelevant in the face of a mans feelings just because he believes he is a woman but are actually some kind of bigotry we can be educated out of.

Ruth Hunt, this is YOUR legacy. We won't forget.

It's just so shocking to ignore the needs of the most vulnerable women in their society to prefer the men's "feelz". Ugh. I hope the charity commission will act.

It's just so shocking to ignore the needs of the most vulnerable women in their society to prefer the men's "feelz".
This just reminded me.... they've stolen this and twisted it round in typical DARVO style.

The Lancaster pride video has someone in the crowd holding "Trans lives over Cis feelings".

@HigaDequasLuoff and @Mbwashenzi - I think this covers it, although it does not contain the specific clarification that "case-by-case" means "per service/facility" rather than "per individual".

Someone asked for official clarification and this was confirmed. "Case by case" doesn't mean that all single-sex services have to consider each transwoman on a case by case basis but that each organisation providing single sex services can decide for itself whether its core aims can be just as effectively achieved with transwomen included. Eg hair dressers, nail salons and knit&natter groups - probably fine actually. Domestic violence shelters are such an obvious example where transwomen shouldn't be included that it is used as an example in the guidance.

The example here is Changing Rooms:

fairplayforwomen.com/changing_rooms/

I am not copying and pasting because that page includes in-line links and images so best to view directly. It applies to single-sex provision and also the legal basis for exclusion of transgender people with or without a GRC at service level.

Reading this made me cry. :(
I still can't believe we have to explain the need for single sex services in 2019.

I hope journalists pick up in this, maybe Janice Turner of The Times and Gina Davidson of The Scotsman, Shona Craven in The National (Scottish paper). I know women have tweeted them about it.
The role of Stonewall and other trans lobby groups in enforcing an ideology which seeks to totally transform our understanding of biology, female oppression and enforce rigid stereotyping on girls and women must be investigated. Not that I’m holding my breath.

We have been notified by a reliable source from one of the organisations interviewed by Stonewall that they chose to deliberately leave out responses about concerns over women’s physical and mental safety.

This is shocking. Are any of these people willing to go on the record as the basis for a formal complaint?

I agree - it’s pretty awful that Stonewall erased vulnerable women (and their children) in this. Aren’t they publicly funded and thus accountable to the public??

MoleSmokes, I meant where refuges already say that they will be trans-inclusive. The refuges say that they will do a risk assessment on all people who are accommodated there. But they won't know the history of the male person with a sex offending or violent past. That's the whole reason that some of them want a new identity in the first place. They'll just turn up as "Tiffany Smith" with no history of offending under that name. Self-ID will make this sort of thing much easier of course.

Karen White was placed in a woman's prison because the risk assessment process was ignorant of the crimes committed under other names.

If prisons, with their supposed robust assessments and security, can't protect women, then what hope have refuge workers got of getting it right?

Of course, some refuges will have male members of staff (who identify as women) making these assessments in the first place. Who will be determined that male transgender people pose no threat to women. That already happens in Scotland. The manager of a women's refuge is a male transgender person who sees no danger from men towards women.

@Popchyk Ah! Sorry - I misunderstood!

Would that not be covered by a DBS check? Criminal records for all names are meant to be linked for the purposes of issuing a DBS Certificate.

If they have got a GRC then the DBS certificate should be in their new name.

If there are no previous convictions then, even without a GRC, the person can ask DBS to issue a certificate in the current name.

www.gov.uk/guidance/transgender-applications

Guidance
Transgender applications
Guidance and information regarding the sensitive applications route for transgender applicants.

Published 21 August 2018
From:
Disclosure and Barring Service

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) offers a confidential checking service for transgender applicants in accordance with the Gender Recognition Act 2004. This is known as the sensitive applications route, and is available for all levels of DBS check - basic, standard and enhanced.

The sensitive applications route gives transgender applicants the choice not to have any gender or name information disclosed on their DBS certificate, that could reveal their previous identity.

The sensitive applications team

If you are asked to complete a DBS check and have a previous identity that you do not wish to be disclosed to your employer and/or on your DBS certificate, you should call or email the dedicated sensitive applications team before submitting your application. The team is experienced in dealing with sensitive cases and will advise you of the process and what you need to do.

How to contact the sensitive applications team

To contact the sensitive applications team, please telephone 0151 676 1452 or email [email protected]. Please note, that the telephone number also has an out-of-hours answering machine where you can leave your details, and a member of the team will call you back.

If you are happy to have your previous identity disclosed on your certificate, you do not need to contact the sensitive applications team and can simply submit this information under the ‘any other names’ section of your application.

Please note, an applicant using the confidential checking service, will still complete the same application form as any other applicant.

Published 21 August 2018

MoleSmokes What stops a person from answering No to the Any other names question? Also DV service users do not have to undergo DBS checks

@Janie143 That would be the same for anyone who has changed their name for any reason.

I don't know if there are any extra loopholes in these circumstances.

I have been looking at:
Female Only Provision: A Women and Girls in Scotland Equality Report
secureservercdn.net/160.153.137.99/hjn.a49.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/FEMALE-ONLY-PROVISION-REPORT-1.pdf

They argue for the Equalities Act to be strengthened to make it easier to maintain single-sex services for women and children where this is proportionate and justifiable, eg. refuges.

It could be argued that there also need to be strengthened provisions in the GRA and/or EA to protect women and children's services that include transwomen, due to evidence of increased risk to women and children.

@Peakpants had some ideas for tightening up the EA in this thread (more than one post):

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3266960-Daily-Mail-new-story?msgid=78358915

The discussion there is about this article:

"As more trans women who were convicted as men hope to follow rapist Martin Ponting into female wings, prison governors fear vulnerable inmates could be attacked"

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5798945/Trans-women-convicted-men-attack-vulnerable-inmates.html

@Janie143 I can't see any other way to protect DV service users other than by requiring DBS checks.

In the Westminster meeting that Karen Ingala Smith attended recently I am sure that it was said that the DV Refuge in the South West (can't remember exactly where) did DBS checks routinely.

Any male who wishes to be in a refuge and have his identity as a ‘transwomen’ validated by vulnerable women and children has failed the values part of safer recruitment procedures and therefore should not be there.

This is exactly it. Like a Ben Elton routine from my childhood on machine gun licensing - only one question required 'Do you wish, to own a machine gun?' and if the answer is yes, you clearly aren't a suitable person to have one.

it’s pretty awful that Stonewall erased vulnerable women (and their children) in this

Yup, only men count.

This video by Tranime Girl (transwoman) puts a good case for denying rapists the right to change Gender Identity and for revoking GRCs of rapists on medical grounds:

Rapists' Pronouns

Transcript

I need to talk about rapists and their pronouns. I'm appalled that I need to talk about the pronouns of rapists, but here I am. Let's just take a head first dive in to this.

There is an odd phenomenon of the "transgender community backing the "trans identity" of rapists. We're talking about male-bodied individuals who forced the most male part of their body into an unwilling victim, claimed they are transwomen, got placed in a women's prison based on their supposed gender identity, who the proceeded to attack female inmates.

They are so insistent that these alleged "transgender" women are indeed transgender women that they spend an obsessive amount of time shouting about it on Twitter, insult women who disagree, and some have gone as far as it being one of the reasons they are threatening to dox me!

Yes, the "trans community", whom for years has insisted that you must never out trans women, will post the private information of a transsexual woman because I refused to believe a male who forced his male genitals in to someone against their will is a woman.

If these are the people who make up "transgender", then there is no reason transsexuals should be supporting, or included in, "transgender".

To be a transsexual, one must be dysphoric about their sex. If someone can take the set of genitals they were born with and force them on to another human being while they fight against the attack, clearly, clearly that person is not dysphoric about being the sex they were born with.

There's no gray area here.

The entire concept of protecting the pronouns of a rapist hinges on the extremely false premise that a "transgender identity" can never be spoken as a lie. They insist so-called TERFs lie, and "TruScum" lie, but when it comes to stating oneself is "transgender", suddenly the concept of lying doesn't exist.

This isn't about taking someone's identity away for bad behaviour. I'm not going to claim a transsexual woman is a man if she vandalizes a car or knocks over a liquor store. This is about someone demonstrating in themost extreme way possible that they are not dysphoric.

If you want to rebut this by saying there are women who rape, then I ask you, where are the post-op rapists?! Where are the transwomen who raped AFTER their surgery?! Why is it every single "trans" rapist I can find either didn't get the surgery at all or only got the surgery after having raped preoperatively?! Maybe there's a post-op rapist out there somewhere, but certainly not enough for me to find them easily on Google.

With places like New York City allowing people to change the gender marker on their identity documents without any affidavit from a doctor, psychologist, or any other documentation from any other medical professional at all what-so-ever, the stage is set for male rapists to claim to be women to be put in women's prisons with a whole cage full of new victims who can't run away!

That's what "transgender" activists are backing! I'm not sure what their motives really are, but I can more than understand why so -called "TERFs" are up in arms about this! Things like this are precisely why I was willing to talk to them. It turns out a lot of them have no issue with transsexuals. Unsurprisingly, they don't like rapist defenders! No one does!

They've gone on some tirade , insisting I'm some sort of "Token to the TERFs", a "TERF lap-dog", and that I've sold out my community! I can tell you this, I don't need a feminists, Trans-exclusionary or not, to tell me rapists are bad. I figured that out on my own.

I refuse to allow "transgender" activists to make me in to the Trojan Horse that brought rapists in to women's spaces. I will NEVER grant a rapist their "preferred pronouns"!

"Transgender" activists insist that by allowing these rapists to be denied their pronouns it will set a precedent that "trans identities" can be taken away. False!

The fact that I refuse to give pronouns to rapists sets the precedent that someone who commits an act that flies in the face of their claimed dysphoria in the most extreme of ways was never a transsexual to begin with.
It sets the precedent that trans means something and you can't just lie your way in to it.

Conversely, protecting the preferred pronouns of a rapist sets the precedent that "transgender" activists do not care about the people they share space with. They have selfishly, foolishly proclaimed that the act of misgendering someone is worse than the act of rape!

They have set the precedent that "transgender" has little to no meaning at all what-so-ever as absolutely no one, not even those who demonstrate they are clearly not dysphoric, will ever be rejected from "transgender"!

I didn't sell out my community. "Transgender" never truly was my community to begin with! They're trespassers who see transsexuals as a way to get what they want.

If you disagree with me on that statement, show me otherwise instead of protecting the precious feelings of rapists!

I'm done with this topic! Anyone who demands I respect the pronouns of a rapist can fuck directly off! You will not use me nor my dysphoria to back rapists! I think rapists should lose any possible access to transition or identification changes.

I've had more than enough! Don't @ me on this topic, I am done with this topic!

Austin Powers: Right, let me show you baby! That ain't no woman, It's a man, man.

The sensitive applications route gives transgender applicants the choice not to have any gender or name information disclosed on their DBS certificate, that could reveal their previous identity.

What the actual FUCK? ?
So, a man could terrorise his wife for years, beat her senseless, abuse his children, build up a string of police incudent reports and social worker involvement, then call himself Letitia and get a job with access to women and children and no link between his male identity and his new identity??
What is the point of DBS then?