This is possibly the worst answer they could have written. The arrogance with which the complaint is dealt with is off the scale. Sorry long post, but it has to be read to be believed.
Lüneburg, 10 July 2019
Dear Sir/Madam,
This is a complaint addressed to the charity ‘Stonewall’ (Charity Number 1101255).
On 3 July 2019, I had the chance to read a letter that FOVAS (Female-Only, Violence and Abuse Survivors), a group of women victims of sexual and domestic abuse, wrote to your organisation (henceforth, ‘the letter’) .
The letter is quite disturbing on a personal level, namely in reporting the direct testimony of women victims and survivors of male violence. On this account alone, it deserved a considered and sympathetic response from Stonewall. To my knowledge, this has not happened. Of course, it is not my place to raise this as an issue, and this does not constitute the content of the complaint, although it gives a measure of your values if indeed you have not replied, nor you have any intention to do so. The letter contains, as obvious from the substance of the present complaint, actionable information, if false. To that extent, I can reasonably infer that failure to reply and take appropriate action might be an admission by Stonewall that the content of the letter is truthful.
The letter is also disturbing in its allegation of certain conduct by Stonewall. For context, the letter concerns a report issued by Stonewall in 2018, ‘Supporting Trans Women in Domestic and Sexual Violence Services’ . In the report, as stated in the letter, the concerns expressed by several individuals in women’s organisations, refuges etc, have been ignored. See for example the following quote:
'We find Stonewalls report to be highly misleading and unethical. We feel completely silenced and ignored as survivors of abuse. We are very stressed having to do this response when our energies should be focused on recovering from the abuse we suffered. Many of us are disabled and very unwell because of our abuse. Many of us are also lesbian or bisexual and feel massively betrayed by Stonewall.'
More disturbingly, the letter alleges that Stonewall willfully ignored concerns that were expressed, editing the evidence they had collected to exclude them, in order to present a picture of overwhelmingly positive reaction to the proposed changes. See for example the following quote:
'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 with having trans identifying males in places like women’s refuges. We contacted this organisation upset that they appeared to be ignoring the voices of vulnerable women and were told that actually they did express concerns and Stonewall have ‘cherry picked’ from the response they gave and have purposefully chosen to leave out any quotes expressing concerns about women’s safety.'
Additionally, the letter alleges that Stonewall failed to collect evidence from the actual victims of sexual and domestic violence, so the users of the services, in addition to the evidence collected from the providers. See for example the following quote:
'We note that female survivors of male violence have been made completely invisible in this report. The analysis made by Stonewall UK is incomplete. For some of us our lives depend on having access to these female-only spaces. We feel ignored and silenced as survivors and that no account is being taken of this extra burden of speaking out as survivors of such sexual violence and abuse in addition to the burden on us as survivors when we can no longer rely on a fundamental principle of female-only rape crisis services for women & girls (female). This is supported by a recent development in Scotland where 71% of women said they did not want trans identified males in their spaces.'
This exclusion is significant in view of the fact that in certain cases, women’s organisations risk losing funding if they fail to cater for transgender individuals so they might find themselves unable to raise objections, as that could result in loss of funds and potential closure.
The letter goes on to claim that Stonewall ignores the specific traumas that could be suffered by females, which makes it unadvisable to expose these women to the presence of male-bodied individuals . As a victim myself of sexual assault, I am absolute in my conviction that any unwanted exposure to male sexual organs is a form of sexual assault, regardless of the gender identity or expression of the individual possessing those sexual organs. A fortiori if the female victim of this unwanted exposure is a child (any individual under the age of 18). This and the following claims reported in the letter, involving the specific traumas suffered by female victims of sexual violence are of course not going to be taken seriously by those who believe any male who decides he is now a woman becomes magically so, even in the absence of any outside intervention. I am not going to engage with this particular aspect of the letter (although, as I am in possession of a considerable amount of brain cells, I refuse to believe that the penis can be a female organ and other assorted absurdities gender theory throws our way. I simply find it offensive that women victims of rape are being told they have been raped by women. Women do not rape in English law. ).
The substance of the complaint is on the claims of unethical and potentially illegal use of data and interviews to substantiate the conclusions of the Stonewell report. As of now, I am unaware of any response provided by Stonewell to the letter by FOVAS. I am therefore requesting, in the first instance, that Stonewall makes available anonymised information of all the interviews and evidence collected in drafting its report, in their integral, unedited form. Several of the quotes used in the report are sufficiently de-contextualised that they may not at all have referred to the extension of provision of services to transgender individuals, but they are presented as potentially having done so (see for example page 10 of the report). This is consistent with the allegation in the letter of Stonewall having ‘cherry-picked’ quotes to advance its agenda.
I should add that this request takes the form of a complaint because as a woman I feel that the proposed changes could potentially expose women like me to additional risks when they are in the most vulnerable circumstances. Nobody is advocating for trans individuals not to be protected against the effects of sexual and domestic violence. I, and women like me, are simply pointing out that there are potentially nefarious consequences resulting from changing the definition of woman in law, and extending specific rights that women possess ‘as females’ to individuals who are not females. Some human rights are universal, but some are specific to certain categories (women, migrants, children, disabled people, racial minorities ) and it serves nobody’s interest to pretend that those rights can be extended beyond the intended category without consequences.
The substance of the complaint is contained in the previous paragraphs. The process of lodging the complaint to Stonewall forces me to add a procedural section. When I originally read the letter by FOVAS I was so disturbed by the content and the allegations contained in it, that I thought it proper to address the issue directly to the Charities Commission. In the course of familiarising myself with the process, I noted that the Charities Commission recommends that the issue be solved, or attempted to be solved, in the first instance with the charity itself. Therefore, I accessed Stonewell’s website to find out what the process of lodging a complaint with the organisation entailed. This is when I found out that Stonewall provides absolutely no information on its website on how to lodge a complaint. So, I used the General Enquiry section of the website and I sent an email, which was replied to, timely I should add, with a request to explain the substance of the complaint, so that a non-better defined ‘senior team’ could address it. The individual also admitted there is not a dedicated complaints team at Stonewall.
I do not think it acceptable that an influential, large and well funded charity as Stonewall should have no procedure in place, and no publicly available information about, a clear, transparent and accessible complaints procedure and I strongly advise that Stonewall remedies this deficiency as part of responding to the present complaint.
Sincerely,
Alessandra Asteriti
Dear Professor Asteriti,
Thank you for getting in touch with us.
We always work with third party organisations to ensure our research is balanced, ethical and adheres to appropriate guidelines (including maintaining confidentiality agreements with our participants).
The objective of our research was to present the views of providers, specifically their insight on how they deliver their services to trans survivors and their views on the Government’s proposed reform to the Gender Recognition Act. We commissioned interviews with participants with significant experience in frontline service provision, to build an understanding of the policies and processes that services use to support trans survivors and whether the proposed reform of the Gender Recognition Act would impact the way in which they operate.
The content of the report is drawn from 15 interviews with representatives from standalone services and national umbrella bodies working in the sector across England, Scotland and Wales. The themes reported in the research were verified by the research organisation we commissioned to conduct this work as being a fair and balanced report of the views and experiences of the participants.
We direct complaints to our public inbox, so that they can be escalated to the senior staff member responsible.
Kind regards,
Stonewall