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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Beaumont Society

69 replies

AnyOldPrion · 29/11/2019 22:23

Is anyone here aware of the Beaumont Society? They describe themselves as “the largest and longest established transgender support group in the UK”.

They have a highly respectable air now. But in the past, my understanding is that it had little to do with transsexualism, but was a very private club for cross dressers.

I have tried to find out more, but it’s as if everything has been whitewashed.

Pencils commented on them on a different thread to say this:

”They went from a secret club for heterosexual transvestite men to a government supported ‘trans kids’ organisation that’s in our schools in a skip and a jump.”

It’s been rumoured for a while that there is influence high up in government or perhaps more likely, the civil service.

I find myself wondering if these things are linked.

OP posts:
DuMondeB · 30/11/2019 12:31

They updated the trust deed in the late 80s, maybe that’s when the association with Mermaids began?

Or maybe there has been an unofficial version of Mermaids since the 70s?

Ereshkigal · 30/11/2019 12:34

I haven't yet AnyOldPrion. I'm happy to do a transcript if people would find that useful, although it might take me a while.

I would, if you don't mind and have time, Pencils.

PencilsInSpace · 30/11/2019 12:42

OK, on it Smile

I like doing them because it makes you listen really hard to the actual words that are said. And it always seems much clearer when it's written down - you catch a lot of things that slip by when you're just listening.

TinselAngel · 30/11/2019 12:42

Apologies for dropping the two links earlier in the thread and not explaining them, it was late last night.

One is a talk by Diana Aitchison who was the main organisers of WOBS (Women of the Beaumont Society) when I had contact with it.

The other is a recent Daily Mail article by a couple who are heavily involved in the BS now. It is typical of the kind of propaganda they have always put out to try and minimise cross dressing and gaslight partners into staying (in my view).

There is another partners group called Depend, which has a very similar tone to WOBS. I wonder if they have any links?

My experience of WOBS was when it was a yahoo group about 10 years ago. It was populated by women in teeth grindingly miserable marriages with cross dressers or abusive relationships with AGP's. Leaving wasn't an option that was very much discussed.

Ereshkigal · 30/11/2019 12:43

A:gender is discussed briefly on this thread. Link to civil service workplace policy which now no longer exists, but there are extracts quoted:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3520371-civil-service-trans-policy-what-can-i-do

Ereshkigal · 30/11/2019 12:45

I like doing them because it makes you listen really hard to the actual words that are said. And it always seems much clearer when it's written down - you catch a lot of things that slip by when you're just listening.

Thank you Smile I'm sure I'm not the only person who really appreciates the effort it takes and to be able to forensically look at what is being said.

AnyOldPrion · 30/11/2019 12:49

I asked in the hope that you had Pencils. It’s a big interview and a lot to unpack... and unpick.

Humber suggested upthread that this thread might disappear and I wondered too. But given that the earlier thread was allowed to stand, unless we get too close to the knuckle, I suspect this one will be too. The whole point of this campaign has been one of eminence grise type politics. Open power is not generally visible.

I suspect the tactic this time might be to smear us as mad and imagining it all. Or to post lots of other distractions...

OP posts:
TinselAngel · 30/11/2019 12:50

Somebody (R0 I think) posted the minutes of the first BS meeting a while back I think? I'm on my phone so can't find it now.

TheBullshitGoesOn · 30/11/2019 16:58

Is there anything useful in this?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a3383823-who-is-the-driving-force-behind-the-trans-agenda?pg=1&order=

ThePurported · 30/11/2019 20:03

I'm happy to do a transcript if people would find that useful, although it might take me a while.

That would be amazing Pencils, if you can find the time. I would offer to transcribe part of it but I'm too slow!
I think we have the right to know how this assault on women's rights started. The way they've gone about it is deeply undemocratic for starters. Was it somebody at Stonewall who bragged about getting their proposals through by ensuring that no women service users were present in meetings?
And that's another one - how exactly did Stonewall become an advocate for cross-dressers (as per the trans umbrella) i.e. het sex men? I know about Ruth Hunt and the board members, but who did the groundwork?

PencilsInSpace · 01/12/2019 12:12

Lots of familiar names here, ThePurported:

Zoe O'Connell's blog:

A few of us have worked with Ruth from when she was the number two at Stonewall, and knew her to be approachable and someone we could work with so we were not walking into this completely blind.

www.complicity.co.uk/blog/2014/08/transstonewall-the-meeting/

Ereshkigal · 03/12/2019 22:14

Lots of familiar names here, ThePurported:

How cosy!

SirVixofVixHall · 03/12/2019 22:47

Did the BS meet in King’s Cross ? I remember a friend talking about it decades ago, she had a cross dressing male friend who was a member I think, I will ask her.

AnotherNightWatering · 03/12/2019 23:06

This page is from the 1982 edition of Alternative London. It's a bit small, so not sure if you can read it. Anyway, it's about Beaumont, and also has an interesting cartoon about birth certificates!

Beaumont Society
AnotherNightWatering · 03/12/2019 23:07

In case you can't read it, members had to sign a declaration that they weren't gay!

PencilsInSpace · 29/12/2019 21:56

Done a transcript of Christine Burns interviewing Alice Purnell in 2013:

pastebin.com/HMZs1wD8

Original recording here:

soundcloud.com/justplainsense/jps90-alice

PencilsInSpace · 29/12/2019 22:12

This is a men's sex rights movement and it's the poshest, malest, straightest, whitest movement I have ever seen outside of things like the Bullingdon Club.

PencilsInSpace · 29/12/2019 22:22

Anyway, I searched and searched through bookshops, and of course I read Krafft-Ebing and Magnus Hirschfeld and Freud, and everybody you could think of. And always they associated anything to do with gender variance as a type of deviance, and I got more and more horrified by this and I thought, what the hell am I going to do, and I came across ... would you believe it, in a dirty book shop in Soho, a magazine called Transvestia and I thought, what? And this was a magazine produced by a Dr Virginia Prince, who was an American pharmacist, and she had organised a thing called Phi Pi Epsilon, very American, which stands for Full Personality Expression. And the essence of her thesis was that you could be a woman, though male. So the goal of her organisation was to try to maintain marriages or relationships between men and women when one or the other, usually the one that was officially male, gender migrated by cross-dressing or by being what eventually we came to know as transsexual. The whole vocabulary of gender was a dreadful, dreadful nuisance.

Here is what Dr Virginia Prince's thesis - that you could be a woman, though male - is based on:

"Starting at the age of about twelve I found myself fascinated with wearing my mother's clothes on all occasions when the family would be out. It was sexually exciting and thrilling but it was also frightening and it gave rise to a tremendous load of guilt and shame. With that kind of pressure I should have quit – and I did – many times, I felt terrible about it, guilt ridden and wondering what was wrong with me – an otherwise normal, functional boy. For a while I supposed that I must be a homosexual – though I had no interest in boys sexually. When I got that straightened out in my head I decided that I must be psychopathic. But on the other hand, I was an intelligent, above-average student, an athlete, member of clubs, etc. But even if I was not either of those two two things surely I must be the only otherwise normal boy who was so weird as to want to wear girl's clothes. I went through adolescence with those worries, and I kept on dressing on every occasion when I thought I could do so safely. While it started out as an erotic experience each time, there came a time when, after eroticism had run its course, I discovered that there was still a very special pleasure in 'being' a 'girl'. Instead of just being an erotically aroused male in a dress, I found that I was somehow different. I did not know for years what was going on – or more properly what was coming out. It was that part of myself that had been hidden and suppressed in all my growing years – just as it is in all men. It was my other half, that half that when openly expressed is termed feminine."

zagria.blogspot.com/2013/03/virginia-prince-1912-2009-part-1-youth.html

And that's why we're sterilising children.

By the way, Zagria's blog is an absolute goldmine for anyone interested in the history of this clusterfuck.

OldCrone · 29/12/2019 22:23

This is a men's sex rights movement and it's the poshest, malest, straightest, whitest movement I have ever seen outside of things like the Bullingdon Club.

It's quite impressive that they have managed to persuade so many people that they are the most vulnerable and oppressed group on the planet.

PencilsInSpace · 29/12/2019 22:28

So I then founded Gendys which was an organisation that was including trans people and practitioners in their care, and I was very lucky in that so many of my contacts, through running the conferences, became patrons. And that maintained this ongoing dialogue between professionals in the field and the trans people, and that was very good.

That list of patrons would be interesting.

PencilsInSpace · 29/12/2019 22:35

Virginia Prince / Phi Pi Epsilon > Beaumont Society > Press For Change --> GIRES

Sex shops to puberty blockers in a hop, skip and a jump.

YellaHumberElla · 29/12/2019 22:36

Very interesting Pencils thank you. These sort of elite clubs are highly secretive about their members and patrons I imagine. The kind of club that men in certain positions and with means and influence might aspire to join.

PencilsInSpace · 29/12/2019 22:37

Stephen Whittle turning up in the middle of it all to do some gluing and sticking and then some international human rights lawyering.

Nothing to see here.

ThePurported · 29/12/2019 22:42

Pencils you're a Star

This is a men's sex rights movement and it's the poshest, malest, straightest, whitest movement I have ever seen outside of things like the Bullingdon Club

Yup, and that includes their early enablers, the psychiatrists, surgeons, etc. Russell Reid crops up again - it's astonishing that he wasn't struck off
www.theguardian.com/society/2007/may/25/health.medicineandhealth2

How many times does Alice mention intersex?

GrinitchSpinach · 29/12/2019 22:46

Unbelievable, Pencils. wow, wow, wow...

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