I used the ‘contact us’ tab on their site to send the following - it was dashed off and I don’t know whether anything in it will transgress the guidelines but I just couldn’t hold myself back:
Hi there, I don’t understand why you are using the term ‘gender’ in your UNWomanUK campaign. Surely women are discriminated against, genitally mutilated, raped and forcibly impregnated, kidnapped, aborted as foetuses, forced into ‘marriages’ as children because of their SEX?! Your use of the word gender suggests they suffer all the above because they ‘present’ or ‘perform’ ‘femininity’ and the stereotyped ‘roles’ of womanhood, not because they simply ARE women. I was only alerted to this fact by a tweet from one of your new advocates Munroe Bergdorf. This is a person who has diverted and distracted from many campaigns and fora to push forth their belief that Transwomen are women rather than transwomen are transwomen (with the concomitant rights to not suffer discrimination or bullying because of their Trans-ness) How someone can stand there and talk about their chosen gender (with all visible ‘feminine’ cues created through surgical implants, cross-sex hormones, make-up, wigs and performed through lingerie, latex, heels, cuffs, collars etc...) with the implication that ‘woman’ is just an ‘identity’ that can be adopted or cast-off is so hugely insulting. Can you tell me why you are centring this idea in your campaign? It’s just so insensitive and I would love to hear your reasoning and explanation.