Now the SC ruling (along with the Forstater case, of course) has opened the door to our all being able to use plain language about this issue again, I hope that enables the conversation to change on women’s groups like the WI where it’s not about intimate facilities but about women wanting a women-only space in which to socialise.
One of the things I find particularly stressful about having to share supposedly women-only spaces with transwomen (especially middle-aged ones with very sexist views of women) is the fact they almost always insist on coercing the women into actively agreeing that “we’re all girls together” and performing this insulting, infantilising caricature of womanhood that the women are forced to agree with so as not to upset anyone or get bullied out of the group (typically, women like me who can’t keep quiet about it tend to self-exclude, as I’ve done with many women-only and lesbian groups over the last decade).
In terms of the EA 2010, the effect is that gender critical women (i.e. any woman not in thrall to gender identity ideology) are indirectly discriminated against by having TW in their women-only spaces as they’re forced to self-exclude.
For years, transactivists have argued that because we’re not getting naked at, say, a women-only book group, there should be no issue with a biological male joining. But there is an issue - that women often want to associate with each other away from men, as their experience of the world is distinctly different in many ways, and men are socialised differently, whether they realise it or not.
All women know that a mixed group has a different dynamic from a women-only group, but no man could ever know that as they can never experience a women-only group by definition.
This is why organisations like the WI and girl guides came into existence in the first place.
The argument from transwomen that other women have ‘cis privilege’ so they can’t possibly understand the plight of transwomen is just feminism repurposed - that men aren’t aware of how women are treated differently, because it’s not happening to them and women are practically invisible to them. Which is one reason we needed sex discrimination laws in the first place - because you can’t expect men to simply see what barriers women face, as they don’t experience them.
I’ve met many transwomen who believe TWAW who genuinely don’t realise that even if they did pass and were actually indistinguishable from women in their appearance and mannerisms, they still betray themselves as biological men as soon as they start talking. It bemuses me that they think that voice training will help with this, when the truth is that they out themselves by what they are saying anyway, regardless of how high-pitched they’re saying it.
In the same way that transwomen deny their own male privilege in assuming that women are happy to share toilets because the women are obviously too intimidated to challenge them, TW can’t possibly know what women really think about sharing their women-only social spaces with them, because they’re men muscling into that space with the unspoken threat of bullying and ostracism for any woman who objects.
I hope people feel more free to discuss sexism and male privilege in the context of women-only social spaces now that it’s been confirmed that women do have the right to associate away from men.
For too long, transwomen with male privilege have insisted on women explaining exactly why these spaces need to remain women-only, but the point of the EA 2010 is that we don’t need to justify why - the fact that women share a protected characteristic is sufficient reason in itself.