Quaker's response to finding that leasing a room to WPUK wasn't a straightforward booking!

[stumbledin]

WPUK posted a link to this article. Not sure everyone (anyone?) will find it interesting or that it solves the issue for people with room space to hire and are worried (intimidated) if gender critical feminists want to meet.

Quite a long read.

www.norwichquakers.org.uk/post/norwich-meeting-s-experience-of-conflict-around-transgender-issues-january-2019-january-2020

In the late 70s/early 80s the Quaker meeting house was Just about the only people who would allow the Communist Party of GB to hire a meeting room. Where I live, the far right were very active and threatened any organisation that allowed CPGB to rent a room. So this does not surprise me. Good for them

I have some issues with the Quaker model of reaching consensus.

In theory, it should be a wonderful way to resolve conflict.
In practice, those who steamroller others (in this debate, think men, and TRA's) get to 'shape' consensus. Systemic discrimination doesn't politely sit outside the meeting room.

But hey, if it enabled them to decide that renting a room to witches was justifiable (I mean, how hard does one have to think to agree that women meeting to discuss women's rights is acceptable), then good.

Thank you for sharing that. Fascinating and seems to have been written by some fundamentally decent people.

This stuck out at me:

Transgender people should not have to face the humiliation of pleading for rights already promised to them.

Like how women are currently having to do?

I'm a Quaker ! We are really nice.. (and pretty sensible mostly)

although we don't really subscribe to heaven, angels and all that guff 😇...

That was very interesting; lots of GC facts & TRA emotional manipulation

The thing that struck me most was it was EIGHT emails that got this response - it got me wondering just how few emails other venues have had to deal with before they told women to go elsewhere

popehilarious I agree that sentence doesn't quite work, it reads to me as though a few words were missed out by accident and it was maybe meant to say something like this:

"It quickly became clear, however, that those people who consider any discussion of the nature of female identity or of possible threats to women by natal men who say they are female to be unacceptable/an attack on them, and [who] make their objections [to these discussions] in hostile or threatening ways, would not agree to meet with individuals with different perspectives."

In other words, it's talking about the TRAs - who are the people who don't want the nature of womanhood or the risks of self-ID to be discussed, and who object aggressively to this - and saying they obviously wouldn't agree to debate with women who disagree with them.

Those are the facts: how can we compromise in relation to them? By believing them only half of the time? Compromise is trotted out nowadays as though it’s always (a) possible and (b) a good thing. But that’s not right.

I think what they mean is find solutions that mean people's needs are met, identify commonalities, that sort of thing. Political compromise, not splitting the difference, so finding a place from which you can find social and legal solutions, without asking for ideological capitulation.

Surely this is the only way to ever make progress? If the boxes weren’t there, there would be no need for anyone to transition. They could just be themselves as their natal sex.

Personally, I doubt that is possible. The boxes will exist to some extent always because they reflect that we experience life in a sexed body. Even if people fully recognise that the boxes aren't actually discrete, they will probably exist. being a woman will always have an association with motherhood, for example, and motherhood will have a wealth of personal, social and even artistic associations.

Or if we think about the idea of having mens and women's social groups outside of situations where it is necessary for some reason like safety, that will inevitably create a box of sorts, even if men have an equivalent group. Because it builds up a different set of social experiences and relationships.

I think the thing is to see that these boxes, or I would call them cultural patterns, can be enriching but they don't have to be terribly limiting (though in the end there probably will always be some limits.)

It's a brilliant piece. I a) don't believe in God b) am an Anglican chorister, but, yes, I've got lots of respect for the Quakers.
@ahagwearsapointybonnet, @popehilarious - yes i think you are right.

"It quickly became clear, however, that those people who consider any discussion of the nature of female identity or of possible threats to women by natal men who say they are female, and make their objections in hostile or threatening ways, would not agree to meet with individuals with different perspectives."

I agree something seems to be missing from this sentence; maybe something like this:

"It quickly became clear; however, that those people who consider any discussion of the nature of female identity or of possible threats to women by natal men who say they are female to be transphobic, and make their objections in hostile or threatening ways, would not agree to meet with individuals with different perspectives."

Cross posted with ahagwearsapointybonnet

Interesting read - very well written.

My three favourite Quakers are John Cadbury, Joseph Rowntree and Elizabeth Fry :)

Ooh the chocolates

Dr James Barrett is a Quaker
Article from ;The Friend'
‘It is soul-crushing and miserable for anyone to live pretending to be something they are not.’
11 Apr 2019

(extract)
"James Barrett runs Britain’s largest and oldest gender identity clinic. In the first of a Friend series on gender identity issues, he gives his reflections on thirty years of work. (continues)

Gender’, in fact, firms up a bit on closer examination and a bit of linguistic dissection. There is, for example, ‘gender’ used to describe the way anyone has a sense of themselves. Most people feel male or feel female (a few people feel neither or a bit of both). For most people that sense of themselves fits their body and the label that came on their birth certificate. For a few people, it does not. How anyone feels can’t be argued with; it’s their reality.

Then there is a social gender role. This is the way we are perceived by society and as a consequence are expected to behave, to dress, to work (this to a pleasingly diminishing extent) and even, perhaps, to think. It predicts how others expect us to behave, too. Others might expect us to be collaborative, communicative and nurturing if we are perceived as female, competitive, overbearing and maybe even violent if we are perceived as male.

It is soul-crushing and miserable for anyone to live their lives pretending to be something they are not, no matter how good the pretence they put up. As a society we don’t ask people to conceal their religious or political views; as Quakers we always took the opposite stance. Even if ethnicity could be concealed, as a society we wouldn’t suggest it and as Quakers we would be at the forefront of opposition to such a thing. History eloquently records the blighted lives of gay and lesbian people who tried to live as if they were straight, which is why it’s not required any more, and as Quakers we led the way in ending that requirement. It is equally soul-crushing to live in an inauthentic social gender role. Just as life-enhancing to, at last, be able to be one’s true self.

I think that when we are in Meeting for Worship or otherwise get closer to God, the spirit, the light or however we choose to describe it, we do so with our minds, or possibly our souls, but decidedly don’t do so with our bodies. It is not our spleens, lungs, gastrointestinal or reproductive tracts that matter. We are Quakers, we are deeply rooted in equality, so I don’t think it matters what gender we are, in either a personal identity sense or a social role sense." (continues)
thefriend.org/article/it-is-soul-crushing-and-miserable-for-anyone-to-live-pretending-to-be-somet

Yes, fascinated. Common ground. That's a refreshing thought.

I thought the comments in the Quakers' report about how so many trans people felt hugely restricted by gender roles and rigid sex stereotypes was really interesting.

'Transitioning from male to female can provide the framework in which an individual can express who they are, eg, soft, gentle, peaceful; not weak, sick, perverted, illusory.'

Of course, most feminists and I think most people on this board would argue that anyone can and should be able to express themselves as they wish, whatever their sex.

“ Despite all the hostility, there is an area of clear general agreement between those in conflict, namely that the socially constructed boundaries around notions of male and female are far too rigid and prescriptive/proscriptive. These tight boundaries make it impossible for many individuals to fully express themselves; there is a need to loosen societal gender boundaries”

Except that transgender ideology relies completely on extremely rigid gender roles, or therr would be nothing to transition to/from.

God, I'm so tired of being told to be kind and understanding of sexist men with internalised homophobia.

Can they not just go off and do their own work on their own selves, and leave women alone to uphold women's rights?

Why is this even a discussion? Why all the mental energy spent in arriving at a position? Why is the starting point not the concluding point, that women have rights, and are entitled to discuss and uphold those rights? Why did this even go to discussion?

And there's no bloody need to bring gender into it at all! What is needed is for society to stop imposing sex-based stereotypes on people, particularly on women and girls!

Sorry, I'm clearly not such a fan of this. I am generally pro-Quaker, but they do talk a lot of guff at times.

It's soul fucking crushing for me to live with the lies society colludes in to protect sexist and homophobic men from doing the work of challenging sex-based stereotypes as they apply to themselves, but I bet the Quakers won't be sitting down to discuss that.

There are women who have been Quakers for many years & have been badly treated by trans activists from within. Heather Bruskell-Evans has spoken about this.

It seems to me this congregation came to this question without any real experience of the conflict, they were asked to host a meeting that might be contentious, and wanted to make sure it wasn't something that was incompatible with their beliefs, and they decided it wasn't.

Asking the speakers to come was a response to the backlash or responses they received from the community, including from within their own, and their summing up of what they heard from each speakers seemed quite fair to me. That does't mean I agree with every point, but that isn't the purpose of that kind of listening as I understand it - listening is about first hearing accurately what people are saying and what is important to them. That's missing from a lot, maybe most, of our political discourse now, and I think it's at least partly responsible for this whole mess.

I think that when we are in Meeting for Worship or otherwise get closer to God, the spirit, the light or however we choose to describe it, we do so with our minds, or possibly our souls, but decidedly don’t do so with our bodies. It is not our spleens, lungs, gastrointestinal or reproductive tracts that matter. We are Quakers, we are deeply rooted in equality, so I don’t think it matters what gender we are, in either a personal identity sense or a social role sense." (continues)

This is interesting to me, would an orthodox Quaker say something like that, because it's fairly clearly straying from a traditional Christian understanding of the body. I know some Quakers have really gone quite decidedly down the non-sacramental protestant rode into a kind of spiritualism, but I didn't think that was ubiquitous.

I don't know what there is to listen to from TRA's, goosefoot.

They don't believe women should be able to self-define, they don't believe that women have sex-based rights, they don't believe that women should be able to gather and speak about their own needs away from men. They are misogynists, in other words.

Why on earth, having considered that WPUK did not cross any Quaker virtues, was engagement with anti-women misogynists invited in response?

I mean, maybe Quakers are just better people than me. But really - is it too much that organisations just say they support women's rights, and then go on supporting women's rights, without feeling a need to anxiously make space for voices which loathe women's rights?

I can't think of a single bit of common ground between me and a TRA, other than our shared membership of the human species - good luck to the Quakers in finding it, but what common ground is there between women who defend sex-based rights, and men who want to remove them?

It’s nice to be kind but this whole thing has made me realise that I care more about truth.

It's also made me realize that in the long run not telling people the truth isn't all that kind, because sooner or later they will have to face reality, and protecting them from it for so long may just mean that it hurts more when the pretense finally comes to an end.

I think we all go through a process, and sometimes a long one, in working out how we feel about this issue. It sounds like the Norwich Quakers have come to this debate fairly cold, and instead of immediately bowing to pressures to just cancel women's meetings (as so many other venues, including other Quaker Meeting Houses have), have set about trying to work out from first principles how they feel about it.

Do I wish everyone coming cold to this debate would immediately agree with me on this? Yes, of course. But that's not going to happen, and I am not sure I'd trust it if it did. I think the process they are going through is a good model, and they are proceeding with it in good faith despite getting a ton of shit for it, and I wish more organisations (including other Quaker groups) would embark on something similar.