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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Allison Bailey to sue Stonewall

999 replies

OhHolyJesus · 27/06/2020 08:20

There is a crowdfunder so I won't share the link but here a part of the text. It's long but brilliant and this isn't the half of it. Off to find my wallet...


The new trans activism: all scrutiny and critical voices labelled ‘transphobic’  
In early 2018, when I first heard that plans were underway to make the lives of trans people easier, my reaction was that this was a good thing and I did not give it a second thought.  I kept coming across the term ‘TERF’ but ignored it.  I thought that bigots were simply being called out.  
Then one day I clicked on a link: terfisaslur.com where someone had collated the online abuse that was being directed at women who I realised had entirely valid concerns and questions about the wisdom of replacing sex with gender. 
I learnt that the new trans activism wants to smash the distinctions between men and women; replacing sex with notions of gender identity; making sexual difference a matter of self identification; and demands that any and every man that wishes to identify as a woman must be allowed to do so.
I learnt that the new trans activism is focusing, inexplicably, on young children and declaring them ‘trans’; treating puberty as a disease to be blocked with powerful drugs; delivering our young people into the arms of a multi-million pound industry of big pharmaceutical companies and plastic surgeons. 
I saw that the same males who would have society regard them as women, were quick to brandish knives, axes, baseball bats and nooses, as they threatened with rape women who questioned the wisdom of replacing sex with gender —TERFs.
I realised that the new trans activism operated a crude but effective system of punishment and reward: agree with every demand of the trans lobby and be safe; object and face vilification, abuse, boycott, character assassination and cancellation.
I was horrified (and terrified).
I wanted to look away, to pretend that I had not seen it; that it did not reveal the worst woman-hating, lesbian hating, misogyny that I have ever come across in my lifetime. 
I did not look away and I urge others not to either.  Thanks to brave women who have come before me, such as the late, great, Magdalen Berns, whose courage and no nonsense approach to calling out the new trans activism as the men’s rights movement it so clearly is, gave me courage.
I realised that I did not have to accept that any man can claim to be legally a woman, without having to undergo any hormone or surgical intervention, psychological evaluation or risk assessment. 
I realised that it was okay and necessary to say that it is reckless and naive to think that men will only identify as women if they are stunning and brave and harmless: that the wicked, abusive, predatory, unwell and downright cantankerous will, by some miracle, refuse to take advantage of free and easy access to women, to their politics, safe spaces, sports, legal protections and identities.
I was shocked to discover that significant numbers of male sex offenders are permitted to identify as women and nothing is being done to stop them.  In England and Wales, some 40 per cent or more of trans identified males in the prison population are men with convictions for sex offences, including rape and possession of the most serious indecent images of children.  I read a steady stream of news reports from around the world of males who identify as women committing serious sex offences.
It is repugnant to me and wholly unacceptable, and frankly unbelievable, that the new trans activism demands that sex crimes committed by males who identify as women are recorded as having been committed by women; and that these males can demand to be referred to by female pronouns.
I discovered that women incarcerated in prison are left vulnerable to serious sexual assault and mental anguish, as males, including sex offenders, are locked up with them. The new trans activism demands that a man’s desire to identify as a woman is more important than the right of imprisoned women to safety and dignity.  These women have no way to escape, no choice, they are locked up. I do not see how this is anything other than state facilitated abuse and mental torture.
Where there should have been discussion, investigation and inquiry, there has been the silencing of concerned and critical voices; not voices from the far right, but from women like me, who are of and from the progressive left.
Mantras have been chanted because the new trans activism is a movement that cannot bear scrutiny: TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN; TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS; TRANS PEOPLE ARE WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE; PROTECT OUR TRANS SIBLINGS, and so on, do nothing to engage with and address the serious concerns that exist about replacing sex with gender.
The new trans activists are joined by politicians, journalists, lawyers, writers, entire organisations, and assorted celebrities, in the chanting of these mantras to shut down debate, while others who are appalled at what they see happening are too afraid to speak out. It is cult like behaviour, it is Orwellian, and it has disgraced and shamed a generation.
Labelling all critical voices ‘transphobic’ is a cynical political ploy of the new trans activism. It must be resisted.  
Surviving child sexual abuse: understanding that women and girls are oppressed because of their sex and not their gender identity
The man who sexually abused me as a 9 year old little girl; the man who targeted my single-parent mother; the man who told me that I could trust him whilst he slipped drugs into my orange squash to render me helpless as he sexually assaulted me, was tried and convicted of multiple sexual assaults against me in 2015, and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He was released from prison last month (May 2020) to serve out the rest of his sentence on licence.  
I make this disclosure now because I feel compelled to stand in solidarity with other women with similar experiences of male physical and sexual violence. It is not weaponising trauma to say so, any more than recounting racist abuse is.  
We must not allow men or women to bury, minimise and ignore the visceral reality of male violence.  We must not allow the new trans activism to force survivors back into the closet; this would be an abuser’s charter.  
It should be a cause of great alarm that the new trans activism takes such a regressive and shaming attitude to disclosures of abuse. This culture of denial and belittling has been the bedrock and the hallmark of every abuse scandal. It is a red flag that signals a safeguarding catastrophe in the making.
It is women like me whose lives have been torn apart and seriously blighted by wanton acts of male violence that know that men are often not who they say they are or claim to be. 
I know that conflating sex with notions of gender identity will leave women with no legally enforceable boundaries against any man.  
I know that if the new trans activism is not brought to heel, women will disappear as a political class.

OP posts:
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Notwiththeseknees · 27/06/2020 09:06

Donated - amazing woman! Good luck Allison.

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MindTheMinotaur · 27/06/2020 09:07

CourtneyLurve Blimey, that is shocking Shock Seems to me Stonewall are being treated as if they are a statutory agency. A complex regulatory landscape with many different quangos probably helps blur those boundaries. Chambers you think would be more on it.

I'm really grateful to Allison for taking this case, I see all the abuse she gets online. I'm so sorry that she was abused as a child.

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chilling19 · 27/06/2020 09:09

Another survivor here Allison. Will support you. 💐

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OhHolyJesus · 27/06/2020 09:15

It opened at 8am and there is over 8k already.

There appears to be an appetite for this case to go to court!

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shinyhappywoman · 27/06/2020 09:16

Thanks for sharing - I've donated. Really hope she gets justice.

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NorthernIrishFeminist · 27/06/2020 09:16

@Deltoids1

Brava Allison!

Although I had a lump in my throat reading that. Just like JKR she’s had to unveil her own abuse to justify her position. Is it going to come to that for all of us? In order to be taken seriously (with employers, etc) will we all have to share horrifying detail of our own abuse by men?
It makes me sad, sad that successful, intelligent women like this will not be listened to.

And sadly just like #MeToo men* will quickly get annoyed that so many women have stories of abuse and will dismiss them 😡

*Not all men but too many fucking men
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Cliques · 27/06/2020 09:20

Thank you, Allison. As someone who was sexually assaulted at the age of 11 - when I had short hair and wore gender-neutral clothes - not because of my gender but because of my sex, I am so grateful to those brave enough to speak out. Women need safe spaces.

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FaceOfASpink · 27/06/2020 09:21

Donated.
Thank you Allison.

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BaronessWrongCrowd · 27/06/2020 09:22

Just dug. Thank you Allison, I wish you the best of luck.

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ThePurported · 27/06/2020 09:24
  • Individuals within my chambers were liaising with Stonewall in the days following the launch of the LGB Alliance,


  • Stonewall were involved in eliciting complaints against me from third party organisations and directing them to my head of chambers.


  • The process by which chambers was deciding how to deal with me was being shared with Stonewall, and Stonewall were strategising on how to shape its outcome, including in relation to specific internal meetings at chambers.


Shocking. I will donate.

Stonewall can go to hell. It's absolutely tragic what has happened to that org, but at least LGB Alliance is now doing the job Stonewall was supposed to be doing.
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InfiniteSheldon · 27/06/2020 09:25

Donated

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onalongsabbatical · 27/06/2020 09:28

God she's amazing. Pledging. Thank you so, so much for sharing. Also what she's written is so brilliant I'm using it to open up the conversation with my DH. I haven't known how to begin to discuss it because it's taken me ages to begin to digest what's going on for myself. We all need to talk about this if we can. We cannot go on being silenced. What an amazing woman.

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WineGummyBear · 27/06/2020 09:33

Donated and shared.

Allison you are so brave and I hope you win.

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MoltenLasagne · 27/06/2020 09:36

Surely both her Chambers and Stonewall are on very thin ice for this. I've done some digging.

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Dances · 27/06/2020 09:37

12K

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Michelleoftheresistance · 27/06/2020 09:40

Allison. Flowers

Brilliantly explained, and yes to every word. The power Stonewall has been enabled to garner to do all this is shocking. And it has to be faced that otherwise taboo and illegal behaviour has been allowed to become justifiable and downright virtuous so long as it's directed at female people. Massive institutional failure on many fronts.

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ChakaDakotaRegina · 27/06/2020 09:42

Have put my spades worth in.

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Cuntysnark · 27/06/2020 09:43

I’ve donated. Her Chambers should be very worried. It’s shocking the way they’ve treated her. Stonewall don’t surprise me anymore.

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teawamutu · 27/06/2020 09:43

I've dug. And there were at least 12,000 shovel marks already 😁

Is this the mothership case? The speed of the digging is like nothing I've seen since Maya's.

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OldeMagick · 27/06/2020 09:45

Thank you Allison, you absolute shero! Smile

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CourtneyLurve · 27/06/2020 09:45

They tried to destroy a black woman's livelihood. This isn't going to play well in the current climate.

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Dances · 27/06/2020 09:46

13

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twoHopes · 27/06/2020 09:46

Wow £13K raised in less than 2 hours. Stonewall - you picked the wrong woman to mess with.

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Dances · 27/06/2020 09:52

14 now

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teawamutu · 27/06/2020 09:52

And what an extraordinary piece of writing. I'm in awe and inspired.

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