Action Aid - no such thing as a biological female

[Apileofballyhoo]

Has this been posted already? It's from an email they sent. I saw it on Twitter so I'll be back with links.

@littlbrowndog

medium.com/**@MForstater**/action-aids-policy-goes-right-to-the-top-323e1b4ab38 From maya

Suffering Jesus, that is fucking terrifying. What is happening??

Right in the middle of the chain is the Safeguarding Framework. Development NGOs have been struggling to get their house in order over sexual abuse and exploitation. As the Safeguarding Framework sets out the term “sexual abuse” means the
actual or threatened physical intrusion of a sexual nature, whether by force or under unequal or coercive conditions.
But at Action Aid they believe there is no such thing as a male or female body (or at least they are willing to say they believe this) and no need for single sex spaces in which people can get changed and washed in privacy from member of the opposite sex.
Try talking about threats of a sexual nature without acknowledging that sex exists.
Try having a robust safeguarding culture where there is “zero tolerance” for anyone admitting that they do think male and female bodies exists , or disagreeing with the idea that any male who self-determines as having a female identity should be allowed to share spaces where women and girls are undressing.

From maya again SAFEGUARDING

200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation.

Impossible. If there is no such thing as a female body, there is no such thing as female genitalia. So, gladly, that problem has evaporated. Thanks, ActionAid!

I get the impression that Stonewall are going all out for this. They are hoping they will have gender so firmly in all institutions that it will be difficult for the government to to unwind everything.

It will get more and more difficult the backtrack. I just hope there is a strong recognition that a minority are running this and the majority don't buy it at all

"Self-determination of our bodies" doesn't mean "identifiying as something are bodies aren't "

Not happy. Not happy at all.

I can't believe this. I worked for ActionAid for several years (and was a supporter prior to this). The thing I loved most/was most proud of was that women's rights was a thread running through all their work. And now this. Ffs.

Can I suggest Plan International as an alternative charity. Seem to know what a girl is (campaign is called 'Because I'm a girl..) and even the mandatory lbgt+ bit refers to girls.

The only response to "we define women as anyone who self-identifies as a woman" is to ask "self-identifies as a what?" What is this unnameable entity you are self-IDing as?

This. It's so frustrating how many people fail to see that it isn't a definition. It's even more obvious if you switch it out for a nonsense word.

I'm a qwerty.
What's a qwerty?
A qwerty is anyone who self-identifies as a qwerty.

It tells you absolutely nothing about what a qwerty actually is, unless the answer is that the speaker is playing a postmodern language game and there's no objective real-world referent. That isn't an answer to be taken seriously.

From Maya's article:

The idea that sex does not exist is embedded in ActionAidUK’s trans rights policy document, signed this off at the highest level and the senior leadership team has been trained on it.

Has anyone been able to find this document on their website? I can't find it.

And there I was believeing 'self determination' meant determining my own path. But no, it just means I can imagine sh*te and others have to affirm it.

The crazy thing about this for me is this idea that biological sex doesn't exist is an idea that has percolated down from Postmodernist gender theory from universities in the USA. Saying that biological sex isn't real ONLY makes sense if you accept the wider postmodernist theory (everything is discourse and textual, there's no objective values, there's no human agents underlying our social constructs, blah blah.) The point is this...Action Aid is clearly not postmodernist. I don't see them quoting Focault or Judith Butler. They are a charity engaged in real work in the real world which affects real people. So why on earth are they buying into snippets of this gender theory crap? Quite simply they don't need to and they have no good reason to do so. They don't believe, I presume, that one ought to 'subvert and queer the hegemonic discourse and that is the only way that one can destabilise the dominant power relations'.

If you take the conclusions of postmodernist theory out of their context and into the real world it is just batshit insane. I have no idea why charities and companies are going along with this!

The idea that sex does not exist is embedded...

Sure Jan. Totally believable you guys don't think you are sexed.

I'm sorry but this is beyond a joke. I want a judicial review into sex discrimination. Against women, who don't exist without men. I mean have these people just read a bit too much Genesis and Leviticus? If were made from Adam's rib then it seems Adam can do whatever he likes, including denying our existence. And of course as Leviticus sets out very clearly, women have dirty bodies. So....just do away with them.

Imagine subscribing to the idea that sex does not exist but gender totally does. While not being on drugs.

Well I for one look forward to never needing to donate to any of their appeals again since they can just tell all the women and girls involved that they can identify out of their issues. Job done!

What fucking stupid wankers.

On that note: How about ending global warming by identifying out of it? I mean, we could just destroy all thermometers and long-term weather data, get rid of words like 'drought', hot', 'temperature'... we could just eliminate all that and safe the world!

Nobel prize for deepwatersolo

Just want to repeat this paragraph again.

Try having a robust safeguarding culture where there is “zero tolerance” for anyone admitting that they do think male and female bodies exists , or disagreeing with the idea that any male who self-determines as having a female identity should be allowed to share spaces where women and girls are undressing.

Also, that would be zero tolerance of about 90% of the population.

@Sicario

Like so many other charities and organisations, they have been "Stonewalled". Stonewall has been misrepresenting the law and peddling their rewritten version of the Equality Act, under the guise of "diversity training".

Single-sex protections and rights are written very clearly into UK law.

Stonewall needs to be investigated, held to account, and their illegal "guidelines" removed from every single institution in the UK.

Abso-fucking-lutely.

I could only read half of Maya's article, I got so upset. How could an organisation like Action Aid buy into the stonewall rubbish? Did they get a big donation from Google on condition? What in the name of God is going on?

Oh their charity commission description:

ACTIONAID UK IS PART OF AN INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION WORKING IN 44 COUNTRIES. WE PROVIDE SUPPORT AND HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE TO PEOPLE LIVING IN POVERTY AND ON THE MARGINS OF SURVIVAL. TOGETHER WE DEMAND ACTION AT LOCAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LEVEL. WE DON'T WALK AWAY UNTIL WE'VE ACHIEVED LASTING CHANGE.

They are not a charity for women and girls.

IMO, I think the drivers behind this rubbish are the fundraising managers, who have marketing backgrounds, not legal or humanitarian ones. There job is all about how they can achieve as high a profile as possible, to knock out their competitors and to squeeze the money out of you, guilt you into leaving legacies etc. I doubt they have a whole lot to do with the actual coalface, where knowing what a woman is, so you can help her, might be pertinent - that's left to the poor black and brown people on the ground. This is a marketing strategy, the latest bandwagon everyone is jumping on. This statement is so at odds with their mission statement, that they must believe that it chimes with the zeitgeist and will earn them approval from potential donors. Unfortunately for them, I imagine the vast majority of their funds come from the sort of women that post on these boards, not the blue haired and penniless woke. I donated to them by DD for 10+ years, and then I met their International Fundraising Manager, who left me cold, and I diverted my funds elsewhere.

I am beginning to think this is the biggest intentional psychological warfare campaign / psy op ever perpetrated, and frankly alongside my confusion, and mounting anger, a frisson of genuine, gut wrenching fear is brewing.

All the word salad, circular arguments and downright lies seem so calculated - while the term gas-lighting may be over-used, it really does seem to encapsulate the tactics being used.

Do these charities, corporations and other organisations truly believe this stuff or is it a cynical and financially motivated bandwagon jumping exercise?

I have been dipping into the thread on AIBU where there is a google image link to miles and miles of the most awful violent de-humanising hate speech directed at women by TRAs that I have ever seen.... I'm 51, I've been around the block, I've experienced sexism, misogyny and being kept in the bloody gender box, and I don't scare easy, but this - I can't begin to articulate my dismay at what is going on in the name of a statistically tiny number of people who have been mainly supported and included by women and the legal system for years without much issue and now war has been declared because no matter how much they are validated for their identity it's never enough..... but no amount of discourse from women is considered worthy of consideration.

I should probably step away - but I'm scared that if I turn my back for a minute I'll miss some horror that will further diminish women.

This is just - beyond words.

Allowing self-determination of our bodies is a basic feminist principle

By this logic then Rachel Dolezal is black right? And Elizabeth Warren is Native American if she says she is. And I should be able to claim disability and get a blue badge on my car. Or is it only the "female" attribute that you can "self-determine"?