Basic Stonewall Question

[LittleWingSoul]

I couldn't answer this when someone asked me and couldn't find a straight up answer online...

"Who or what financially backs Stonewall's 2015 inclusion of Transgender Issues and why? What's in it for them?"

This will help a bit

www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/23/the-rise-and-fall-of-stonewall/

"The appointment of Ruth Hunt as Stonewall’s new CEO in August 2014 was to be decisive for Stonewall’s change of approach. She immediately set about expanding Stonewall’s remit to include trans rights, holding a meeting on 30 August 2014 with ‘trans professionals, campaigners and activists to discuss the possibility of Stonewall becoming trans inclusive’. She stated elsewheree_ that ‘we are very open to taking whatever direction will be in the best interests of that community’.
What followed was a consultation between Stonewall and ‘over 700 trans people".

Sorry posted too soon, from the same article:

Between 2014 and 2018, its incomee rose from £5.4million to £8.7million – an increase of 61 per cent. Some donors, such as the Arcus Foundation, which gave Stonewall $100,000 in 2015, even insisted the money was usedd to ‘integrate trans-specific work’ into Stonewall’s campaigns.

More on Arcus here

twitter.com/transgendertrd/status/1385585148247293961?s=21

And here

"Jon Stryker heads the Arcus Foundation, he is heir to the Stryker Corporation medical supply company fortune. It is unsurprising that someone whose wealth has come from the pharmaceutical industry might be inclined to promote transgenderism, as those who identify as trans often require life-long medication and surgeries."

4w.pub/the-fall-of-stonewall/

A lot of money was poured in by the Arcus Foundation....

gendercriticalwoman.wordpress.com/2021/04/22/arcus-foundation-grants/

As a lobbying-based charity they need a cause. There were no major battles left for gay rights, so trans gives them something to fight for.

I'm not sure there's any specific backer, at least in Stonewall's case. There's no grand conspiracy - it just suits Stonewall to be in an environment where there's something to lobby for and to be in a landscape where companies feel the need to ask them for "consultation" on new things.

I think there are examples of organisations having an even more direct financial incentive, like Planned Parenthood in the USA which seems to be transitioning (!) to being mainly a gender clinic.

They had nearly 9 million A YEAR?

What did they do with that money? There's about 70 staff, I think. Office costs, I assume.

Whining and pouting are free - what on earth did they do with all that money?

Is this going to turn out to be a Ponzi scheme after all?

Staff are expensive. With all the other costs involved, you might well be talking £100,000 per staff member per year on average, so that would be £7,000,000 of the total.

Thanks everyone. So something like... Lobbying organisation that is funded through charitable trusts and such for a worthy cause (pre 2015). New CEO with agenda who wants to make noise/push (personal?) ideologies/trailblaze.

Investment from Arcus (pharma, suits medication of trans issues).

Somehow manage a stronghold over varied institutions that want to appear Right On/avoid litigation (litigation for which Stonewall would back the accusor?). Such a stronghold that they have managed to get schools (even religious schools, my DD's strict RC secondary school being a point in case) to get on board with their ideology?

Just why? It does kind of feel like a grand conspiracy, @NecessaryScene...!

And thanks @OhHolyJesus I probably need to read through those links you sent too when I get a minutr, just trying to piece it together in my mind (in an easy way for me to understand!)

I feel strongly GC and spend a lot of time lurking on this board and feel I've got a decent grasp on the main issues, but when I try to talk to people about it IRL I find it really hard to articulate anything at all. I just stammer and clam up and feel stupid for having said anything in the first place!

With all of the money they get they could have spent it on things like specific rape crisis and domestic violence services aimed at LGBT people- particularly trans people, who as it is continually pointed out by the TRAs, are one of the most vulnerable groups. Surely having specially tailored services to deal with the needs of users who have the very specific medical and mental health needs of trans people would have served the community better and made life better for the people whose interest Stonewall is supposed to be serving, without compromising the single sex services required by women.

There is also a real inclination for all kinds of charitable sector organisations to keep themselves going because they are industries that provide jobs. Professional activists "need" those jobs. It's especially true for these big prestigious organisations.

Somewhat comparable was a few years ago, this may have been more in North America, there was some research that suggested that mammogram screening programs weren't as useful as had been thought. There was a lot of push-back about this, people really react strongly to being told something they thought was important and put time and money into promoting wasn't so useful and might have even been harmful in some cases. And then some of the breast cancer orgs which ran these screening programs really reacted, because the research threatened their whole remit. Companies that make mammogram machines didn't like it either.

Probably none of thes epeople thought, oh, I want to keep doing this even if it doesn't help women. But the psychological response was not neutral.

@LittleWingSoul

I couldn't answer this when someone asked me and couldn't find a straight up answer online...

"Who or what financially backs Stonewall's 2015 inclusion of Transgender Issues and why? What's in it for them?"

The idea that you think that somebody does something good for someone else only if there is something in it for them says so much about the anti-trans mentality.

Just why? It does kind of feel like a grand conspiracy, @NecessaryScene...!

I'm listening to the Nolan podcast, and I think one thing that it gives the impression of, wrongly, that this is all coming from Stonewall. Making it sound a bit like a Stonewall-led conspiracy.

There's a whole confluence of different cultural things, and different interests here. Stonewall are simply a kind of the delivery and packaging mechanism, but they're not really the source of the ideas. They just made a very conscious pivot to pick up the gender ideology stuff and run with it in 2014/15.

A book like Helen Joyce's Trans will give you more of the story of how we got here.

Good interview with her on that subject, which would serve as an introduction: theelectricagora.com/2021/10/15/helen-joyce-on-her-new-book-trans-when-ideology-meets-reality/

I think following the money is always a good starting point, but I'd be cautious about pinning too much on the agency or personal preferences of Stonewall here. By 2015 there had for several years been a degree of popular pressure from within the LGBT community/communities for Stonewall to become LGBT rather than simply LGB (witness for eg the response to Julie Bindel's nomination as Stonewall journalist of the year - maybe around 2009? - which was protested on the basis of that years-earlier Guardian article).

I don't see a conspiracy, I see a confluence of factors.

Cross-posted, but less informatively, with @NecessaryScene

No, yours covered points mine didn't.

Teamwork!

@TheBeardedVulture

With all of the money they get they could have spent it on things like specific rape crisis and domestic violence services aimed at LGBT people- particularly trans people, who as it is continually pointed out by the TRAs, are one of the most vulnerable groups. Surely having specially tailored services to deal with the needs of users who have the very specific medical and mental health needs of trans people would have served the community better and made life better for the people whose interest Stonewall is supposed to be serving, without compromising the single sex services required by women.

are you seriously saying that LGBTQ+ folk should not have access to existing rape crisis and domestic violence services?! Have you any idea how this looks?!

The idea that you think that somebody does something good for someone else only if there is something in it for them says so much about the anti-trans mentality.

indeed

@NellWilsonsWhiteHair

I think following the money is always a good starting point, but I'd be cautious about pinning too much on the agency or personal preferences of Stonewall here. By 2015 there had for several years been a degree of popular pressure from within the LGBT community/communities for Stonewall to become LGBT rather than simply LGB (witness for eg the response to Julie Bindel's nomination as Stonewall journalist of the year - maybe around 2009? - which was protested on the basis of that years-earlier Guardian article).

I don't see a conspiracy, I see a confluence of factors.

Often the answer with this stuff is that it's all the things.

There might have been some strategic decision by people at SW about what their next campaign was going to be.

There were many people who really thought this was the right direction to go in.

There was funding associated with it.

There is a general reluctance for groups like this to consider that their remit is done, or needs to be scaled down.

And with regards to that last, to take an approach that means they no longer need to exist. Which, if they had ended up taking the perspective of LGB becoming "just people" would have been the ultimate outcome. I think that had to have influenced the tendency for them - as a group and as individuals - to see it as an identity characteristics. And while lots of LGB people feel like that there are also a lot who don't, and the latter tend to be the ones who don't have much to do with groups like SW or Pride. It's hard to get a sense of numbers but it's seemed to me like there are at least as many of the people who don't see it as an identity, but they tend not to be represented by an organisation.

It may be that the tendency for groups like SW to see sexuality from an identity lens has influenced their tendency to see gender the same way.

@NecessaryScene

Staff are expensive. With all the other costs involved, you might well be talking £100,000 per staff member per year on average, so that would be £7,000,000 of the total.

Salaries p34

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/signedaccountssye300september_2019.pdf

@LittleWingSoul

I just stammer and clam up and feel stupid for having said anything in the first place!

I imagine we all think this from time to time, I certainly didn't start out writing bold snd confident letters, though from about 2018, if I read them back, I could read anger and frustration between the lines.

I also don't think we need to write like academics or be informed on every area related to this. Stick to the subject, write from the heart and a position of information, share examples or links to further explain your point and ask for a response.

The Sex Matters website has a list with crossed our names of those who confirm they have left Stonewall and with the protests this coming Friday there is very little room left to deny that it is a mainstream concern., it's covered in the news almost every day somewhere in the U.K.

I think it's also useful to suggest what reputations damage or what could cost them money or support, should they decide to stay with Stonewall.

For me, with the BBC supposedly leaving (after Nolan they must have right?) you would wonder why they would have to stay, are BBC staff at risk of bullying and/discrimination if Stonewall posters aren't in every lift or represented in some way in HR meetings? Are LGBTQI+++ people going to be sacked for being their sexual orientation (a protected characteristic) or gender identity, gender expression or the way their style their hair if Stonewall doesn't hold the BBC's hand?

If so then it can't be that 'safe' a place to work after all...

@NecessaryScene and @NellWilsonsWhiteHair thank you, like you both say, it is more nuanced than anything like a stonewall-led conspiracy, I guess I picked up on this specifically because it's almost like they are the public-facing salesman, and one which organisations have seemingly unquestionably signed over to. But it looks like there is finally some dismantling of this going on?

@DisgustedofManchester I'm not anti trans and it is a valid question.

@LobsterNapkin. I remember the controversy about mammogram screening. Logical proposals for better allocation of health care resources were countered with emotional stories. Even the word "charity" plays on emotions. Universities churn out the professional activists and the charities employ them. Win win for the managerial class.

Catharina no, don't be hyperbolic, of course no one is saying
"that LGBTQ+ folk should not have access to existing rape crisis and domestic violence services?!"

If a transgender person is raped then their gender difference will mean they have needs which are equal to, but different from, a woman who has no gender difference who has been raped.

It is not transphobic to wish that people who have been sexually assaulted could get help which is tailored to their needs and circumstances.

That would be best developed by an organisation who understands what those needs are and which has the financial resources to do that. Which is what Stonewall is and could have done, but chose instead, to try and strong arm their way into the resources built for and run by women.

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

Catharina no, don't be hyperbolic, of course no one is saying "that LGBTQ+ folk should not have access to existing rape crisis and domestic violence services?!"

If a transgender person is raped then their gender difference will mean they have needs which are equal to, but different from, a woman who has no gender difference who has been raped.

It is not transphobic to wish that people who have been sexually assaulted could get help which is tailored to their needs and circumstances.

That would be best developed by an organisation who understands what those needs are and which has the financial resources to do that. Which is what Stonewall is and could have done, but chose instead, to try and strong arm their way into the resources built for and run by women.

There are trans inclusive rape crisis centres under whose remit this falls. They understand the needs and cater to them (when they are not being swamped with anti-trans inclusion messages and can actually concentrate on their work).

Yes, I am aware.

I am also aware of the impact that has on the women who need support after they have been sexually assaulted by a man; the impact of trauma; that many women's recovery from rape and trauma is hampered by being around male people; and that many women perceive trans women as male even if they are nice friendly sorts.

I think that a civilised society would give a raped woman whatever the fuck she wants. And if that is to be in a female only space then trans women who are the victims of sexual crime should be cared for in spaces separate to those women.

Does my belief that women have the right to say "no" to male people in single sex spaces make me transphobic?

Or does the refusal to hear a woman's "no" make inclusion campaigners misogynists?