Council has invited lesbian group to join LGBTQ+ social forum

[Pluvia]

One of my neighbours (I've known him for years) is a councillor at my Local Authority. He knows I'm a lesbian and he knows that years ago I used to apply for (and sometimes receive) small grants from the council to fund lesbian-only events or apply to rent council facilities for women-only/ lesbian-only events. For the last few years I haven't tried to obtain money because we were told we needed to be more inclusive — by which they meant we needed to welcome TWs, something I will never do.

My neighbour/ councillor recently told me that there was some funding coming up and suggested I apply for it for my lesbian group. I thanked him, explained previous problems and made my position clear. He's now forwarded me an email from the council Inclusion and Diversity champion saying that it would be wonderful if members of the lesbian group were to attend the LGBTQ+ forum/ coffee sessions he runs.

My gut instinct was to say No Thank You and explain forced teaming and how inclusion and TQ+ had done terrible damage to the lesbian community. But I get the feeling from my councillor neighbour that at least some members of the council are going out of their way to support lesbians and perhaps we need to emerge from the darkness and start being a bit more public. There is a rumour that the council have fairly recently left Stonewall and we've put in an FOI but heard nothing yet.

Any thoughts about the best way of playing it? I'm not prepared to go along to a council forum and smile politely at the local TRAs who've destroyed public lesbian culture in this area.

How are the sessions organised? Could you attend once to observe and see how things stand?

I'd go
if it's an open meeting you will be able to specify that you are a women only lesbian group
if anyone challenges this and says you should include men, consider it a teachable moment. Most people are reasonable and would not expect lesbians to welcome people with penises into their spaces.
On the other hand they may completely be on your side and you can get funding for a lesbian group. If TRAs then object to this, again a teachable moment for the general public.

an email from the council Inclusion and Diversity champion saying that it would be wonderful if members of the lesbian group were to attend the LGBTQ+ forum/ coffee sessions he runs.
Ask what is the purpose of the meeting. Is it just flim-flam to make D&I look good or will there be any concrete outcomes from these meetings which will be a positive for your group? Put the ball back in their court.

I think it would very much depend on risk/reward ratios here. What are you likely to gain from a coffee morning, possibly with TRAs present, with the Inclusion and Diversity Champion (always the most captured, most invested and most resistant to anything but the trans rights/Stonewall party line in any group or organisation) setting the agenda and running the meeting? If it was a more formal council meeting where you could present your position to a more open minded group, then fine, but there doesn't seem to be much on offer as a quid pro quo for the risk you take. If you think it will lead to further openings down the line, however, it becomes more worthwhile, but I would certainly make sure to take someone with me - possibly your neighbour, as a teaching opportunity in itself?

Sorry, sort of cross=post with Senua..

And you say that you get the feeling that the council might be at least beginning to wake up and smell the misogyny - is there any way of firming up this knowledge so that you have a better idea of how proceed? Possibly by exactly what you wanted to do initially - explain to your neighbour/councillor the roots of your reluctance; the forced teaming, the damage done, examples of the groups, facilities and culture destroyed, the silencing of lesbians and our exclusion from precisely these kinds of funding streams. Because isn't your absolutely justified reluctance to put yourself in that vulnerable position a perfect example of exactly that? If he is a good local politician surely he would appreciate more information and a fresh perspective..

I've done some googling and spoken to someone I know who works at the council and it would appear that the LGBTQ+ forum is mainly about networking. I'm not interested in networking with TQ+. I already have a few key GC gay men in my contacts. It would appear from a quick look that there is more reward for the I+D guy to say he's doing his job and is in contact with lesbians than there is for us. The only reasons which would encourage me to attend are money and the opportunity to educate a wide section of the council on the utter destruction that their inclusivity has caused.

I'll have a go at wording a polite response along the lines of 'really not sure there's anything to be gained by attending meetings but would be happy to have a private meeting with I+D and other interested council members so that we can explore what they can offer and what's in it for us.'

If there have been GC councillors and staff trying to highlight the appalling way the lesbian community has been treated and trying to change that, perhaps we need to respond positively. One of the friends I've run this by has said to flag up safety issues and use it as an excuse to confront the I+D guy with all the hatred and threats lesbians receive from the TQ+.

@StillWeRise

I'd go if it's an open meeting you will be able to specify that you are a women only lesbian group if anyone challenges this and says you should include men, consider it a teachable moment. Most people are reasonable and would not expect lesbians to welcome people with penises into their spaces. On the other hand they may completely be on your side and you can get funding for a lesbian group. If TRAs then object to this, again a teachable moment for the general public.

I think you'll find that the TQ+ people prepared to attend a council forum to promote their views are exactly the kind of people who would expect lesbians to welcome people with penises into women-only space.

I'll have a go at wording a polite response along the lines of 'really not sure there's anything to be gained by attending meetings but would be happy to have a private meeting with I+D and other interested council members so that we can explore what they can offer and what's in it for us.'
You could ask Council person what their definition of Inclusion is. Do L have to include Trans? Or do Trans have to accept/include other mindsets? G'wan, stir up the hornets nest.

Oooh, yes — that would be a good place to start. Asking the I+D person to provide us with the council's definition of 'lesbian' and 'woman'.

Is it worth going just to check out the biscuit situation the lay of the land?

As StillWeRise said, either you make the happy discovery that the Council has remembered how protected characteristics work & you regain a funding stream; or this is your big moment for a truth-telling soliloquy (ensure you wear good shoes in case you want to storm out at end - tripping would ruin things) that, if necessary, would hopefully shake some scales from some eyes. Obviously you need to feel up to dealing with pushback not only in the meeting but afterwards. Utterly absurd that lesbians’ groups in the C21 have to be clandestine: if things keep going like this there will be some truth to the infamous “ew shut up girls don’t DO that - they don’t even know about that stuff STOP BEING GROSS!” 1921 voting down of a proposed Amendment to the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Bill.

NitroNine well obviously that is just gals being pals.

I would note the safety concerns.

Point out to the D&I guy that you are wary of accepting the invitation because lesbians have been under considerable threat amd pressure from other members of the GBTQ+ Community for being lesbians, and you don't want to expose women to that fear.

I have no idea who attends LGBTQ+ council forum networking groups, but I imagine the people who organise Pride (with LA funding) and are very publicly pro trans (apparently they hold different views in private) will be in attendance, trying to network with people who might be in a position to publicise their events.

I have had previous contact with the Pride organisers and would not choose to share space with them again. They are total misogynists.

I wonder whether the Council have a women's networking forum? I would be happy to go along to that.

@Pluvia

Oooh, yes — that would be a good place to start. Asking the I+D person to provide us with the council's definition of 'lesbian' and 'woman'.

Yes. And I despair that this is where we are because such enquiries would have raised eyebrows for being wholly redundant not that long ago.

the more people's eyebrows rise the better

It may be worth attending one just to have it on the radar that this 'inclusion' is highly exclusionary in practice, and its disproportionately disadvantaging a group by sex. #inclusionfail

Your lesbian group I am sure is fully inclusive of all female homosexuals regardless of faith, disability, age etc. To insist that a female group is never valid unless it welcomes males, or that every single lesbian group must accept political redefinition as a mixed sex group open to heterosexual relationships or be excluded (for what? being homosexual?) is dodgy in the extreme.

And yes, as pps say, I would voice the absolute lack of trust and the fear of now going anywhere near public groups and council led groups because of the bitter experience of homophobia, misogyny and being told that any group not centering males (and actively excluding any females who cannot access a mixed sex resource) is not valid or appropriate for females to be allowed to have.

And then inquire where the resources are for the females who are homosexual, who have a disability, who have a trauma or who have a faith or culture that means they cannot access a mixed sex resource and so are therefore deprived of anything at all so that male people can access absolutely everything? Have the council encountered the EqA? Do they still expect those women to pay the same rates as those who are allowed to have resources? How do they justify their intolerance and discrimination against these females?

I wonder whether the Council have a women's networking forum? I would be happy to go along to that.

If there is one, it’s very likely to have been targetted.

Could it possibly function like a LGB/TQ+ version of an interfaith event? Or could you approach it like that?

I'm not a believer in anything, I'm just a same-sex attracted woman. Would you invite an atheist to an interfaith event? Surely the bottom line is faith?

At uni (long time ago now) the humanists and pagans attended interfaith council….. it was about representation of all parties. Just a suggestion.

Possibly another way to phrase it is that anything labelled LGBT+ should be diverse enough to recognise.... same sex attracted women.

It's not really asking for the moon! But I see what Cwenthryth means about pointing out the need for tolerance, because the issue is belief. The belief that male people can be women and lesbians is a belief, and not one that everyone holds. Mutual tolerance is going to be needed. Or does the council feel that access to LGBT+ forums should be limited only to people performing a political belief (that homosexuality is bigotry?) as opposed to welcoming and inclusive of all LGBT+ people in their diversity?

I have to disagree with Cwenthryth's analogy. In an interfaith dialogue such as the humanists and pagans that she references, both parties to the dialogue have faith in something as a commonality, however differently that faith may be expressed. In this instance only one side of the 'council' has faith in the proposition in question. That might be fine if mutual toleration was indeed a possibility, but so far in this debate all the toleration has been required of one side, and I don't see any trans rights activists lining up to move even a little bit towards the middle. That's what No Debate is all about, isn't it?

I'm not a believer in anything, I'm just a same-sex attracted woman. Would you invite an atheist to an interfaith event? Surely the bottom line is faith?
The bottom line is belief. See the Forstater case: Trans have the right to believe in gender identity; others have the right to believe in science and biology. Both are entitled to hold their beliefs.

Why does belief trump fact?