Remember Petra Wenham? The first transwoman to be on the WI mag cover?

[Clymene]

Wenham transitioned at 68 and promptly joined the WI where they were terribly welcoming. The magazine cover features Wenham coyly peeping from behind a tree and gushing about the sisterhood in the press coverage

https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/21276923.suffolk-retiree-becomes-first-trans-woman-appear-cover-wi-magazine/

Well, you'll never guess what's happened now? Wenham has now been appointed to the National Federation of Women's institutes membership committee.

https://twitter.com/womensins_dec/status/1664887571820806146?s=61&t=gd6tu0Iz6JpyKXGLWMLGjg

I'm sure you'll all join me in being shocked.

We can have nothing for ourselves

Quelle surprise!

🙄

Somehow it always happens that leadership is part of the deal…

ah so now it’s the Peoples institute

are they not embarrassed at their level of fawning handmaidening?

I would like to encourage all WI members to defect to the Women’s Rights Network.

I don't know. Utterly cringy

No doubt this person felt a calling to leadership to show women how to “women” properly.

Unfortunately, people won’t defect because too many value the social side outside organised WI events. I’ve been firmly shut down when trying to talk about biological reality in my local WI (long-standing member). I’m politically and socially homeless.

Thats the end of the WI, then.

I imagine most of us read the sycophantic statement from the CEO/head whatever of WI Federation about how tw can teach us women a few things about being a woman. And I believe she also said bring a woman is part biology & part life experience. Petra Wenham scores zero on both counts.

And I think it's significant that Petea has got Petraself on the membership committee. Will Petra be doing due diligence and scouring the Internet for evidence of potential new members' wrongthink?

Gosh,who saw that coming?

Having just gone through the better part of a month of gynae investigations with the attendant worry, pain and persistent discomfort, I SO need a bloke to advise me how to woman.

It's traditional on these threads to include this link:

https://www.theonion.com/man-finally-put-in-charge-of-struggling-feminist-moveme-1819569515

Who better to lead and direct the women's institute than someone who is not a woman?

And yes. Leadership's always the goal, anything for women, get in there and smash it.

I think this is a bit of an internal coup. Petra’s wife is a big cheese at local and national level, and I think this is her way of coping with an embarrassing and life altering event. Most of the rest of membership * just goes along with it, partly out of sympathy, and partly because no one wants to be branded as a boring old fashioned bigot by the trendy media.

I don’t know how many other TW have flocked to the delights of the WI, because I have chucked it. I suspect not many, because it’s not exactly flutteringly feminine in the tearoom at the cross country run, so Petra will be recruiting for company.

• until they actually have to cope with the male presence at meetings, even if it is in a nice floral dress as per the infamous cover photo.

WI ran a survey on membership criteria recently, didn't they?

Wonder how much of a hearing the women who requested a WOMEN'S Institute will get?

Didn't I/we recently complete a survey from the WI which included views on having men in the organisation?
Did everyone say they wanted them, then?
Or are women's views just being ignored?

Snap!

Petra will be making sure that your views are taken into account.

I imagine the consultation will have been one like that done re the Hampstead ladies pond. All the replies saying “hell no just for actual women please” will have been set aside for being meeean & transphobic and therefore safe to ignore

I did so enjoy this.

My dm belongs to WI , her small market town group has in the last few months had two maybe 3 men join. Honestly she is sanguine about it and says they just sit silently , that said she is pretty plain speaking and may be blunt if challenged. More seriously many of the members are post retirement age and many are widows and live alone . This is a really important social group for them. A lot of WI interest groups eg book, gardening, poetry reading etc take place in peoples homes and several members are saying privately that they don’t want unknown men in their homes. It’s ridiculous.

Thank you nauticant!

This is such an insult to women.

I’ve been looking to join my local WI but this has stopped me.

I need a terf group to join!

I missed that!

Seriously thinking about leaving the WI.

I was, until lockdown, a long-term member of the National Women's Register, a similar organisation to the WI.

Does anyone know if they've been captured? I've recently been to a couple of meetings but won't join again until I'm sure.

The Onion would never publish that nowadays.

(See https://www.theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997 )