Stonewall: Lower the Temperature

[PorcelinaV]

https://news.sky.com/story/lower-the-temperature-stonewall-chair-calls-for-end-to-megaphone-diplomacy-around-trans-rights-debate-12924483

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This. Absolutely this.

It is the journalists who now have to be under pressure to hold labour to account on this.
If labour comes to power, they should not be allowed to weasel out with "this is a problem enshrined by the tories - we didn't realise". Their position needs to be clear going in. More questions need to be answered before they get into power to blame someone else.

Although we dearly wish that no single-sex spaces wished to exclude trans women,

Because they are men you absolute muppet.

Women want and need men-free spaces.
Some women cannot access spaces with men in them for some activities.
Sometimes they just plain want to be with other women.
And not every single thought or need or issue for women revolves around first pleasing and caring for bloody men.

Women need single sex spaces.

If you feel that 'excludes' some men and that's the problem rather than being able to understand and be inclusive and caring towards women or even hear what they have been trying to tell you for about a decade now, then you've told me everything I need to know about your movement and the people you represent. And you can FOTTFSOFATFOSM.

I wonder if stonewall doesn't have all the money mn has been accused of receiving from far right American donors...

Historically, the far left can be as scary and dangerous as the far right. Pol Pot for example.

The saying 'the lunatics are running the asylum' springs to mind!

I am laughing. The minute I saw that list - I thought wow a lot of (potential) American donors there. I will go and look in more detail later. But I find that even more offensive. The Uk and US democratic and social structures are different - how dare American corporate organisations try to influence over here? Why dont they focus on their own country with their huge social problems ranging from extreme poverty, racism, misogyny, abortion rights, religious influences etc. How dare the fuck do they come here? It would be interesting to see if the generous US tax breaks cover all sorts of overseas campaigning, outside of corporate mission? Might take a number of lawyers to comment on that.

Are they required by law to disclose all their major donors?

“It is really important to say that we do not advocate for the removal of the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act. When the Equality Act was first introduced, Stonewall did. That was because we were worried that they would be applied in a blanket way and would be used to wholesale exclude trans women from many single-sex spaces. We know that that has not been the case.”

That was because we were worried….

but also ‘trans women have been using female toilets for centuries without anyone objecting’.

We were worried that the exemptions might actually be used in women’s favour, but now we can see they’re not so it’s ok.

More likely that it's finally sunk in that any charity is not allowed to campaign for the removal of others' rights and they're beginning to grasp that they don't have carte blanche to do exactly as they wish

More likely that it's finally sunk in that any charity is not allowed to campaign for the removal of others' rights and they're beginning to grasp that they don't have carte blanche to do exactly as they wish

Hmmm not sure that's true tbh.

Indeed.

More likely to be because it’s dawned on them that if they start a debate about / campaigning for making changes to the Equality Act, other organisations could campaign for changes to it too - such as removing GR as a protected characteristic or making clear that the PC of GR does not apply to under 18s.

Sex Matters letter

https://twitter.com/SexMattersOrg/status/1683425013435711488?s=19

I can see what Sex Matters wants to do here to flush out Stonewall’s sleight of hand (saying we all need dialogue and debate-but then also saying SW will only talk to groups they already agree with..) but for an open letter it doesn’t read that well.

Silly smears like calling (the rest of the world’s opinion, effectively) an ‘anti trans group’ are better dealt with by a pithier press quote than I could write, something saying for example that SW seems to think the majority of the population outside their echo chamber are unworthy of being the object of their charity’s legal charitable aims to promote equality… a very odd tak, given their remit.

Secondly that a lot of people’s unremarkable views (that biological sex matters) would seem to make them ‘an anti trans group’ in the eyes of SW, including same-sex attracted LGB people. That offensive slur has no foundation in fact, and sadly just highlights how removed from reality SW are consistently being on this one topic.

Instead the SM letter to SW just repeats that this is their third time asking for a meeting from SW (no previous dates given) and doesn’t say what the meeting would be needed for, who in the population the meeting would aim to benefit etc. which is key to getting the reader on side. Without this it’s easier to dismiss.

The letter instead looks more like SM simply trying to clear its own name against an irrational name caller. That doesn’t really draw me in as a passing reader. Stonewall jumped the shark years ago and actually ARE demonstrably anti women, so SM already have that moral argument won. Isn’t it better for Sex Matters to try to inform the broader narrative and just leave Stonewall to flounder around at this point?

Presumably Sex Matters needs the audit trail, and they need it to show at each stage, what SW were saying vs doing. They need it for future reference so that SW can't say "oh we tried to talk to you" when they've plainly not tried to so that the story can't be rewritten at each stage, as though things didn't go before each "big tent" pronouncement.