Action Aid - changing the world for those identifying as women and girls!

[AstonScrapingsNameChange]

I know this has been discussed before but I thought it warranted an update given the email exchange I have just had with them.

As a charity campaigning for 'women and girls' mainly in the developing world, Action Aid should know what a woman is.

They campaign on FGM and access to period products among other things.

However, they are missing the vital point that woman and girls worldwide are opposed by their sex and biology. This is something that

A) we cannot identify out of and

B) male bodied people will never experience.

It's therefore not appropriate to include trans women and girls in their definition as this group does not experience the same abuse and oppression.

I had hoped that the change in societal direction of travel post Cass might make them think again, but they have instead doubled down (and lectured me on trans rights too, nice).

It's like they didn't even read my email. The only thing they have clarified is that they are supportive of trans men and boys, so that is at least one good thing.

Interestingly this is how they're described on the charity commission website:

"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."

Interestingly this is nothing like their advertised tagline and email signature "changng the world with women and girls" (note - it used to be for women and girls 🙄). No mention of women and girls on their charity commission page.

Could their adverts be considered false advertising? Their response to me highlights their misson creep away from women's rights into the more general eradicating poverty (obviously good thing, don't get me wrong, but not what the charity says that it does).

I wonder if it's possible to check whether the write up on the charity commission website was changed because I'd bet my house that it used to refer to women and girls.

Their response to my email asking about their mission and trans inclusion:

"Thank you for your email to ActionAid UK and for sharing your concerns.

ActionAid values our supporters and appreciates them taking the time to share their comments with us. Where there may be differences of opinion, we strive to find common ground that ensures we continue with our mission of ending violence and fighting poverty so that all women, everywhere, can create the future they want.

The Cass Review has not changed ActionAid’s stance on trans inclusion. The aim of the Cass Review is to ensure that children and young people who are questioning their gender identity or experiencing gender dysphoria, and who need support from the NHS, receive a high standard of care that meets their needs and is safe, holistic, and effective.

ActionAid UK is a trans-inclusive organisation and employer. We aim to ensure that all non-binary and trans colleagues feel represented. We are serious about our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion which is at the core of our culture and commitment to universal human rights. When we talk about women, we include trans women and when we talk about men, we include trans men.

We believe in everyone’s fundamental right to self-determine their own identity. Enabling bodily autonomy for all is a key part of our work, particularly for those individuals (often women and girls) whose bodies are most likely to be the subject of control. We recognise that trans women, trans men, and those who identify as non-binary often face specific discrimination and increased levels of violence based on either their gender and/or perceived gender, and/or their physical body.

Our women-only safe spaces are a vital part of ActionAid’s programming worldwide. We take safeguarding incredibly seriously and have robust processes in place to ensure that the women and girls who use these spaces are kept safe.

We oppose any form of negative stereotyping of trans women and girls, and it is particularly worrying that the debate has often portrayed trans women – already a stigmatised, marginalised group – as a potential danger to other women. In fact, trans women and girls face particularly high rates of other forms of gender-based violence, including some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.

We have strong programming on ending FGM with several partners across the ActionAid Federation. We are working with whole communities to end this harmful practice for good and to safeguard girls’ rights. We know from the communities that we work with and from our in-country partners that this work is having an impact. To end all forms of violence against women and girls, we need to end the gendered inequalities that fuel it.

Trans rights are human rights. Whilst women's and girls' rights remain at the heart of our work, we neither discriminate against men or boys (including trans men and boys) or non-binary people, nor refuse to help them. For example, when we respond to emergencies and disasters, we support everyone in the community – providing immediate relief and setting up long-term projects that help them rebuild their lives.

We recognise that we need to work closely with whole communities to change entrenched views, advance women’s rights and achieve our overall objective of eradicating poverty. "

How can they not see that being 'inclusive' of trans women both as staff and 'customers' is positively at odds with their core mission as advertised, and means that they cannot guarantee women only spaces and support for vulnerable women and girls? What are their 'robust safeguarding processes' that allow trans women inclusive women only spaces which are safe for women?

I will be including ActionAid in my response to Kemi Badenoch (examples of bad guidance on single-sex spaces
www.gov.uk/government/publications/call-for-input-incorrect-guidance-on-single-sex-spaces-and-gender-self-identification. )

They have deliberately and disingenuously misrepresented the results of the Cass Review, which has been the catalyst for the government taking steps to implement women's rights to single sex spaces and intimate care as per the Equality Act. ActionAid seems to deliberately deny that this conversation is even happening.

As has been discussed to death here, tryng to equate single sex spaces with negative stereotyping of trans women is just a nonsense strawman.

How can you protect women and girls if you deny these basic rights?
I'm so v angry that they pretend to work for women and they literally don't.

I had this with Amnesty International after they said that the issues women fact are not due to their sex. They replied to my email by saying how great they were for women, listing all their work on abortion rights, contraceptive rights, intimate partner violence etc. I asked them to explain how all those issues are not related to women's sex, but they just said they were sorry I did not agree with their stance on trans rights ( despite me never mentioning trans anything) and then stopped replying.

These people are batshit. You can't safeguard women's rights by removing single sex spaces. There is no robust measure that can overcome the danger of allowing men in. Pretending that the men will act nicely in those spaces as none of them are really men, and the real men who may be a threat will self-exclude, is clearly bonkers.

I would write back and ask for details of those ' robust measures' in those non single-sex spaces. But I wouldn't hold my breath on a getting a reply. Because there isn't one.

I would also point out that TW are not being portrayed as a threat, and that that is a misrepresentation of the debate.
The focus is on males a threat.

I ditched Action Aid a year or more ago and sent my donations elsewhere.

Someone on here recommended a small charity which supports a school in Tanzania, so they get the ££ now. I can ask for the money to be used to support a girl, and it is.

I will indeed be asking for further details of their amazing schrodingers safeguarding (relating to men who both are and are not men at the same time)

FFS. Nobody is saying “if you’re doing disaster relief deny trans people help of any kind!” If Action Aid are the only relief group in an area, that would of course be wrong. But if they’re setting up anything for women & girls, it should be just that. Having a mixed sex staff in the UK? Fine. But their staff’s sex &/or “gender identity” shouldn’t determine how resources are used.

I wonder if, in those places where small girls have to trek several miles each day to fetch water, where women have to dig the fields without male help, where women and girls have to search out places in the forest to relieve themselves away from men, I wonder if men in those places are actually queuing up to become the workers that women are by transing.

I very much doubt it.

It's very much a luxury Western belief system. I think it's really colonial how privileged western charity workers are trying to impose their values in vulnerable women and girls.

I really dislike the dishonesty of it - "of course we safeguard women and girls but trans rights are him rights and we're fully inclusive except of vulnerable women and girls who need single sex spaces, they can fuck off, the bigots "

That’s another one off the list, then.

Action Aid are well known in the sector to be completely captured. Dominated by activists who spend all their time (and considerable funds) posturing about identity politics. Sadly becoming more common both in charities and charity funders.

I'm presuming that they no longer campaign against female genital mutilation, given that that is the ultimate aim of "transing".

No apparently that's still one of their areas of focus (how do they know what kind of humans are at risk of FGM though? ).

Makes no bloody sense at all does it?

@AstonScrapingsNameChange , nope, none at all, I wonder how many of their donors are aware of their hypocrisy.

We stopped donating a whole ago because of this.

It's the hypocrisy and gas lighting that really gets to me.

If they were open about deciding to move away from being a charity focused on women's issues to one focused on poverty more generlly instead, including trans rights, everyone would know where they stood and could decide whether or not to donate or find another charity more aligned with their principles.

It's the bare faced lying I can't stand.

Women effectively being told to shut up and not worry our silly little heads because they know best how to support women. We don't know what's good for us. We're not real people who deserve disclosure and consent.

My guess is that the reality is that they can virtue signal about their transactivism in the UK, while any work they actually do with women in the field will remain largely unaffected because the people on the ground will remain grounded because of the situations they’re dealing with.

So they probably are still doing useful work despite, rather than because of, their policy of allowing men into women’s spaces.

That said, I absolutely wouldn’t choose to support them and other women might feel the same. It’s such a stupid thing for an International charity dealing with people in very poor countries to get hooked into campaigning on. It is very likely irrelevant to their core work and potentially therefore a distraction which diverts funding and efforts way from the important in favour of virtue signalling.

I stopped contributing to Action Aid over this issue a couple of years ago (and told them why) and found a charity that supports actual women and girls that hadn't drunk the kool aid.

We oppose any form of negative stereotyping of trans women and girls, and it is particularly worrying that the debate has often portrayed trans women – already a stigmatised, marginalised group – as a potential danger to other women.

Well, judging by prison statistics from the UK and other countries, it's stating facts, not stereotyping.

In fact, trans women and girls face particularly high rates of other forms of gender-based violence, including some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.

That's trotted out continually, with no evidence to back it up. Like Tatchell saying, "As we know, transw are facing an epidemic of violence in bathrooms." [sic]

Yes, I would like to see their evidence to support this claim. Perhaps I'll ask for it, along with asking them what 'trans rights are human rights' actually means.

@AstonScrapingsNameChange “trans rights are human rights”? It means they haven’t the wit to create their own slogans, for a start - just another thing stolen from women 🙄 (Apologies for the Wiki link; content of this [section of the] article is, however, at time of posting, accurate.)

Amnesty is another group that I've been unimpressed with - from their page on Afghanistan

"Under the Taliban, women and girls were discriminated against in many ways, for the 'crime' of identifying as a girl. The Taliban enforced their version of Islamic Sharia law."

Well that's easy to fix then, isn't it - just stop identifying as a girl, and all will be well.

Can't trust any of these organisations who focus on identities ahead of actually helping women, and don't trust what they'd be doing with my donations.

I wonder just how much of the funds people give to these charities is spent on EDI. I know of many people who think their money is being misused and has been for years.

On the principle of nature abhorring a vacuum, is the growth of EDI because we have lots of graduates who have degrees in social studies? It's all so bizarre

@BlossomToLeaves
WTAH?! 😵‍💫
I can only conclude they’ve all been at the poppy-derived export of Afghanistan. In extraordinary quantities.

Im pretty sure the Taliban know what a woman is. And it's got nothing to do with how to identify 🙄

I was amused that they had to put 'crime' in quotation marks, to emphasise that it's not really a crime even though it might be treated like one, and yet no quotation marks to identify as a 'girl'.

So fucking offensive.

Sex isn't gender because trans people.

OK, so we can separate sex and gender and continue to highlight /protect/ campaign female people?

NoNoNo everything set up for Women-as-a-sex has to be open to male Women-as-a-gender. Yes even for stuff that doesn't and even can't happen to male people. No you can't have a separate name that just means female.

It's not enough that trans women and the female people who feel they share that gender are recognised, safe and supported, trans activism demands that female people have no female only spaces, no female only voices, no female only rights to support them with the reality of being female.

The overreach is massively beyond what trans activists claim they care about and tells us who they really are.

"We believe in everyone’s fundamental right to self-determine their own identity" except the people who want to talk about what it means to be a specific sex, the challenges and dangers it brings and the support they need.

Once you see it you can't unsee it.