Secret signals

[LionsAndTigersAndBearsOhMy1]

I bought a mug a few years ago which I like to think is simultaneously entirely innocent and also a bit of a signal to those ‘in the know’ that they are not alone.

it’s a mug in green and white and purple (scandalous)

I’d quite like to add to my collection of ‘secret signals’ but not quite brave enough to get the scarf.

Any suggestions?

Please be as specific or nebulous as you like with an understanding that not all those who read this thread are friendly forces.

My husband bought me this:

www.dinnyhall.com/suffragette-three-stone-scoop-necklace

Then please be thankful for all the women who have put themselves on the line and donate some money to the crowdfunders for those who are getting us all out of this situation by taking their employers/ professional bodies etc on. Hooray for Jo Phoenix, yesterday declared Hero of the Year by Academics for Freedom of Speech.

www.afaf.org.uk/heroes-and-zeros/#:~:text=Our%20Hero%20for%20January%202024,of%20her%20gender%2Dcritical%20beliefs.

That is lovely.

Possibly outing myself here, but this is one of my colleagues. Or rather, very sadly, my ex colleague. Which is why we rely on secret symbols at work.

https://www.mysocialworknews.com/article/council-pays-gbp-54-000-in-compensation-to-social-worker-over-gender-critical-views

@ILoveAnnaQuay That is awful! I am sorry but I cannot believe that anyone was "shaking in disbelief" to hear that sex exists and men are not women. Chancers.

I have THE scarf, and dinosaur studs.

@Pluvia do those people know they are heroes and zeroes? Not seen that before and it was quite an interesting read but I couldn't work out if it had all been done at the year end or month by month as the year progressed?
Apologies if I missed anywhere explaining that, I did look again but got distracted

Thankyou everyone for the links and suggestions

https://www.dinnyhall.com/signature-medium-hoops-29885
I have these and the matching necklace. On sale at the moment !

@teentantrums it actually started with an incident involving someone's "gender fluid" dog. You couldn't make this shit up.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13855513/Lesbian-social-worker-discrimination-tribunal-gender-fluid.html

apologies for the Daily Fail link but it does cover the issue which is more than the Guardian did. The bit about the dog would be funny if it was in a novel but in real life it's scary.

If you hum it I’ll sing it!

Thinking of The sing TERFing in the streets.

I’m too old to care, in fact I say bring it on. Every day I wear a suffragette lanyard. What could be more “woke” than votes for women. Thanks to DEI their policy is promotion of women so HR can’t argue with that. Ironically I’m on the DEI, recommended by a senior gay man! I’m a well known gay rights supporter and feminist. Last couple of years DEI has gone full trans rights. So it was my job to inform my department that pronouns in emails was “recommended”. I outstandingly did my best and sent a list of the most crazy pronouns “to help” colleagues understand and choose. Not one uses pronouns!!

Last year there was a meeting about men could be women. I wrote comments along the lines of you can’t change sex. To show others they can be brave too. To let others know they don’t have to pretend to believe nonsense. My lanyard has a small message on it, some notice it. I have a very subtle pin too that says Terf on it. Last year I brought up the photo of Isla in his pink leggings, very helpful. I’ve had to sit thru discussion in the canteen about how people believe men can be women, so I point out that biology is real, but I do it very carefully. One of the DEI policies is about “belief” so they can’t get me on that.

i’ve come to realise that DEI is all lies actually. Those promoting it are doing it not because they believe in it, but because it’s official policy and they don’t want to be seen not to believe in a lot of it. For expediency they will fake it.

Apologies if my post is a little bit cryptic, don’t want to out myself. I’ve great support from colleagues who get it. We secretly make jokes. Fantastically one guy announced to us all by email that henceforth he was no longer Barry but Barbella (obviously I’ve not used the actual words) he even shockingly mentioned growing breasts, that email didn’t go down well, lol. But he didn’t give a dam. One senior manager confessed to me he didn’t believe it either because he knew fairly well I am a Terf, where I am they do not know what a Terf is. (Not UK) but one gay young colleague knew, and called me one. I confirmed it, coward that he was he told me he wouldn’t debate it, so I realised he too didn’t believe. Another one debated me once on it, he was full of be nice crap, told me there was no physical difference if men competed in women’s sports. Idiot. Wonder what he thinks now after the Olympics boxing. I didn’t even bother to bring that up with him.

Well, after Lizzy's triumph (I met her before the settlement and donated to her crowdfunder) I don't imagine you'll have any trouble at work saying what she said. If someone harasses you for that, they won't have a leg to stand on.

Commenters are, shall we say, less than impressed over council workers being paid to talk about putting their dog in a dress to discuss what gender fluidity means, rather than emptying bins and fixing potholes.

I find that saying you have "strong views on women's rights" or that you enjoy the Cormoran Strikes series tends to bring fellow TERFs out of the woodwork.

I was recently in a little town in Yorkshire where there was a feminist/LGBT bookshop displaying both the pride flag and the suffragette flag everywhere. I have to admit I was confused about whether they are team TRA or secretly team TERF.

Probably Team TRA, as TRAs think men's rights do not conflict with women's autonomy, whereas GC people recognise the conflict.

TRAs either embrace or ignore the cognitive dissonance. GC people recognise that cognitive dissonance indicates a priblem that needs to be addressed.

I have a relative in the civil service and he regularly moans that being silenced on biological reality is one aspect of his job (a job he loves) that really pisses him off. It’s shocking that our own government has this locked down. He’s a bloke and it affects him but I really feel for the women having to work in an organisation that denies their reality on this.

The thing is, I actually find this thread incredibly dispiriting. I know it's absolutely necessary for women in the captured workplace to adopt these guerilla tactics if they want to remain employed and I have every sympathy with those forced to do it. However I can't help remembering being an 18 year old baby dyke in the late 70s, with my short hair, my single earstud and my pinky ring, all desperate flags waving in the forlorn hope that someone who wasn't an intolerant bigot would recognise the smoke signals and point me to the hidden path out of compulsory heterosexuality. (Eventually I gave up on trying this in the small market town of my youth and moved to London, which was a much more effective strategy, but that's a very different story..) That was nearly fifty years ago, and I really thought we'd moved on from the scapegoating, until this vicious ideology rocked up and necessitated all the secret squirrel stuff again - now it's ok for me to be a lesbian, even at work, as long as I'm the right kind of lesbian, apparently. Aaargh!

"Roared with laughter". Nice touch!

I have a lovely wrap in Suffragette Tartan
https://theministryoftartan.co.uk/product-category/suffragette_tartan_range/

I agree CompleteGinasaur, it feels like we're going backwards not forwards, it's incredible that GC women are now doing the signals thing we had to do as dykes all those decades ago.

I came to the conclusion years ago that there is no such thing as linear progress, there are cyclical gains and losses, and unfortunately women are in a constant struggle to gain/maintain/regain whatever rights we have achieved over the centuries.

There are a few clichés I could use here - taking our foot off the brake/eye off the ball/the price of freedom is eternal vigilance* - but you get my drift: it's a mistake to think, as I believe happened in the recent past, that that's Women's Rights done and dusted, we can all relax now. Look where that got us
PS I still have the short hair

*not a cliché of course, a quotation from John Philpot Curran, Lord Mayor of Dublin, 1790

I agree. I’m much more supportive of the suffragettes and Unison, who use these colours, than I am of GC. I also wear a fair amount of purple and green (not together!) because it suits me.

I’m old enough to remember what a disappointment it was when the rainbow became sole property of the LGBT+ and not the ‘promise of a future’.

I live a nomadic life and so rarely see friends in my original country. When you move on every 2-6 months you rarely make new friends. I have made a very few over the years and we keep in touch.

So I crocheted myself a suffragette scarf and I wear it whenever it's cold enough to do so.

I have no job to lose as I'm self employed, so I'm happy to be open about my terfing.

Maybe one day the scarf will initiate a conversation with another terf in the wild, that would be fabulous. In the meantime, I hope it sends a message that we are everywhere to other terfs.