Get the violins out - Stonewall is "in crisis"

[IwantToRetire]

Our biggest LGBT charity is in crisis. Are we just going to let it collapse? LGBT people need armour; an organisation like Stonewall to act as a first line of defence

Stonewall, Britain’s largest LGBT organisation, is in crisis. It’s plummeting financially, with rounds of redundancies as funding cuts hit. And its credibility and influence is plunging amid a national and global backlash against LGBT rights.

This matters. If someone asked you to name the first LGBT organisation that comes to mind, I would bet my cat you’d say Stonewall. Since it was founded more than 35 years ago, the charity has become entwined in our country’s psyche, Parliament, schools, sporting and business sectors. But for how much longer?

However you feel about Stonewall, we need a conversation about the state of the biggest charity defending LGBT people. And we need to ask ourselves a question as the opponents of all kinds of human rights lie in wait: are we just going to let it die?
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To highlight one recent example of Stonewall’s seemingly waning influence, I asked the Government several times recently whether it has consulted with Stonewall over a proposed ban on conversion therapy since taking office. A spokesperson from the Cabinet Office declined to confirm whether it has even had any meetings with the charity about it, instead offering vaguely: “We will engage further with a broad range of stakeholders.” I asked Stonewall three times, but they did not provide a response.

Perhaps both sides are being coy or don’t want the public to know that they’ve met. But either way, this is as bizarre as it is concerning. Stonewall was once the charity that lobbied every MP in the country to help pass the same-sex marriage law in 2013. Now, it is unclear whether they’ve even had a meeting with the new Government over the psychological torture of LGBT people
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Should it die, many will dance on Stonewall’s grave. But then many would happily see the rights of LGBT people revoked too – thereby exposing how much a strong, influential organisation for this community is still needed.

If you think it should return to only representing lesbian, bisexual and gay people, then you’re ignoring not only the plight of trans people but also how intertwined all these rights are and how many government’s incarcerate people for laws that oppress every letter in the acronym – or pass laws like the Equality Act that protect everyone (until that is chipped away).
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Complete article at https://inews.co.uk/opinion/biggest-lgbt-charity-crisis-stonewall-3645337
Can also be read in full at https://archive.is/yGTYs

(If LGB people can set up their own Alliance, why cant trans people do the same?)

Once if I saw an ad for a local Gay Pride event I’d have smiled & gone along in a lesbian or feminist T-shirt.

Now I’d grimace & walk in the opposite direction.

I feel exactly the same - given the way Stonewall, the police, businesses, London Pride and the general pride-supporting public have treated lesbians in recent years, I view Pride and the rainbow flag (even the traditional one) as explicitly hostile to myself as a lesbian.

They have literally told me and other lesbians that we have no right to be gay and that we should be ashamed of ourselves (they’d get on great with my homophobic parents).

Pride Month’s going to be interesting.

Wholly agree.

I have run into homophobia here on FWR from 'activists' of an extremity and nastiness I never encountered in the days when I was actively supporting and fundraising for Stonewall, and it was as deeply unfashionable thing to be seen doing as it was to be 'out'.

Indeed!

I’ve already heard people saying “well Pride was originally a protest, so we need to go back to that”.

I know many feel pride is too corporate anyway, but it will certainly be interesting to see how it evolves in terms of corporate support for actively removing women’s legal rights going forward.

I’m just waiting for someone to tell me they want pride to go ‘back to its grassroots’ while arguing for a completely hijacked movement which oppresses the gay community who started it - it reminds me of that thought experiment of how many component parts of a table you can replace before it’s a different table.

Rather like Stonewall, I think Pride has been rotted beyond recovery. It's now a corporate jolly and a fest of gender ideology. As with most LGBT groups, everyone LGB who isn't compliant has long since left or been kicked out.

'Pride month' for many is now a rather grim experience. There isn't much to be proud of when the flags are an explicit sign of a political position that is actively against homosexuality.

As with many of the issues the rise of the trans agenda has made public, in fact long before Pride becames transed, it had turned into a display of male dominated queer sex, and most sane lesbians had stopped attending.

Sadly the be kind message has led to many women now feeling they have to show "solidarity" to Pride whilst being alienated by the queer male sex fetishes that it now seems to focus on.

Part of me feels that the old Gay Rights march was much for visually challenging as a public march, as it oftner featured lesbians and gay men marching in their work clothing, clearly showing that the NHS, the armed forces, etc., had lesbians and gay men.

Or maybe to be truely an "umbrella" we could have a colour coded march. A powerful purple contigent of lesbians, and some colour for gay men, and bisexuals wearing the 2 colours! Then all those dressed in the rainbow would be shown to be not actually anything other than a public performance.

I do find a parade of gay men in fetish gear at 1pm on a Sunday afternoon disturbing. Not the fact they are gay but the overtly sexualised clothing and displays on show. I would feel the same if it were women in bondage gear wondering down the high street

I think Nick Wallis is the man for that job.

He did a superb job with the Post Office scandal.

He is, and he’s closely following this issue.

Wow. That is very interesting

Well, here's your starter for ten, Mr Wallis: we've got the receipts going back for years

I dont want to start a thread with this as FWR get picked up by search engines so just posting this here.

Did you know there is a Museum of Transology and has been going for 10 years(?)

https://www.museumoftransology.com/

I think we are going to have to up our game. We are women are maybe being too modest, and we need to start taking ourselves as seriously as this group of activists, have done and are doing.

Or do we have a museum womanology?

He started a blog but it seems to have fizzled out as there have been no entries since March.

https://genderblog.net/blog/

I don't get why intersex is force teamed with trans.

Some people are born with sex disorders in the same way some people are born with one arm. We accept that one armed humans are not a type of human but is a two armed human where something went a bit wrong during Development resulting in one arm at birth. Surely intersex is the same- it is a birth defect and doesn't explain why 50 year old Dave, a father of 3, now wants to be called Daphne.

He’s paying a lot of attention on Twitter.

He’s currently busy with the final writing/editing on a new book. But I think he’s got this topic in his sights for when he’s clear of that

Hope that the firm Global Butterflies will be included in future investigations. I see their site is down for maintenance...
https://whatisawoman.uk/Transmission/

Just looking through some of Peter Wallis's blog, which has the quote from Peter Daly, Maya Forstater's lawyer, "The first judgment by DJ Talyer found that Ms Forstater’s gender critical beliefs were “not worthy of respect in a democratic society” and therefore dismissed her claim."

It's just unbelievable to me how anyone, ever, could come to this conclusion. You might disagree with MF and gender-critical opinions, fine, but to say they were not WORIADS. How the hell could that happen? I still don't understand!

Truly staggering.

DuesToTheDirt · Today 09:33

"The first judgment by DJ Talyer found that Ms Forstater’s gender critical beliefs were “not worthy of respect in a democratic society” and therefore dismissed her claim."
It's just unbelievable to me how anyone, ever, could come to this conclusion.

If my memory is correct, the judge was Tan Ikram, the gender zealot, who had a great input into the infamous Equal Treatment Bench Book. His judgement was later excoriated.

Wasn't Judge Ikram also involved in one of Sarah Jane Bakers cases?I'm sure I saw his name connected to SJB in some capacity. Menopause brain pisses me off sometimes...

You are correct. He let him off in court for inciting people to punch the next “TERF” they saw at a protest.

I think this is a very good point. I work in the NHS and am increasingly uncomfortable by the NHS displaying the Pride/Trans flag. We're not allowed to wear religious symbols or have (for example) the Ukrainian flag on our email signatures- why is the rainbow flag treated differently? Why isn't the suffragette flag displayed? I'm working up the courage to raise this at work.

It was Employment Judge Tayler who made the first judgment in the Forstater case which was overturned by the EAT.