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?
...
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?)

However you feel about Stonewall, we need a conversation about the state of the biggest charity defending LGBT people.

Reading something like that after all the years of no debate, getting women fired and arrested and helping to make almost the entire country scared to speak, I don't think folding is good enough.

They need to be sued, dragged into court, held accountable, and punished.

Not only is that statement fury inducing, people genuinely need to see how this process was even possible?

How did grown people, commanding the attention of the entire government, successive governments in fact, manage to promote an organisation, which was in dangerous breach of the law, whose ethos was completely self-contradictory, who financed themselves by running a racket?

It's great to see so many posters identifying that the trans takeover was what did for Stonewall, and LGB✂T is the only way forward.

I suppose our attitude here will be characterised as 'gloating', as was the reaction to the SC ruling. But honestly it's hard not to feel not just schadenfreude but a sense of relief that such a powerful organisation which has been misrepresenting the lesbian and gay community for so long, and exerting such worrying power over public life, is on its way out.

It has been ..what's the word I'm looking for? upsetting isn't too strong a word - to see an organisation that I supported, and that did great work for people like me, turn on us and force the terms 'lesbian and gay' into a dishonest, damaging, irrational and divisive entity called LGBTQ++.

It has been upsetting to see the rainbow flag, and its variants, dragged through the mud of public disdain when once, at a time when it was dangerous to show it, it was a bright spark showing support for lesbian and gay people in dark times.

Hey Stonewall - Go on now go, walk out the door, just turn around now
'Cause you're not welcome anymore

This. And any remaining funds should be gifted to help the victims of trans medicalisation. The young people who were castrated , sterilised and maimed both physically and spiritually. A medical scandal that nobody wants to discuss.

"cutted up pear" had me screaming.

First time I've heard, though I see the phrase has a proud Mumsnet heritage!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/mumsnet_classics/1301196-If-my-3yo-had-access-to-AIBU

2018
We call on Stonewall to:

• Acknowledge that there are a range of valid viewpoints around sex, gender and transgender politics
• Acknowledge specifically the conflict that exists between transgenderism and sex-based women’s rights
• Commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate, rather than demonising as transphobic those who wish to discuss or dissent from Stonewall’s current policies

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/3384045-Petition-to-Stonewall

stonewall ignored, no platformed, no debated. They deserve to be in crisis.

Total delusion - there’s no “backlash” against LGB people, who should never have been glommed onto by the trans brigade in the first place.

So nothing about what the SC ruling clarified for lesbians' freedom of association and for transmens' maternity rights? These are good news stories for an LGBTQ charity.

Do Stonewall do anything at all for "I" people? I have not come across one instance of them advocating for people with a DSD.

There absolutely is a backlash against LGB people. You've seen what's happening in Hungary and the US just in recent weeks? They're not wrong about diagnosing that part of the problem. I just don't think they've done the work to plan effectively how to be the right organisation for that campaign. While they're still insisting that the right approach I for UK organisations to employ them to understand how to 'respond to' the Supreme Court, when they haven't even acknowledged that their advice was part of what led to the case going to the SC in the first place, they're hardly going to be effective in advocacy to the EU to actually do something about Hungary and Orban's homophobic laws.

Just wanted to add that it's thanks to one of the wise women on here that I know that Stonewall stopped 'representing' people with DSDs over a year ago.

Apologies for not remembering her name, but someone here pointed out that people with DSDs (or maybe a leading DSD charity?) had a meeting with Stonewall and asked for a formal separation. Stonewall had to embarrassingly update their website to say they no longer represent 'intersex' people.

Of course it's because Stonewall were exploiting people with DSDs to try to pretend that sex is a spectrum. The NHS stopped using the term 'intersex' over twenty years ago because of course sex isn't a spectrum and people with DSDs are very much still male or female.

This is why Stonewall dropped the I in LGBTQI. And most LGB people realised that Stonewall was screwing us over years ago when Ruth Hunt said that caring about what genitals your sexual partner has is akin to racism. So all they have left is the TQ.

Oh well 🤷‍♀️

I think that Stonewall have directly caused what is now being experienced by trans people as a backlash of "transphobia" against them, which must be very painful and make them feel genuinely persecuted.

But the reality is that Stonewall managed to infiltrate pretty much every corridor of power in the country and put in place something akin to a dystopian police state where people have been forced to say they believe trans women are women out of fear of the repercussions if they don't.

And in the light of the Supreme Court ruling, a lot of people have now gained the confidence to say, "Finally, someone has said it, and not just anyone, the highest court in the land. Trans women are not women and do not belong in women's spaces. And if the Supreme Court can say it, so can I."

But trans people have been conditioned by the TQ+ lobby to believe that not believing TWAW and TMAM is transphobic. So of course they believe that what they are currently seeing is an outpouring of transphobia.

As opposed to what it actually is, an outpouring of the truth that we have been forbidden from speaking for so long.

There is such an entity, surely?

LGBA is what survives of Stonewall. Weren't many of the people who set up LGBA ex-Stonewall activists who didn't like the change of focus to TQetc? And who already recognised that the change would undermine LGB rights and likely provoke a backlash that would hit LGB people?

They should be sued to oblivion for all the harm they have done lying about the law.

Fair enough, thanks for clarifying. I also donated

But, I still think that we might be in a different place if JKR had been pro trans. I'm really gratefully she wasn't. And her input has given a lot of publicity to the issue

" I asked Stonewall three times, but they did not provide a response."
So they're completely useless (and rude) even to their most fervent supporters?

Apart from anything else, it's just unprofessional to not reply at all, not once, not twice, but three times. But, sadly, indicative of the
a) shout louder than everyone else
b) stick fingers in ears and hope will go away
strategy...

My tardigrade is using my violin.

Totally agree with this - [other] charities need to see that they will be held accountable and that their status or their [hopefully] noble aims do not exempt them from moral, social or legal responsibility. I’d very much like to see Stonewall and mermaids hauled over the coals as an example to others. And I’d like a review of charity law to ensure none can act they way theses both have ever again.

Stonewall has no future. They lied about the law, and misled countless organisations into thinking that TWAW. They presented the law as they wanted it not the law as it was, declared that their (legally incorrect) interpretation was beyond question, and ruled that anyone disagreeing with them was ignorant or bigoted or both. If justice were to be done, they'd be sued to oblivion. Assuming that won't happen, they should be grateful simply to fade into that oblivion gracefully. Their day is well and truly over.

I will be eternally grateful to her that she raised her head so publicly, knowing full well she’d be vilified for it. Admittedly, her voice put the issue in the sphere of those who might not otherwise have noticed.
But she was far from a lone voice, and there were many many other women who have been in this fight for a very long time. I don’t think those women would have backed down just because someone like JK Rowling might have supported trans ideology. Most celebrities and politicians refused to draw their line and support women, women faced overwhelming adversity in the face of a media and political class who blindly supported the erosion of our rights.

Stonewall were great with their campaigns for gay rights and marriage. But they did what they needed to do. Then they hung on, and hunted about for new causes. Which was a disaster.

It's like being sad that a Suffragists' charity is going under. Their core work is long done.

I agree with all of this. Not only have they been completely useless at battering us all into submission over gender ideology, they have completely failed the gay community, especially lesbians. But that’s what men’s rights movements do isn’t it? Good bloody riddance to them.

I asked Stonewall three times, but they did not provide a response.

Probably off spending all that lovely money on a round the world trip before they're ordered to pay it all back as compensation!

What exactly have all the donations been spent on? Anyone?

In their arrogance they have caused severe and irreversible damage to many young people, they have persecuted lesbians and destroyed lives. They have harmed transpeople and their cause too by aggressively pursuing any dissenting voice. This is the crop they sew from #NoDebate.

However you feel about Stonewall

Well, what I feel about Stonewall is that they used to be an amazing organisation campaigning for the rights of gay people and against homophobia. They - along with many others - did a brilliant job. When I think back to the 90s compared to now, and how being gay is, in most quarters, completely accepted, it's a fantastic achievement.

But, having campaigned themselves out of existence, they cast about for a new cause which they embraced with alacrity. It's how we ended up with workshops on "overcoming the cotton ceiling" (aka bypassing the consent of lesbians as to who they had sex with). Likening people to "sexual racists" if someone didn't feel that those who'd identified into the sex class that they fancied were people they'd want to have sex with. And - IMO - being complicit with the bullying, harassment and silencing of gender critical people via their champions scheme, which made companies adopt Stonewall's policies and act on "breaches" of them accordingly. Then we have the concept of "Stonewall Law" which has become a byword for someone presenting the law as they'd like it to be rather than how it is.

So what I feel about Stonewall is that they're a busted flush who has wrecked their own legacy. And they've sold LGB people down the river by force-teaming them with the trans/queer identity crowd.