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Original poster

Women’s institute announcement

703 replies

Itsthecatsfault · 07/05/2025 15:32

Published earlier today.

Women’s institute announcement
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Another2Cats · 01/10/2025 19:49

Karatema · 01/10/2025 13:52

Surely the NFWI have resolved this? As a member I’ve heard nothing and whenever I ask there is stoney silence!

There's an upcoming court case. I would guess that is likely why they are being silent on the issue.

CleopatraSelene · 04/10/2025 15:00

borntobequiet · 10/05/2025 08:27

Thank you, I tried to compose a reply to that but was stumped. No one in most if the last century cared a jot about lesbians in this sense. They simply didn’t feature to most women (unless you were one of course, and your personal life was tricky as a consequence). The idea that women worried about predatory lesbians in public loos is laughable. Those of us born around the middle of the last century tended to - and still tend to IMO - be more relaxed and accepting of other people’s sexuality than those who followed. (At my girls’ school, “crushes” on other girls, which occasionally became mildly physical, were pretty normal and not seen as any indication of future sexual orientation.)
What I did notice was that it - “you’re a lesbian/lezzer” became an occasional taunt among schoolchildren in the mid nineties, used towards girls who were somewhat gender nonconforming, like my DD, probably because prior to that most children hadn’t even heard the word.

Edited
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I see what you mean re people being more accepting around the middle of the century.

However, when you say crushes on girls were seen as normal & not indicative of orientation in future: is this really evidence of lesbian acceptance?

If at your school someone had turned out in later school years to be lesbian/having a gf rather than simply having girl crushes, would people not have had issues with that?

Maybe I'm wrong, but hasn't it historically been the way in girls' schools that girl crushes were fine precisely BECAUSE most people had them, and bc they were thus seen as an adolescent stage to heterosexuality, but girls who had relationships with girls/turned out to be lesbian were certainly not accepted at schools in the same way?

I get that most UK older women haven't been very fazed by lesbians, certainly not how men reacted to gay men often. But isn't the fact that lesbians 'just didn't feature' to most women in itself indicative of the way that lesbianism was generally disregarded as it was often disbelieved that women could have serious attractions that didn't involve men at all?

Invisibility & disregard are obvs better than violent persecution, but they're not the same as acceptance, are they?

CleopatraSelene · 04/10/2025 15:37

CleopatraSelene · 04/10/2025 15:00

I see what you mean re people being more accepting around the middle of the century.

However, when you say crushes on girls were seen as normal & not indicative of orientation in future: is this really evidence of lesbian acceptance?

If at your school someone had turned out in later school years to be lesbian/having a gf rather than simply having girl crushes, would people not have had issues with that?

Maybe I'm wrong, but hasn't it historically been the way in girls' schools that girl crushes were fine precisely BECAUSE most people had them, and bc they were thus seen as an adolescent stage to heterosexuality, but girls who had relationships with girls/turned out to be lesbian were certainly not accepted at schools in the same way?

I get that most UK older women haven't been very fazed by lesbians, certainly not how men reacted to gay men often. But isn't the fact that lesbians 'just didn't feature' to most women in itself indicative of the way that lesbianism was generally disregarded as it was often disbelieved that women could have serious attractions that didn't involve men at all?

Invisibility & disregard are obvs better than violent persecution, but they're not the same as acceptance, are they?

Show quote history

It's in no way unheard of for straight women to have a mean girl-ish reaction, esp ad teens,,to the idea of lesbians or sharing spaces with them. There was a case around the early 2000s of girls in the US saying they didn't want the lesbian in the locker rooms & she was actually removed from sports for a few weeks before despite having done nothing wrong. On the few GC lesbian subreddits, lots of (mainly US) women have stories of that kind of bullying at school or even later on from adults, sometimes also bullying in loos for butch ones who are still clearly female

I think personally this is much more of a US thing, which fits with stricter gender norms there. Their issues should not be protected here, and bullying of lesbians is not a shield/Trojan horse for transwomen, the opposite.

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