I wonder what the WI are going to announce on Woman's Hour in the next few minutes?

[nauticant]

Apparently it will be a matter of the greatest seriousness and sorrow.

Or do we want to live in a society where one side of a political debate imposes their understandings and definitions of things on the rest

No. That's why I don't want men in women's protected spaces.

Trans identified people are either male or female like everyone else. Single sex exemptions permit the exclusion of members of the opposite sex. Males are excluded from female only spaces, services and categories. This is legitimate. If the WI no longer wants to be a women's organisation then they should change their membership rules to makle it a mixed sex organisation. Until then, it is for women only.

No-one is proposing that we gaffa tape up the mouths of men and women to prevent them from saying the magic words "I am trans".

Transwomen cannot join the WI, because they're men, and men are not women.
that is not the view of the women's institute, and does not express their

It is however the law of the land which the WI must obey. If they don't like the law the WI do have an option to lobby for a change in the law but it's telling that they haven't.

We can't start mandating all civil society organisations to exclude some people because some other people might "feel excluded" if they were there now can we?

They identify as kind. They have swallowed the guff about TW being the most marginalised and vulnerable group in the world ever and they are terrified of being labelled as transphobic. So when a man who happens to be married to a senior women in the organisation the women who identify as kind stay quiet and more men join. And as more men join the kind women have to shut down dissent from the lowly women who thought they had joined a women’s group.

Why not?
Oh, and you haven't answered my question from a few pages ago yet.

Yep. It's the sunken cost fallacy in play with these handmaiden types. Almost as deluded as their husbands.

I actually think it would be great if there were trans identifying men and men in jeans and t shirts as the Sisterhood groups, plus a smattering of women to take notes and make the tea of course. It would promote understanding between the 2 types of men and show the men living as women they have nothing to fear from the standard men. Who might take the piss a bit, being blokey types, but mostly aren't homphobic, some of them being gay themselves, and show them that they wouldn't cause the TIM any grief in the male toilets. TIM would then be enabled to get back into male toilets, where they belong, and leave the women's toilets cleaner and safer for women, which is surely what all women want.

That is unless transgresing women's boundaries and invading their spaces and making them feel unsafe is part of the experience of living as a woman for such men?

Sorry, I haven’t RTFT but is this due to the woman whose husband challenged the WI discussed here some months ago?

Yes.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

do you have a ‘thing’ for humiliation?

'Trans' is a framing device..not a unique category of human being. It provides a word and a narrative to explain why some people want to present as the opposite sex to that which they are.

But nobody is actually the opposite sex to that which they are. It is therefore not a material reality; even if someone has extreme surgery to modify their body.
Being 'trans' is not a fixed reality, either.....that is why we have detransitioners.

Isn't that up to the people who run the individual groups?

Oh? I'm really interested: can you name a single material attribute that distinguishes between a man and a trans woman, or between a woman and a trans man?

Because being trans is both real and material

I don't understand what you mean by this @puppymaddness

I am a member of a local WI group.
We've never had a TIM at ours - I wouldn't still be a member if we had.

I haven't read all of the thread or even all of the news (work getting in the way), but I won't be joining in with any 'sisterhood' activities from what I have seen so far.
Unlike the WI press statement, I firmly believe transwomen are men.

We can, and we have. You do know that there are all sorts of clubs for people with things in common, don't you? And equality law made a special exception for it.

'In this case you are mandating the exclusion of a group of people (against the values of the organisation), because they are trans'.

Nope. Noone is being excluded because they are trans.

Men are being excluded because they are men.

Maybe they could meet in the garden shed, or the bowls club, or the golf club for the TIM who want to straddle both camps.

They aren’t going to want to are they though, even if a few of the handmaids join them to sooth their troubled brow and assert that yes of course they are real women, just like the other real women with the body history that women have. Because it won’t be like being in a proper Women’s group will it. What are they going to have talks on that will keep them absorbed? Getting tights that fit, dealing with five o’clock shadow, male pattern balding, where to find nice court shoes in a size ten. How can it be a Sisterhood when the TIM have been thrust out into the cold hard world of biological reality.

What on earth are you rabbiting on about now? Nobody is mandated to start a single sex civil society. It's just entirely legal for them to do so, and equally legal for others to start one for the other sex, or for both sexes. There are some legal requirements for single sex provision in the workplace and other public services but anyone can start a single or mixed sex activity group.

Ask yourself why the WI isn't prepared to include trans identified men by becoming openly mixed sex. That's an option, it would include them, it just wouldn't maintain the pretence that they're women and use the entire organisation as a validation prop. That's why they won't do it.

Point to the section in the EA2010 that would permit the inclusion of TW but the exclusion of other men.

Yes we can.

The alternative is to leave some women without access to domestic refuges or gyms or rape crisis centres of leisure activities.

Interesting that the WI chose to announce this on Women's hour - getting the message to the right people or captured safe space?

Wow this brownie leader has said she still happily will accept boys.

these people are absolutely bonkers

That biological sex is real? Devastating news.
Who knew.