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.

I dont think so. He wanted to join as a man, not a TIM.

This. Everyone in FWR who isn't already a member should be joining in the next month or so - they need to see a huge membership spike following this news.

If you look in the mirror while you shave, or look down while you wee, and say 'yup I'm a woman despite the facial hair and a penis' then you probably believe whatever it suits you to.

Presumably they don't deserve them if they don't believe men are women. But democracy and civil liberties and freedom of belief!

I can assure that if (when?) I turn up it will not be to promote my understanding of TIMs, and based on my experience thus far the more I understand the more I will seek to distance myself and fight against every signle thing they stand for.

I have no intention of joining an organisation who is only doing this because they are forced to be law

I have no intention of supporting an organisation who thinks I am a women for some undisclosed reason that isn’t the sex I was born as

they may be abiding by the law but their attitude sucks

By that logic I should be able to set up a Beer Drinking Club that encourages under 18s to join. All those anti democratic restrictions about age limits for drinking could just sod off.

That was the point. To demonstrate that the current policy was discriminatory.

Detransition is just another rainbow-coloured and wonderful part of the trans journey dontcha know (but detrans are a special kind of trans not allowed to speak on trans issues).

I feel it's only fair to tell you that this is not my 'logic loop', its the law.

The Women's Institute have to comply with equality law just as everyone else does, hence their announcement today.

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

That is pretty much how parliament works. MPs are elected and the party that can form a government creates legislation. If you want to change legislation, you have the right to campaign for change. Instead you seem to be arguing that people should be allowed to break the law.

All I can say is
Sad Times

Lol they won't have a clue!

You can see why so many people like this are influenced by Trump, Farage etc. Can't follow even a very short thread of logic, or understand equality law, just "it feels like a thing that goes against my prejudices so it must be wrong".

Have you followed any of the recent industrial tribunals or read any of the history of the so-called gender critical movement? If you have then you'll see that people have had no problem at all doing exactly that to women who didn't share their views. They called them hateful, with no place in modern society. Now women are saying these are our rights and you can't have them because you'll be hurt if you don't get them. How about you being kind and respectful to those women? You can start with JK Rowling.

The 'Sisterhood' thing is pointless anyway because the TWs won't want to go. They only want to be in the regular women's groups to validate their existence as biological (sic) women.

It will be like the debate about TWs in women's sport. Some sports tried to find a middle way and create an 'open' category that TW could enter. None of them did.

Not just a logic loop eh @nicepotoftea and not just the law
It's biology
Why can't people grasp it??

IIRC, the WI had previously stated that female trans people were excluded from the organisation, which actually was illegal discrimination towards those people on the basis of their protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

You do recall correctly SirEctor - their current EDI policy states "all women who live as women" [whatever that's meant to mean, they never defined it...]

Transmen live as men and so are not eligible

Yes we can. And we do. From sports to prisons, refuge centres to rape crisis provision, and more.

And frankly, being told you can’t join a Women’s social group because you are a man is very low down on most rational peoples concerns.

It's always illuminating to see how men who want to beat down women's rights and equality will frame it. In this thread and yesterday's about Girlguiding, we have been told that by insisting on single sex spaces, women are monopolists, anti democratic and anti civil liberties. Some people really do seem to believe that as men they have an absolute moral right to define women out of existence (because if a man can be a woman, there's no such thing as a woman as they aren't distinct from men) and prevent them from gathering anywhere without men, and that this oppressive sexism - this right of men over women, no matter what women say about it - is not only right and good, but the absolute bedrock of civil liberty and democracy.

Quite apart from being jaw dropping, weapon level entitlement, it also shows that they know who the women are.

Interpretation of legislation is not supposed to be 'democratic'.

'All women who live as women' is an absolutely amazing addition to their policy.
You can be a woman, but that isn't the same as living as a woman.

Yet elsewhere "living as a woman" literally makes someone a woman.

They cannot, however hard they try, unmuddle "female" and "woman" even in their own policies! So telling!

If you're not worried that organisations are being forced to change their policies to align with views which go against their moral beliefs, then you should be. This will cut more ways than one.

We dont exclude because of how people FEEL

we exclude because its seen as the best option to promote fairness

males and females can have sex separated groups because of their differences in biology and because of how society treats them differently. Objective. Measurable

not feelings

The kind of country that bases its laws on fact not fairy-tales.

If your beliefs are that 'being a woman is restricted to people with certain feelings' then I'm not upset that's changing.

Same as if your beliefs are that brown people are criminals or disabled people are faking it. Sorry, we need to legislate against this discrimination.

I am utterly delighted about this, but in this particular area I do wonder what developments over the next few years will bring. Because if a government in power wanted to, I think they could get an amendment to the Equality Act in this specific area passed, such that it became legal to have associations that allowed in women and transwomen (potentially only with GRCs) but excluded men.

Not for sports, not for services, but just for associations. Given that it has now been shown it is entirely legal for women's groups to exclude all men including transwomen, and given that (inexplicably in my view, but indisputably looking at all the comments etc on social media) there are plenty of women who (say they would) like a group to be 'for women' but including transwomen, should this be prohibited?

In theory you would then be able to have a female only group and a 'women plus transwomen' group. I think a politician could make a good argument for allowing that, and it would be hard to argue against, because the argument against is essentially about resources - that in practice what may happen is female groups disappear.

But if the female groups do disappear, would that be just people voting with their feet? Or an example of the patriarchy disadvantaging women?