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.

Yes @puppymaddness stop bugging us and write to your MP. Although, we would like to know why hanging out with transwomen is different from hanging out with other men, just out of curiosity. I appreciate this means something to you (just as it means something to me to join a women-only club), but - what?

I've been arguing on facebook today with idiots about the GG and WI judgements. I don't usually do this, mainly for privacy, but the amount of misinformation going round is staggering.

Actually maybe I need to try and block all the GC/trans stuff on facebook. I've liked a few GC posts recently, and the algorithms are giving me more and more about this. It's not good for my blood pressure!

Well yes, the equality act in general does prohibit sex discriminstion.

It allows exemptions to this in certain circumstances, but only based on biological sex.

You can absolutely have a mixed sex targetted at common interests of women and transwomen. You just can't label it women-only, or exclude other men should they want to join simply for being men rather than trans women.

But since women and trans women have so much in common with each other, I'm sure plenty of de facto women-and-trans-women groups will arise organically even though they can't be explictly limited to "women and transwonen" simply due to the comfort women and transwomen feel being together. After all, women-only groups being allowed to exist doesn't stop trans women and women socialising everywhere else, does it?🙂

To be honest, I don't think many women will actively try to stop a group that welcomes women and transwomen if the group is set up for that, communicates it clearly and if a necessary service like a womens support group is still available as well as the mixed sex one.

What women object to is having previously single sex groups obfuscating they are mixed sex, when the goal of the group is female oriented or when womens groups get hijacked by transactivists.

Transwomen are free to set up their own womens organisations that are mixed sex aside from the womens single sex. You can support that one if you want.

If men that want to join as well, that is for men to argue. All we are doing is pointing out the group can't use the EA as argument to keep men out as single gender is not recognised by the EA

I heard this too. He did sound a bit sad, and the lady who i think was from the WI was very performatively sad indeed. But i tjoight the correspondent did a fairly good job of explaining it. That if you let people in of the opposite sex it ceases to be single sex, and that's why they are changing their rules. She said it in a fairly straight forward way.

What you specifically wish to prohibit , in law , is any group for women that welcomes, includes trans women.

No. You've got it the wrong way around. The law prohibits discrimination, all discrimination - unless there's a very good reason for it. Those very good reasons have been catalogued, and none of them is "is a man but is not a trans woman". Thus, it's illegal to discriminate only against men who are not trans women. This means that wherever trans women are accepted, other men must be accepted too. This is not about GC people and whatever feelings we may or may not have about trans women. It's about anti-discrimination justice.

If you think "is a man but is not a trans woman" should be a valid reason to discriminate against some men, then feel free to campaign for it.

I'm not going to get in an argument with you about how you ought to see trans women. I am well aware that would be futile.

You see trans women as male; you see no distinction between trans women and men, you see no affinity with women, and there is nothing that will persuade you otherwise:

A substantial proportion of the population, including trans women themselves, see things very differently .

What I am objecting to is a total State-enforced prohibition on any women's organisation / association ever being able to welcome / include trans women . because that is profoundly authoritarian and anti-democratic as a principle.

You see trans women as male; you see no distinction between trans women and men, you see no affinity with women, and there is nothing that will persuade you otherwise

I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.
Persuade me with your solid arguments.

Regardless of your logics and how you seek to justify them, the outcome is the same.

What you are advocating for is a total prohibition on any organisation for women that also welcomes / includes trans women.

Whereas I am not persuadable, because I believe in sex. There is nothing wrong with being a man, and there is nothing wrong with a man wearing a dress or some other 'feminine' coded garment, calling himself Elizabeth, and taking up any hobby he fancies.

But he is still a man, and can have no idea what it is like to be a woman.

It’s the Equality Act.
We do not care that you have a problem with women’s groups not including males who pretend to be women.

I think there have always been trans women who have just gone quietly about their business following transition. They tend to wear casual dress and cardigans and normal stuff. I think they have been accepted into women’s spaces for many years. It’s the women face fetish trans women whose whole personality is about their sexuality and never shut up about it I feel uncomfortable with.

Yes - we are.

for the Stare to enforce a total prohibition on any women's group ever being able to also welcome / include trans women regardless of that group's own purported mission/ values?

No one is prohibiting women from allowing transwomen into their group.

But if they do allow transwomen in they also have to let all men in.

If the women don't want to let all men in then they can't pass themselves off as a woman only group.

Well unfortunately the be- cardiganed didn't step up and say 'not in our name', so here we are.

If I believed that for a moment I would be happy to have exchange of ideas on that.

Unfortunately I am well aware that such an exchange would be entirely futile. Your only interest in opening that conversation would be to seek to demonstrate that I am an idiot/
fool/
penis panderer (or any of the other long list of names you like to call pp's who disagree with you on this subject).

Thank you.

No one has to seek to demonstrate that, you're doing a cracking job all by yourself.

When we don’t understand something we ask questions

if the person refuses to answer we assume that means they don’t know the answer

i thunk it’s insulting to assume we are all so bigoted that we would ignore any sane argument that describes what links women and transwomen

so basically it’s your faith nothing more ?

Yes, because then it wouldn't be an organisation for women. If all that bothers you is the labelling - because you won't accept a designated unisex equivalent service - it's proof that you only want these services to exist to validate men as women, not because you think they should actually serve women.

How would we categorise a women and TW only service? What trait do all born women share with all trans women, but with no men, and no trans men (who are also born women, so good luck with that one).

Yes . Again. I understand perfectly. you are happy to allow mixed sex groups that include everyone:

What you are specifically seeking to prohibit/ outlaw is any women's group that includes/ welcomes trans women.

Really? What's the difference? What makes a trans woman any more like me than any other male bodied person?

Transwomen are men and everyone knows this.
A small minority pretend otherwise and many people will pay lip service in the public sphere whilst resenting the self deception. But everybody, including transwomen themselves, know they’re men.

What you are advocating for is a total prohibition on any organisation for women that also welcomes / includes trans women.

Not at all! As several women here have already told you, we have exactly nothing against organisations welcoming both women and trans women! Whoever wants to set up an organisation and advertise it as "for women and trans women," then more power to them, by all means!

All we're trying to explain to you is that by definition, such an organisation is mixed-sex, and cannot legally call itself a women's organisation. They can absolutely aim to have only women and transwomen among their members, but they cannot legally put it in their texts, nor legally enforce it. This is not about what we want; it's just... the law.

Oh fuck off the lot of you. Poisonous bunch.

Got to ask @Kloot which side of the debate you are aiming at with your lovely friendly post? As both sides of the argument are being posted on here?