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.

Would it not be better to form perhaps a trans wi group so trans women can socialise and make it ally friendly so others can attend if wish?

Because that acknowledges that TiMs are not actually female, and like all other suggestions of third spaces, would be rejected by the TRAs, because they just want us to go along with the delusion.

Sorry, but that is wrong, surely.

If you advertise it as a women's goup and it is open to men then you risk discriminating in favour of men who say they are women (who, due to being lied to by stonewall, and their male entitlement) who will turn up anyway, and against men who don't say they are women (who will rightfully assume that a woman's group is not for men).

By your logic (and puppy's) it is fine to set up a group for women with a Chinese ethnicity (partly for social reasons, and partly for mutual support), and then let in white women and other asian women but enforcing a strick "no black members" policy.

That’s like saying Irish men aren’t the same as men.
Males who claim to be women aren’t the same as lots of other men in that not all men claim to be women. They ARE, however, the same as all men in that they’re male.

If all that bothers you is the labelling

No what bothers you is the labelling. I'm not interested in labels.

I'm just asking for some women's groups to be allowed to welcome / include trans women if they choose to.

@Kloot worked their way through many many posts before writing that. Truth hurts.

Transwomen probably expected, in their idealised version of womanhood and living as a woman, that bio women would conform to their idea of a proper womanly response by welcoming them and making them tea and cakes at their women only venues.

That is not happening, and it must be an awful disappointment to transwomen everywhere.

The shock might be that women are not stereotypes, but biological females. All different, but all the same. It's biology.

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

I'm asking your opinion. I have suggested that if you can explain what trans women and women share, you could set up a club for people with those interests and it would be completely lawful.

By 'futile' do you mean 'would sound a bit sexist'? As long as the club is open to anyone of either sex, it wouldn't be.

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 think it's quite possible for men and women to feel affinity with each other, and many women and men feel more affinity with people of the opposite sex. I just don't understand why a random woman would have more affinity with a man who identifies as a woman.

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

They should certainly campaign for what they believe, and I will continue to defend women's rights.

What shared protected characteristic would be used to justify the exclusion of men who don’t have a trans identity?

Because they are living as a woman, @FlirtsWithRhinos, you know, wearing skirts, make up and painting their nails, baking cup cakes, arranging flowers…… that’s all it takes to make you a woman.

No, that is what the Equalities Act outlaws when it outlaws sex discrimination.

If you want to campaign to remove our protections against sex discrimination then go ahead, but please at least own it.

There is no definition that puts trans women and female people together as "women" that does not fundamentally rely on sexist and reductive ideas of womanhood.

The most inclusive, least sexist way to define a woman is "any type of personality, female body".

Anything you do to change that is either limiting the personalities you consider "allowed" for women, or erasing the differences between the lived experiences of female people and male people. At the end of the day both of those ways of thinking are just the old school sexism with a retread.

You may be but it’s not within the law to exclude men if you do.

(1) How very fascist of you to tell us what we ought to think.

(2) Based on my experience of asking trans'women' on reddit how they see their place in the group known as "women" I can say with absolute certainty that your paragraph 3 is wrong. TW claim to be women, but their sense of womanhood is 100% personal and they do not claim an affinity with other women; they do not see themselves as the same thing, they just want the word and access to spaces and to LARP / cosplay.

All this shows how entitled, self centred and completely dismissive of women this ideology is.

The law saying no, women say no and we're now drowning in seething, entitled sad men and their "allies" mourning their lack of access to support women.

They should have been told no years ago before they wreaked so much damage on women and children.

All mixed sex organisations do exactly what you refer to - they welcome women and men who claim to be trans'women'.

Yep I’d go back to the initial legislation and prioritise women and children instead, ie not do it.

As long as they don't use the label "women's groups" that's fine.

And since you are not interested in labels, that works for you too!

Sorted 😍

"Women's groups" for female people, "sisterly souls" groups for people who identify with neo sexist ideas of womanhood and anyone who wants to join them, and everyone is happy :)

I don't have any problem with you talking about the equalities act and protected characteristics.
I have a problem with you enforcing the absolute and total prohibition of the existence in society of any women's groups that chose to welcome/ include trans women.

I'm not enforcing anything at all mate. It's the Equality* Act that excludes men from female single sex spaces/services/clubs etc because they don't share protected characteristics.

It's the Equality Act not the Equalities Act. You really do need to research this stuff more.

Then ask for a change of the law.

With a very clear remit of what characteristics these two groups share, which are not also shared by men with non-trans identities.

The Scottish government tried and were completely lacking in ability to do so.

Over to you.

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

Do you have any idea how often we've asked for someone to give us an explanation as to how a man can be a woman How they can be 'living as a woman'? How they can 'feel like a woman'? How they aren't male? Exactly what affinity it is that they share with women?

Asked so many times.

Answered never.

Do you want to give it a go? Without resorting to gendered stereotypes of toys, clothes make-up etc. And preferably without changing the definition of woman to anyone who says they are.

Come on. Here's your chance. Chance our minds. Make us understand it.

By your logic (and puppy's) it is fine to set up a group for women with a Chinese ethnicity (partly for social reasons, and partly for mutual support), and then let in white women and other asian women but enforcing a strick "no black members" policy.

Errr no. 😂

By my logic a group for people with Chinese ethnicity should be allowed , in law, to chose to welcome / include anyone who identifies as being of chinese ethnicity .
(Which btw is absolutely how such groups operate in practice! !)

Rather than the state imposing a singular definition of "Chinese ethnicity" (based on genetics? Identity documents?) and then prohibiting / outlawing any civil society group that didn't enforce this exclusive definition of Chinese ethnicity for the purposes of establishing its own membership.

They can choose to, they just can't call it a women's organisation because it's not. If the labelling doesn't matter and all you want is a service, not a validation tool, you'll be fine with it labelling itself the mixed sex service that it is.

I appreciate that you don't accept that women are a separate sex from men but that's so blimming ridiculous it isn't worth pretending to respect. Presumably you just take a wild guess every Mother's Day and Father's Day.

I can't understand why this solution wouldn't be acceptable.

You must be awfully gullible if you think that when a man starts calling himself a woman he somehow stops being a man. I mean does this not strike you as a seriously bizarre belief?

Round and round we go. Where we stop nobody knows!

If the group is less than 25 people, they can do what they like. Otherwise, if it has women or girl in the name ...

Here is Akua's view of it:

Akua Reindorf on associations with protected characterists.

Transcript from about 35 mins.

But everybody has to have ALL the protected characteristics in question. And then What you can’t have is a group for people with two separate [protected characteristics] …where some people have one protected characteristic and others have a different one. Because then let's say you have a group for lesbians or women and men who identify as women, trans women, it's not a… it doesn't satisfy the condition of being a single sex association. A single protected characteristic association for women because not everybody is a woman. It doesn't satisfy the condition for being um a single characteristic association for people who have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment because not everybody has that protected characteristic .

So you can't have that kind of an association. So you can't have a so-called trans-inclusive association. I mean as Maya says, you can always have two associations that join up and do things together. There are ways around it. But fundamentally, what we have started to call sumptions law is wrong both for services and for associations. um

Of course, if it was possible to have a self ID service or association, For Women Scotland simply would not have won the case. Because this is what the Scottish government wanted to do. They wanted to have transidentified males in a quota for women.