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. Obviously only women can make jam.

I hope not too. I’ll be interested to see if any of this is mentioned at my next WI meeting. (There are no transwomen in my local branch)

Either 'living as a woman' means 'female human who has survived childhood' or it means nothing. Presumably they are going for 'means nothing' so anyone can join.

Exactly. Still, I can't wait to see the sisterhood groups. Anyone guessing how many groups there'll be and how many members they'll have. Will they need a church hall to meet in or could they make do with a phone box?

Can we all join the proper WI to give a clear marker of our opinions? It'd be so telling if nobody joined the other thing. Apart from men in dresses, of course.

I have no experience of the WI and it's the first time I've read anything on their website. But two things stood out to me: that "many" of their members will be upset about this, apparently. Really? I doubt it.
And secondly, these sisterhood meetings where women discuss their experience of being women ( or something like that). Again, really? I feel very womanly today. I wonder how many of their members will want to go to multiple meetings to listen to a transgender woman talking about her experience of being a woman? One such discussion might be interesting. Two, I'd get my coat.
It strikes me that the WI have been trying very hard to do something that no-one wants. Well, hardly anyone. It must come from the top. Because a women's group changes when it becomes mixed.

'We remain clear that our strong belief is that transgender women are women.'

No one has asked the members about any of this as far as I know. I haven’t been a member that long though

Listening to this I get the very strong impression that the WI are hammering the last nails into their own coffin. How can you survive as a women's organisation while being so begrudging about excluding men? Ffs, just own your male-pandering and become the People's Institute.

According to Melissa Green almost no one within the organisation complained about including transwomen.

No you can still grf WI, even though I am your prim demographic and you're always advertising for me to join and i know that there are no deluded men pretending to be women in either of my local groups. Im not being associated with any of these pathetic, mealy mouthed, "won't anyone think of the menz?" groups. And my girls are living the switch to other activities.

I feel like these groups, WI, Girl Guides etc are just signing their death warrant really with this pathetic attitude. Membership will surely further decline as women and girls will gradually go elsewhere.

Green by name, green by nature. I get the distinct impression that this woman received the questions ahead of the interview.

Well okay, but apart from him?
I bet there were practically no trans members till maybe five years ago, when a few TW decided to make an issue of this.

Ffs 🙄

Is that because they promote a narrow stereotype of woman ? Rather than an evidence based one? Because their little women brains can’t, obviously, do logic ?

I'm also confused by their reasoning.

I understand that some women want the WI to be single sex, but the people who run it clearly don't mind, so why not allow men to join?

I think there a few younger ‘queer’ friendly WI groups in London. I suspect like my local branch that most groups are women only and are not interested in talking about sisterhood with men.

Why don't they explicitly state what they think a woman is, then, if it's not a female person?

Considering the entire operation supposedly centres them, they must know what they mean by "women"?

They are embarrassed to do so because they would look like sexist fools if they did.

Yeah right......

Less Sisterhood and more Misterhood...

(That's not my joke, I've recycled someone else's )

Of course they didn’t oh deary me no

I can believe it. Most likely these were the narrowly defined transsexuals rather than the broad trans umbrella grouping.

"...almost no one within the organisation DARED complain..."

There, Melissa, fixed that for you.

Because it's against their founding principles so they'd have to change that and not be WI anymore.

Excellent news, to all who campaigned and challenged to achieve this.