Has anyone divorced their spouse for not understanding gender critical views?

[PinkTreeFrog]

It is a major point of difference, along with others that I will omit in this thread for clarity. Generally, values aligned at marriage but became distinct over the past decade.

Are Quakers progressive left ?

Where does it say who are excluded ? What social media I mean.

Our organisation | Quakers in Britain

I am not sure what game you are playing @RedTagAlan
but please do not mis quote me

I am not playing any game. Your post caused by eyebrows to raise in surprise, given how quakers are famously inclusive and against conflict. So I did a web search and I saw they made The Telegraph over their toilet policy. I wont link the Telegraph because paywalled.

But here is the Quakers policy.

statement-of-policy-on-provision-of-trans-inclusive-facilities-bym (quaker.org.uk)

And a quote from that : "5) It is not possible or desirable to monitor who uses our facilities and therefore cannot guarantee any shared space as exclusive for one group of people. We will not label something as a single-sex space if we cannot truthfully guarantee that it will be single-sex"

That seems fair enough to me. Given that single sex facilities have to be provided, but who actually uses the facilities is not enforceable, so far as I am aware. So they are saying they won't do the labels.

The Telegraph is paywalled, so I can't read the whole articles, but how the right wing press works is an armchair interest of mine, and it really does not surprise me to see they are trying to vilify Quakers, of all people, to generate "rage bait"

From what I can see, Quakers have no " TERF" ban policy, but for sure, an individual or group of individuals might have made a social media post. But given that "TERF" means " trans-exclusionary radical feminists", exclusionary being the key word, and quakers being inclusive, it does raise an interesting conundrum. Can a group who say they are inclusive block another group who are exclusionary?

As for my question " Are Quakers progressive left ?", genuine question. Because that brings up the whole left wing/right wing Jesus thing. And that is something we see a lot in US politics.

Here is the article about Quaker toilet policy in the Telegraph.

https://archive.is/BzNNL

Reading this, Quakers have taken an activist stance.

“Quakers in Britain also pointed out that at its main building, French House in London, all public facilities were “trans inclusive”.”

“”A spokesman said: “Toilets labelled with a ‘female’ sign are intended for cis women, trans women, and non-binary and intersex people for whom this toilet is best aligned with their lived experience.”*

““Toilets labelled with a ‘male’ sign are intended for cis men, trans men, and non-binary and intersex people for whom this toilet is best aligned with their lived experience.””

This excuse, “It said it was not desirable to monitor who uses its facilities, adding: “We cannot guarantee any shared space as exclusive for one group of people.”” is also nonsensical. Because no organisation in the UK can 100% guarantee their toilets will only ever be used by people of the sex they are intended for. Even with security there checking IDs because a group of people have been extended the privilege of being able to have IDs with a false sex identifier on it.

Just because you cannot make toilets 100% single sex in practice is not a reason to not have a policy stating it should be only one sex accessing that provision. However, considering the subsequent statements, I believe this is also a deliberate choice by the group to prioritise gender identity over sex class of people and they have offered a weakly supported explanation as to why they won’t change their policy.

I think though their official comment on the toilet situation is in line with their overall support of gender identity and that identity having higher priority than sex class.

It's an interesting conundrum. The Quakers, all 12k or so of them, want to do their thing ( I think they sit in a circle and talk about their God experiences) , in a totally inclusive way, yet they are being labeled as "activist" by another group of people who are saying they have to exclude a certain group from a specific place.

Especially when one considers that they are famed for being inclusive, so they are maybe seen as a refuge for believers of other denominations that are being fractured over dogma. So they are an attractive organisation for LGBTQ believers.

The point of the article is that in the UK if they label their toilets as being for a particular sex, then that label ‘male / men’ or ‘female / women’ indicates it should be single sex. Their reaction to the SC judgement followed an activist line.

Your framing of “another group of people who are saying they have to exclude a certain group from a specific place.” is not really accurate. It is perhaps more accurate to say that the UK law excludes a certain group of people from specific places due to safeguarding priorities if particular spaces are described in a specific way, regardless of what any specific faith group believes.

The labelling of ‘activist’ was a reference to the stance that the group in the UK made in their statement about toilet usage which mirrors statements from organisations such as Stonewall.

So they can't avoid being labelled as activist, even though they are being inclusive. So they are activist anti exclusive ?

And yes, before you say they are being exclusive to women, I would have thought Quaker women overall preferred to be inclusive anyway, given that this is a big reason for membership.

@RedTagAlanyou are jumping from one (incoherent) point to another as soon as someone challenges your assertions. Are you now seriously claiming to speak for all Quaker women? Including those who have been raped and sexually assaulted? On what basis? And remember that consent is not transferable. You cannot agree to men using women’s facilities on their behalf nor can the male Quaker spokesman. What of the many women who are not Quakers but who rent Quaker facilities? What makes you assume that they consent? It is entirely possible to welcome trans people to Quaker services while at the same time following the law and respecting women’s spaces.

I am not jumping from any point to any other. I am just saying it's an interesting conundrum. The idea of an inclusive org being ordered to be non inclusive. I don't see it as a leap to think members of an inclusive org are themselves inclusive.

I checked to see is the quakers had any abuse issues like other Churches. None I can find, although I do have limited web.

I suppose if they rent out their facilities then it will be up to the renter to police the toilets ?

The ‘inclusivity’ you are talking about is solely inclusivity for TW. No mention of TM (many of whom won’t use the gents), no mention of women, no mention of children. A Quaker who wishes to be inclusive would struggle with that. It’s simply redefining the language to privilege men.

I agree that it would be an unusual expectation that all female people who describe themselves as Quakers would agree with the spokesman’s statement. That is a highly unlikely generalisation. Just like it is highly unlikely that there will be no cases of female Quakers being abused by male Quakers historically or presently.

I am not sure why some people would make such generalisations about a faith group.

An immediate issue I could see is if a woman who is a Quaker was married to man who is a Quaker and who declared he was now a woman and is now divorced. If they were part of the same community still, that woman would have to share a female single sex space with her ex-husband who potentially was abusive. The policy doesn’t then safeguard that ex-wife and prioritises the ex-husband.

They could avoid being considered to take an activitist stance by taking an inclusive but neutral one.
This would be to retain single sex provisions and add a third space, and for any statements to use neutral language, acceptable to all, offensive to none. Specifically avoid the word 'cis' and avoiding linking the positive stance of 'inclusivity' with meeting the needs of one group while ignoring those of others.

I did wonder at the Quaker statement having the term "CIS" in it.

Inclusive just means including by a certain category. Inclusive by sex = female (transmen, NBs born female). Inclusive by gender = females and males who call themselves female etc. Both are inclusive in their own category. Ultimately being inclusive will lead to some group being excluded. You may think the Quakers are being inclusive but only if you think a person’s trans identity is more important than the person’s sex.

Having reread the article about the Quakers, much of what is published there is like it has been taken from Stonewall advice.

Statements like:

“We must respect the dignity of each person to live with integrity, informed by the truth of their lived experience”.

and

“Like Stonewall, Mr Parker said the Supreme Court judgement did not have “the force of law”.

“Whilst the EHRC has recently issued guidance, this is currently only interim guidance. It is non-statutory and therefore does not have the force of law,” the document states. “We see the Equality Act itself as our primary legal guide when making decisions.”

The EHRC has advised that the law has not changed and that the judgement should be considered clarification of the law though. So, I do suspect that this faith group is taking advice from Stonewall rather than taking fully independent legal advice on the EA.

And the there is this:

“No trans, non-binary, or intersex Quaker, staff member, or service user will be asked to disclose or prove aspects of their identity in ways that are not asked of cisgender people. We do not seek to monitor who uses our facilities, nor do we believe it is possible or desirable to do so.”

““We have self-contained facilities, which function as single sex spaces, available for all our building users. We are committed to taking robust and proactive steps to ensure that all our spaces remain safe, inclusive, and free from harassment or inappropriate behaviour.””

Do they have single sex toilets or not? Are they saying that their single sex toilets have no communal areas at all and all they have are mixed sex toilets? Because that doesn’t seem consistent with the statement :

“Quakers in Britain also pointed out that at its main building, French House in London, all public facilities were “trans inclusive”.”

“A spokesman said: “Toilets labelled with a ‘female’ sign are intended for cis women, trans women, and non-binary and intersex people for whom this toilet is best aligned with their lived experience.”

”“Toilets labelled with a ‘male’ sign are intended for cis men, trans men, and non-binary and intersex people for whom this toilet is best aligned with their lived experience.””

That seems very unclear and inconsistent and uses words such as ‘cis’ which is only ideological as it is meaningless and not neutral at all.

Then there is this:

“No trans, non-binary, or intersex Quaker, staff member, or service user will be asked to disclose or prove aspects of their identity in ways that are not asked of cisgender people.”

Either way, I doubt it can be said that the Quakers are completely neutral in their inclusiveness given their statements mirror the activist statements widely published.

Not only that, but they do seem to be only inclusive of one group, those with a gender identity, without regard to the conflict of needs of female people and the group with the philosophical belief about gender identity. So, not inclusive of women who disagree that when someone’s sex class matters, gender identity should not be prioritised above sex class.

So are Quakers good or bad then ?

“No trans, non-binary, or intersex Quaker, staff member, or service user will be asked to disclose or prove aspects of their identity in ways that are not asked of cisgender people.”

This is quite inconsistent when you consider it. And it again seems to be lifted from somewhere like Stonewall, although I have not checked.

Putting aside the use of the non-neutral term ‘cisgender’, in fact everyone should be expected to use the single sex spaces that corresponds with their body’s sex class. Expecting a person with a transgender identity to follow that policy is equal to the expectation for all people.

Yet.. they then contradict that by saying, “ “Toilets labelled with a ‘female’ sign are intended for cis women, trans women, and non-binary and intersex people for whom this toilet is best aligned with their lived experience.”

Their statements are contradictory unless only viewed through a gender identity theory lens.

TERFs are simply 'excluding' TIM from their definition of women for matters relating to women's rights. This wouldn't extend to wanting to exclude them from The Quakers or indeed anywhere else that wasn't designated for women only. So there is no conundrum outside of the imaginings of people who willfully misinterpret excluding male people from a feminist definition of women as being 'anti trans'.

Just to add.

The reason the contradiction is important to note is that there is no right for a person with a gender identity to withhold information about their sex category under human rights. They are held to the exact same standard as everyone else under certain conditions. Safety of others is one of those conditions.

Yet when groups like Stonewall advise organisations, they seem to forget mentioning those conditions and only stating that people with transgender identities have a right to privacy. Which ignores the clauses that remove that right.

It’s not about good or bad. It’s about which you believe is more important. If you think sex is the best determinant then you could quite possibly believe this has negative consequences for women who want female spaces without the opposite sex. There was a time, not to long ago where the idea of male entering a female toilet would mean automatic expulsion. A safeguarding risk because there is evidence for example that males are more violent than females. It simply doesn’t make sense that a male claiming a trans identity as a woman means that the person can step away from the behaviours associated with the male group. Similarly it makes no sense to suggest that a woman who claims to be a man somehow becomes more violent because she self identifies into that group. This is not suggesting that TWs are all violent abusive men - not at all, it’s just highlighting the reality of being born male or female.

My Aunt and Uncle are Quakers.

I love them, but they are basically hippies, who have been priviledged their whole lives and out of touch with reality.

My cousins grew up with no tv. Somehow this was dangerous. One of them used to get distressed at watching Tom and Jerry when they visited. They were 10 or 11 at the time. They couldn't cope with ANYTHING with a PG certificate until their teens.

The whole family largely have avoided 'society' for one reason or another.

The idealism and detachment from the rest of the world is a lot of the problem. They have NO IDEA about many issues as they have such a narrow exposure to the world and a very narrow social circle as a result. They have generally poor general knowledge - they know about politics to a degree due to radio 4 but again thats an elitest view of the world in its own right and they have a lack of shared cultural reference points so actually its been tough for my cousins to really intergrate into the adult world as they were so different and had little in common with so many of their peers.

It wasn't a cult, but the degree to which they isolated themselves is quite scary.

My uncle is very opinated about politics though and thinks hes very informed. He is to a degree, but he lacks a breadth of knowledge and he only has a limited number of sources. I like him, but I also think whilst he's outwardly very socialist and very support all society he's desparately naive and exceptionally narrowminded due to his lack of exposure to the world for the last fifty years. He's led a modest life, but its also been exceptionally priviledged in a way thats less obvious because its not based on material things. Its difficult to explain how this closing off to the world and almost picking a form of idealism does this unless you see it close up. He's effectively lived in an echo chamber of his own creation - and is a good case study for what echo chamber living does.

I admire Quakers in a way and am envious of their ability to over simplify the world. I would love to believe in peace and everyone getting along together in the way my Aunt and Uncle believe. But I simply don't think the world works like that and I simply think its a massively naive mindset which has no understanding of living in the real world. My Uncle is a massive cynic about certain things and believes certain people are just 'bad', but idealist about his pet issues. I'm just moderately cyncial about everything and think that most people are trying to do the right thing but have different priorities and motivations. He's exceptionally black and white in a way I'm just not.

And there's the rub for me. You can only be really inclusive, if you don't have a black and white mindset. Its the paradox I see in my Uncle. He wants the world to be equal but also in his head has very firm and fixed ideas for whom to blame for the world not being perfect. Thats the problem - always looking for someone to ultimately blame, rather than looking at problems and how to make the case to fix them. The issue is this whole game of blame rather than seeing the world as built on a mesh of well meaning / well intentioned ideas which are of different priorities to different people and are often very flawed. These are not 'bad' people. Just people who are narrowminded in a different way.

So yes I do see massive problems within the Quaker mindset, precisely because they uncouple themselves in this way from everyone else. Whilst also being almost envious of that degree of self serving idealism where you don't have to come up with real world solutions and just politely preach peace and love instead and be rather critical of anyone who see the world as 'a bit more complicated' than that.

They simply have no concept of the world outside their bubble in my experience.

They want everyone to just get along, but don't really have solutions for conflict points. They simply deny the existence of a conflict point or just don't see it or don't want to see it.

Its a black and white thinking for Nice People. People who are not Nice People are somehow just Bad People. And you choose either to live in Nice Land or Bad Land. Bad things don't happen to Nice People because you've chosen the Right Way.

Its really difficult to explain. I find it all very deliberately isolationist precisely so you don't have to engage with The Difficult Stuff.

Either way, I find it privileged and unaware of how its simply not possible for the majority of people to live like this because of their background and the lack of ability to escape other people easily.

If redtagalan had actually read what I wrote
it was about the social media accounts of specific Friends Meeting Houses

I did read it. That's why I made a distinction between official policy and local posters.

Inclusive policies make provision for EVERYBODY

Women who need single sex spaces
Men who need single sex spaces
Those who are happy to use mixed sex spaces.

Any policy which excludes the first two is not inclusive
therefore the Quakers are not inclusive
AND are in breach of Equality and Health and Safety law