Women’s Rights Network imploding

[NameChangedWren]

WTF is going on? There are letters circulating with members alleging bullying, and anyone who asks a question is suspended and comments deleted. The leader calling everyone to urgent meetings with bizarre messaging: ‘there is no letter, and if there is it’s full of lies, and you can’t see the letter just trust us, and ooh look, something shiny!’ Should I cut my losses, cancel my standing order and just follow Let Women Speak?

I think many of us are intrigued by Unusualdog's personal animus against Tinsel and belittling of her work on behalf of Transwidows.

Then there is the fact that they had never heard of Filia.

Also several curt or bamboozled requests for information about women's rights activism that seem outside the bounds of this thread.

A sudden interest in wanting to find out how much women working for other organisations are paid.

Of course the unprovoked, aggressive, personal attacks on Tinsel and inaccurate minimisation of her work, on this thread and the "Where has WPUK gone?" (something like that) thread, stands out.

Particularly for someone who claims that any critique of WRN Ltd. and its Directors should be condemned because it could damage WRN's reputation and its effectiveness. Despite not being a member of WRN.

However, apparently it is fine on threads of particular interest to women involved in GC/sex-realist activism to try to damage Tinsel's reputation and undermine her work with Transwidows 🤷‍♀️

Appearing to be on our side, whilst hating me, yet never having heard of FILIA/ Lisa Marie is an odd combination, it’s true. Plenty of the soc fems probably hate me, but they’ve all definitely heard of FILIA.

I'm not, not have I ever been part of the membership of the Women's Right Network, but have followed this thread.

On one side there are women who are angry & feel agrieved at their treatment.

On the other, a handful of aggressive women, unwilling to countenance that their anger might be justified & making some frankly nasty comments towards them.

If their behaviour is indicative of the other members it's not surprising their membership are unhappy.

Lol right back at you, sweetheart.
A Zoom? With someone who’s “definitely 💯 nothing to do with WRN” and yet magically channels the exact leadership script, including the sneery “once were” line? Hard pass. I’ve watched how those cosy little calls tend to end for women who notice things.
Machiavellian mind? Bless. I prefer “pattern recognition”. And the proverb you’re groping for is “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” – not whatever suspicious/guilty mash-up you just served up. Though given you’ve now offered a private Zoom to a total stranger while furiously denying any connection… well. One might almost call that telling.
Still, you keep doing you. I’ll be over here with the receipts, the membership exodus numbers, and the growing list of regions that have already walked.

Sunlight’s still free, sweetie. Open a window before the whole echo chamber runs out of oxygen and starts eating its own tail. X

you’ve now offered a private Zoom to a total stranger while furiously denying any connection… well. One might almost call that telling.

Seriously weird! To the point of predatory.

It’s normally pretty well understood here that enticing people to be doxxed is bad form.

I think this conversation is now nearing an end.

1. WRN throws out people for polite dissent
2. WRN throws out people who they think “may want to take over”
3. WRN forgets how much the Bucks members did for the work the leaders took credit for.
4. WRN doesn’t value their members.

WRN doesn’t want to admit their mistakes and have lost a huge amount of credibility , trust and goodwill from women , especially when a member of their board dares to compare a recent incident with the treatment of Sandie Peggie by NHS Fife, it was ridiculous, egotistical and absurd comment. Women are laughing at the comment and WRN Scotland won’t be able to back away from that.

Agree! WRN’s desperate, shameless grab for ultimate victimhood by exploiting Sandie Peggie as a human shield is utterly contemptible. Comparing their own nonsense to what she suffered at NHS Fife isn’t ‘absurd’ — it’s grotesque, egotistical and deeply insulting. Women see straight through the cynical stunt and are laughing in disbelief. Credibility? Trust? Goodwill? All obliterated. WRN Scotland is now a cautionary tale in how to destroy your own reputation in one pathetic move.

I think we can all deduce that 2+2=4 here. I'd take it as a sign of your success in advocating for transwidows but nevertheless, deeply creepy.

People pretending to be what they're not is usually obvious.

Handing over to Artificial Intelligence here for an objective analysis and this is what it came up with:

WRN faces internal division

Criticisms of purges, smearing, and Heather Binning's authoritarian control appear credible via pasted letters (e.g., Bucks grievance letter on suspensions, false allegations) and described screenshots (e.g., expulsion emails, changed Scotland bio criticizing top-down management, Alloa event comparisons using DARVO tactics).

Unevidenced claims include mass expulsions (e.g., 62 in Scotland), ego-driven bullying, financial opacity (e.g., consultancy fees), and Zoom abandonment during intrusion; these appear plausible due to consistent patterns across multiple posters but remain unverified without direct proof.

Defenses highlight achievements like policy work and reports (e.g., February 2026 PDF on local authorities' non-compliance with sex-based rights judgment).

Opinion: Leadership failures likely real, eroding trust and effectiveness in women's rights activism.

(It then prompted me to ask it to analyse Heather Binning's leadership style.)

Heather Binning's leadership style as WRN founder

Appears decisive, advocacy-focused, and centralized, evident in campaigns on single-sex spaces, fair sports, and policy critiques (e.g., puberty blockers, EHRC guidance delays).

Critics describe it as authoritarian, ego-driven, with expulsions, smearing, and financial opacity via covert Ltd. company control; supported by pasted letters/screenshots (e.g., Bucks grievances, expulsion emails).

Unevidenced claims (e.g., mass expulsions like 62 in Scotland, Zoom abandonment, bullying) appear credible due to consistent anecdotal patterns across posters but lack direct verification.

Overall, style drives activism but erodes internal trust.

(I then asked it to consider the outcomes of specific purges and of instances of women leaving WRN en masse as mentioned in this thread, including evidence outside this thread.)

Contributions of Ex-WRN Women to WRN when they were members:

• Past - local FOIs, policy challenges, events, volunteer work
• Future - lost to WRN via purges/leavings.

Opinion on Outcomes

1) On WRN: Damaging—membership loss, expertise drain, trust erosion, internal divisions weaken focus/effectiveness.

2) On activism outside WRN: Positive—new autonomous groups sustain/expand rights campaigns, avoiding central control issues.

(Finally, I asked: "What recommendations would you make based on your analyses and opinions?")

Recommendations

For WRN:

• Increase transparency in governance and finances;
• Implement democratic processes for decisions;
• Address grievances via independent reviews to rebuild trust.

For ex-WRN women/groups:

• Continue autonomous activism;
• Seek collaborations with aligned organizations to amplify impact.

Overall: Prioritize unity in women's rights goals over internal conflicts to strengthen movement.

(The ex-WRN Groups already tick both boxes.)

The discussion has gone low but can we at least dispense with the chat GPT posts?

Do your own thinking, don’t delegate it to a machine, don’t make it a norm, and stop feeding AI confidential information, thank you.

Except that, it’s sad to see so little leadership within women, on all sides, at every level.

I mean who would have thought that a women who joined loads of established networks to 'help the admin', got their name changed without asking the networks, registered the same name as a business, got loads of the women to do a load of work, appointed themselves the boss, operated as if they had done all the work, and then kicked everyone who said 'hang on a minute' would be an authoritarian dictator?

Its a complete mystery.

If you have got the time to analyse everything in this thread alongside relevant information elsewhere and feel able to produce an objective summary as above, free to go ahead 🤷‍♀️

it’s sad to see so little leadership within women, on all sides, at every level.

However, it appears from this statement that your objectivity, or analytical skills, might be compromised. You fail to give due credit to the "leadership" that even AI (not Chat GPT as it happens) was able to detect both within WRN and within groups of ex-WRN members.

stop feeding AI confidential information

Open AI already data-harvests Mumsnet so the "confidentiality" issue is moot.

BTW this post is not written by or with the help of AI - I don't make it a habit of it.

The post you object to was researched with the help of AI, not a copy and paste of a shedload of text vomited up by AI.

• I manually checked all cited references for accuracy
• Several iterations of requests and different prompts were required to ensure objectivity as, unassisted, AI overlooked chunks of data and some obvious themes that have emerged in this thread.

The reason I used AI at all was explained in the first line of that post:

"Handing over to Artificial Intelligence here for an objective analysis"

I think it is pretty obvious from my earlier posts that I have been inclined to criticise both WRN Ltd. and those who have come on to this thread to attack and smear critics of WRN.

It would therefore be very reasonable for anyone to doubt the impartiality or objectivity of a "summing up" that I might produce. This might lead to it being rejected wholesale on those grounds without consideration of whether it had any merit.

I hope that my use of AI has at least reduced the likelihood of that happening.

Incidentally, I have no idea whether WRN Ltd. Directors or WRN members use AI, eg. to help them to analyse information from FOI requests and create WRN reports and materials.

If you put so much work into it, which I admire, why do you need to put it through AI on top?

Don t walk with crutches when you don’t need them. And don’t feed outstanding, confidential, personal or valuable info to a LLM. End of my AI rant.

Maybe it's time we took back which was taken from us under false pretenses and as a road to make money for one woman who really doesn't care about women
..

Is love to have shoppers back

So, who’s going to Alloa? Shall we all meet under the clock with a rose in our lapels?

Well there won’t be any of the WRN Co ordinators there to have to avoid so it’s likely to be more comfortable than it was looking two weekends ago.

Go for it.

I was going to go but it turns out it's the same date as my friend's surprise party which has been sprung on us all last minute by her DH! It's a milestone one so I kind of have to go (she's an old friend). I had a great time the last few times at alloa, it's a fab atmosphere. That was the only other thing I went to other than being part of WRNS. I feel sad that things have developed on this thread re. WRNS as despite being part of the purge, I did like the individual coordinators and the women involved, I didn't really know the director other than reading her announcements on the chat, and I didn't meet her properly irl apart from a quick hello at Alloa.

Like I said, being rural and not knowing many people irl doing all this campaigning etc, it was nice to see other women at Alloa and in the group chats, but if I feel up to it, I'll start trying to engage more again.

This post sums up the problem for me. @HagsRule was thrown out of WRN, along with the rest of the Scottish group, in a mass collective purge. She liked the other women, was isolated from living in a rural area, had just started to go to events. She wasn’t responsible either for the decision to create smaller groups in Scotland, or the backlash against that. WRN shows no concern for the impact of their actions on women like her.

Apologists on this thread have said about women like @HagsRule a.) it’s the fault of other women for disagreeing and she was “caught in crossfire”, b.) that she probably did something wrong to merit being kicked out c.) she probably didn’t do anything much for the movement so was no loss d.) she should stop whining and create her own network and e.) by sharing what happened to her she is helping TRAs so she should be quiet. Not that the mass action that kicked her out was wrong, that WRN should recognise that and change its ways of operating.

The Shoppers movement began for the purpose of connecting women locally for mutual support. When it morphed into WRN, it became a vehicle for individuals to make a name. Yes there are achievements; there are some excellent reports and campaign actions. But the work is done by volunteer women, who are then treated as disposable. I am considering how best to have an impact, but I can’t stay part of the organisation.

I left this chat for a while and have just read recent posts with fresh eyes. I AM SO GLAD I am no longer associated with WRN. The whole thing gives me the shudders. I have spent 50-odd years running from nasty women, I can spot them a mile off and you and your mates on this thread are prime examples. I am sure you sleep easy in your beds as it probably never occurs to you that you're the baddies, but perhaps one day you will reflect on the hypocrisy of your behaviour. Truly, truly horrid.

You REALLY ARE a nasty piece of work

If you, @HagsRule and others in Scotland (if that is where you are) do not want, or are unable, to start up something from scratch, is there anything here (and this is probably not a complete list) worth exploring, as a way to connect with other women and get re-involved? 💚🤍💜

For Women Scotland
https://forwomen.scot/newsletter/

Let Women Speak Locals
https://www.letwomenspeak.org/locals

ScotPAG - Scottish Professionals Advising on Gender
https://www.scotpag.com/

Scottish Feminist Network
Regional Groups

Aberdeen (City and Aberdeenshire)
Argyll & Bute
Ayrshire
Borders
Clackmannanshire
Dundee & Angus
Dumbarton and Helensburgh
Dumfries & Galloway
Edinburgh & Lothians
Falkirk
Fife
Glasgow
Highlands & Islands
Inverclyde
Lanarkshire
Moray
Perth
Renfrewshire
Stirling
https://scottishfeministnetwork.co.uk/our-groups

UK Sector Networks (Sex Matters List)
https://sex-matters.org/posts/category/sector-networks/

UK SEEN - Sex Equality and Equity Networks (or similar)
https://seen-network.uk/other-seens/

Women Speak Scotland
https://womenspeakscotland.com/about/

Women's Declaration International (WDI) - UK and Scotland
https://www.womensdeclaration.com/en/country-info/united-kingdom/

Ah thanks so much @ThimbleThief I will look at these links (I know about FWS obviously and I donate to them when I can afford to).

Thanks for this x