A call to all wims to challenge registered charities who claim to be women’s services who include “transwomen”

[Hedgehogforshort]

Inspired by a post about Nottinghams Women’s Centre being trans inclusive, I think it is time we did something. Like pull the ruddy rug on them.

I don’t think it will need the extensive work of the NHS data thread.

There are hundreds of alleged women’s only services who are registered charities. They mostly have a governing document describing themselves as for women only but do not mention “transwomen” in their objects, but do in unlawful policy documents.

All charities have a beneficiary group, which they cannot stray from.

Also if they change their objectives to be “inclusive’”IMHO” the funds they hold on behalf of the original beneficiaries, must be handed back or ring fenced, which is why some of the major charities have conceded, ergo the WI and GG.

My idea is that we target our own localities and make a complaint to the charity commission, about the charity we are a potential beneficiary of.

what do you all think? Happy to coordinate this though i may need @knottyauty

meanwhile i am off to look at a few national bodies

Things that have not happened
for ten
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7432440806222950400/?originTrackingId=B4ESc4vafMYhcPqvGVUUvg%3D%3D

Raphael Lemkin's family were not approached by the self-styled "Institute" when the founders decided to appropriate his name in order to camouflage their antisemitism. The family's lawyers wrote to them last September objecting to the use of his name & suggesting inter alia that "it falls afoul of the Commonwealth’s Solicitation of Funds for Charitable Purposes Act, along with other prohibitions against identity theft, “unauthorized use of name or likeness, and violation of the ‘false endorsement’ and Anti Cyber-Squatting Consumer Protection Act sections of the Lanham Act.” The founder's response seems to run along the lines of "shan't & you can't make me, nyah nyah". I am keeping popcorn to hand.

Edited to restore the Commonwealth's capitalisation

That kind of eagerly shared feckwittery is how so many employers & orgs have wound up on the wrong side of expensive legal cases.

I'm not on LinkedIn, so couldn't see much of that, but I see Maya is on the case. Likely to be a lone voice there, though?

Speaking their branes, as the saying goes.

Well have i inspired people to “target” women’s sector agencies who are non compliant or were wims doing it anyway?

Either way it is great news from LinkedIn that we are causing a “problem’” that has created a Streisland effect effect.

Having peeped at a few more smaller agencies there are plenty who are holding our line.

keep the intel coming

I notice this is quite different from concerns about policy wording or safety questions. This is a coordinated campaign to remove trans women from support services entirely.
I have to be honest with you. When I read "pull the ruddy rug on them," I think about who actually uses these services. Women fleeing violence. Women in crisis. Trans women face disproportionately high rates of domestic abuse and sexual violence. Where exactly should they go?
You're framing this as a technical legal matter about charity governance. But the practical outcome you're seeking is that vulnerable people lose access to help. That's not a neutral administrative correction.
I also think this strategy may backfire. Charities can and do update their governing documents. Many were founded when these questions simply weren't considered, and clarifying their scope to be inclusive isn't automatically unlawful. The Charity Commission has dealt with similar complaints before and hasn't found inclusion policies to be the clear cut violations this post assumes.
But beyond the legal question, I'd ask you to sit with this for a moment. Is this really how you want to spend your energy? Coordinating complaints designed to strip services from some of the most vulnerable women in society?
If your concern is that women need more single sex spaces, I'd be happy to discuss campaigning for additional services. But shutting down what exists helps no one except those who'd rather these women had nowhere to turn.

How about charities set up to provide support to people with sight loss @sarahd89 ? Would it be ok if they offered support to people who have perfectly good eyesight who identify as having sight loss? What about charities set to to support children? Would it be ok for them to support adults because some adults identify as children?

there is absolutely nothing wrong with requiring charities to comply with the law and their charitable objectives and support the people "beneficiaries"that their charity was set up to support. If women's charities want to change their charitable objectives to include men then they can and they can be honest about what they're doing. What they can't do is claim to support women and girls, get funding on that basis, promote themselves on that basis - and then include some men with special lady feelings

I strongly suspect that if we were challenging the donkey sanctuary for example because it suddenly started running programmes to support wombats, no one would give a fuck but the moment women insist women's charities are for women suddenly that's beyond the pale

bollocks to that! Blame the TRA and their supporters who won't let women have anything for themselves. We didn't start this bloody fight and we didn't want it but as they brought it, then they need to deal with the consequences

The analogies don't quite work, and I think you know that.
Someone who identifies as having sight loss but can see perfectly well cannot access blind services because the services wouldn't help them. They'd gain nothing. An adult identifying as a child to access children's services is safeguarding concern with obvious predatory implications.
A trans woman fleeing domestic violence needs exactly what the refuge provides: safety, shelter, support. The service is relevant to her situation. She's not trying to access something she doesn't need.
But here's where I'll meet you partway. You're right that charities should be honest about who they serve. If a refuge has an inclusive policy, that should be clear in their materials and funding applications. Women who need single sex provision should be able to find it. The lack of transparency is a legitimate complaint.
What I'm pushing back on is the framing that any inclusion of trans women is automatically fraudulent, that there's no possible reading of "women's services" that could include them in good faith. Plenty of refuges have included trans women for years, openly, with the knowledge of funders and the Charity Commission. That's not deception. It's a different interpretation of who the service is for.
You say you didn't start this fight. I believe you feel that way. But from where I sit, my daughter didn't start it either. She just exists. And campaigns specifically designed to exclude her from services if she ever needs them feel less like boundary setting and more like making her life as difficult as possible.
If the goal is more single sex services for women who need them, I'll support that campaign. If the goal is ensuring trans women have nowhere to turn, we're not going to agree.

Of course men however they should identify should have somewhere to turn - it's a shame TRA have spent so much time trying to colonise women's spaces and places rather than creating appropriate support for trans women including those fleeing domestic abuse but that's on them.

women's charities are for women

Men with trans identities are falling over services gagging to centre them. It's women who need single sex provision that have nothing. That's the issue. No one wants to take anything from your Nigel. Oddly enough it's not all about your Nigel.

Trans women face disproportionately high rates of domestic abuse and sexual violence.
No, they do not. That is an absolute lie.

Where exactly should they go?
Back to the men's spaces where they belong. Male on male violence is for men to sort out, not women.

Transwomen are male. Males with penis and testicles. They have no place in a woman's shelter. There are men's shelters they can go to. A woman is beaten by her husband and abused, and she runs into a fully intact male at a womens shelter. HOW do you think she will cope with that, being traumatised? Surely common sense has to come into play here! A battered womens shelter should of course, exclude males. I would think any decent person would understand why. It's obvious why. It really should not need to be explained.

the framing that any inclusion of trans women is automatically fraudulent, that there's no possible reading of "women's services" that could include them in good faith.

It is automatically fraudulent if it's a female only space. They're a male. So by automatic default they are excluded.

But from where I sit, my daughter didn't start it either. She just exists.

If your 'daughter' is male, they 'ExIsTs' as a male. Not a female or woman.

If the goal is ensuring trans women have nowhere to turn

They do. Male spaces. Or third spaces. It's really that simple.

I missed these;

This is a coordinated campaign to remove trans women from support services entirely.

No, it's to remove MALES from FEMALE support services entirely. Because they have absolutely no business being there, as they are male. They have male support services.

Trans women face disproportionately high rates of domestic abuse and sexual violence.

This is absolutely false. There is no evidence of this. And as males, they can fight off their attackers. Females cannot. In fact, data proves that transwomen sexually offend 5 times higher than other males.

Where exactly should they go?

Male facilities. Isn't that obvious? Or gender neutral. But not ever in womens spaces. And regardless of where they go, male on male violence is NOT womens problem to solve. Women are NOT human shields for the male sex. You don't put the fox in the hen house because other foxes picked on him. Transwomen should have been fighting for THIRD SPACES like we all suggest a DECADE AGO, instead of being too lazy to and just colonising ours. Why can't they get off their arses and fight for their own spaces, like they should have done, instead of expecting the 'wimmin' to do all the work and take responsibility? Why do you think that it is women's responsibility to come up with a solution to male on male violence? I'd love you to answer that.

The below is what happens when males are placed in womens shelters:

It is terrifying to think of men allowed into women's refuges simply because they claim to be women. I visited a women's refuge years back and whilst there the husband of one of the women started trying to batter the door down to get at her - luckily it held until the police arrived. These days, such a man could get in by saying he was an abused woman - unless we strongly defend women only spaces.

I'm not sure you understand how refuges work. There's are risk assessment for everyone for example imagine if a woman's abusive partner has followed her and could put others at risk. And most of the housing is self contained like small studio flats with private entrances. How many incidents of trans women creating issues for women can you report, with evidence? The real issue it that we are now at a stage where over 45% of women who need a refuge can't access one because there are no spaces enough (I think this is women's aid data). Not to mention migrant women with no recourse to public funds who find it basically impossible. To me this doesn't sounds like the effort we as women should put our energy in.

Well the thing is we women have women MNetters right here who have tried to explain to refuge staff that they could not cope with the men in their refuge, ended up in tears and were sneered at by the activist staff. And women who cannot and will not use a refuge if men are in it. Raped women denied services because their experience of using one with a man in it listening to women telling stories of sexual violence made her too uncomfortable to return. Women have been lied to about the existence of women-only refuges BY their women's refuge because the staff were all about the men with the women as kind of just set dressing for the bloke involved.

This whole 'squirrel!' thing of trying to tell women to hand stuff to men and bother their little heads only about the things men want them to think about (which involves having no boundaries that inconvenience men in using them) is pure activist, and at this point incredibly 2010. And no woman says 'we women'. They don't need to.

The law is clear; women's services don't have men in them. End of. Because they're for women. Who are actually important too, and enough all by themselves, even without one penis between them.

@SwissMerengue you are talking rubbish, most women’s refuges are semi communal as it is part of the therapeutic environment's

i know because i have manage them, been a trustee for them, and set up DVA services.

i have also set up run and been a trustee of sexual violence services.

I have also been a commissioner for services.

the fact that women’s services are under funded or women, with no recourse to public funding, have access difficulties is not the issue here the issue is that we should insist that women's services do not include males.

It would not have occurred to me to compel service providers to include men,

This is the only way to address and that issue where funders are captured.

https://www.womenarehuman.com/womens-refuge-allows-male-transgender-who-threatened-to-kill-his-female-partner/

East London Women’s Project is also run by St Mungo’s. St Mungo’s management permits Mr Addis to visit their women’s refuge, despite the fact that they are aware of his conviction for abusing his female intimate partner. Female residents say Mr Addis has caused the women at the shelter “alarm and distress” due to his aggressive displays of “shouting, crying, threatening violence” in the presence of the “frightened, vulnerable women.” The women say that their multiple complaints to shelter staff have been ignored, and Mr Addis is able to visit daily, meet with his support worker on site, and attend the shelter’s social events.

This is sheer nonsense. Women's services are no more for men than blind people's services are for fully-sighted people. It's only different because men greedily and selfishly demand something that doesn't belong to them for validation at best, as though women are nothing but service units and men have to get their whims don't they? I imagine the concepts of ownership and boundaries are easy to understand in other circumstances - you wouldn't help yourself to your neighbour's car and you wouldn't barge through a door marked 'staff only' if you didn't work there. This is no different and traumatised and abused women are not validation tools for any special man who rocks up to exploit them.

And he is exploiting them.

No matter how subconsciously: he is using them. They are the desired experience, the set dressing he wants, and it has to be faced that all he wants from them is their bodies. Their beliefs, their histories and experiences, their needs, their feelings are not something he wants to know about - except, and this is drawn directly from the words of men with trans identities, for the parts that are helpful to appropriate for role playing a woman, or the parts that may be sexually exciting to hear about such as their experiences of sexual violence - hence all this frantic trying to reason it away on his behalf. He has no respect for them as equals to him, and no interest in whether those women's needs can still be met as those women need, want and deserve once he is in the room.

This is nothing to be proud of enabling.

Add to this, there are over 300 charities supporting LGBTQ++++ people many of which are dedicated solely to trans people (and frankly to TW because TM seldom get a look in). Some of these charities have been insanely well resourced, to a point that would boggle the minds of women working on VAWG. Any and all of these charities could set up refuges for TW. Any of them. They don’t have to break the law. They don’t have to terrorise vulnerable women. They could design their refuges exactly as they need them. The only reason to go after women’s charities is validation and that doesn’t stack up well against the much greater needs of women and girls.

@sarahd89your Nigel, and everyone else’s Nigels, have access to so much. Why would they choose to damage others when they could take positive action to help themselves and their community?

Kevin has explained more. I wish I had the confidence to try and speak to him off the record.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevin-taylor-mcknight-he-they-2313262_thirdsectoragainsttransphobia-activity-7434511645206290432-5taz?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAAFSXe4BoYpKzzss48JLiWn7lsoyZydj2bg

That post has 6 likes. One from a charities’ governance advisor (??) and disappointed to see another is from someone working for UK Child Poverty. Surely there are enough material issues for them to deal with?