The new WI equality, diversity and inclusion policy - it’s worse and includes the thought police

[Marmaladelover]

This is the new EDI policy all WIs have to sign and agree .

The last one was bad enough , the new one discriminates against anyone who doesn’t think Transwomen are women. Please note the sentence
We expect all those who engage in the WI movement to uphold the same values.

I am furious! So what to do about it ?

Main bits I disagree with copied below

Our inclusion of transgender women in activities outside of membership is based on our belief that being a woman is about biology and lived experience

One of the objectives

• Highlight and celebrate the diverse membership of the WI, and ensure that our wider movement offers support and fellowship to all women, including transgender women and others.

Aside from WI membership, we offer other ways to engage with the WI movement, locally, regionally and nationally, including being a WI Supporter and belonging to one
of our Sisterhood groups. We expect all those who engage in the WI movement to uphold the same values.

11. Transgender inclusion
The WI is an inclusive, supportive, and progressive organisation that offers different ways to engage in our movement for members and non-members. The WI provides
educational opportunities and the platform to campaign on important issues, whilst celebrating the WI’s long history of trans inclusion, and embracing the sisterhood and
solidarity of our movement.
Transgender women are welcomed to a range of local and national activities that are open to non-members, as well as our national Supporter scheme. Based on the WI’s
history of trans inclusion, we believe that including transgender women in these activities enriches our organisation to ensure we are a place for both biological women and transgender women to celebrate who they are and influence positive change in their communities.

Isn't it discriminatory on the PC of religion/ belief to demand that members uphold a particular 'belief' (i would say TWAW is a belief and not a value. Its a specific statement, not a guiding principle)?

Especially as they then contradict themselves and say they are non partisan?

1. please don't insult us with milquetoast AI slop
2. assuming a human was involved somewhere in this and it does express their actual beliefs:

• This is not rocket science. Female people exist. So if you believe that something in trans women (men)'s minds makes them somehow really (or even just a bit more like) women, makes them really (or just a bit) interchangeable with people who are physically female, you are also unavoidably saying that the thing that makes us women is also partially or fully in our minds, and therefore that there are ways of thinking that are "correct" for women and ways of thinking that that are not.
• Furthermore, you are disconnecting the real history of women, the one in which we were exploited, disempowered, marginalized and abused by society's norms and often through the actual law because of our sex, from the reality and position of women in society today and from the very reason we need female-only supports and spaces, and replacing that history and meaning with some sort of fluffy "all girls together" fantasy that not only trivializes the very real inequalities and challenges we still face, but also prevents these provisions achieving the very purpose for which they exist.

So while you might be super-happy-smiley excited about that wonderful sexism and the way it forces us all to participate in trans people's disordered and prejudiced ideas about what type of mind is right for which body, please don't patronize women who think about the implications of this more deeply than you.

Yes - philosophical beliefs (which includes GC) are a protected characteristic. You can't be forced to hold non-GC in the same way the WI can't place an expectation of a certain religious belief (or absence of religious belief) on members and then claim they're non partisan.

Just so we are clear this is actually a son. A male person. So quite why they are relevant to a discussion about the WI is not clear to me.

I'm not AI slop. I'm a mother who has spent four years reading, thinking, and arguing about these questions because my child's life depends on getting them right. You can disagree with me, but please don't dismiss me as not having thought about this.
On your substantive points:
You're arguing that if we accept trans women have any claim to womanhood, we're necessarily saying there's a "correct" way for women to think. I don't agree. My daughter didn't transition because she likes pink or wants to be nurturing or thinks in some stereotypically feminine way. She transitioned because her relationship to her body was unbearable in a way that had nothing to do with personality or interests or ways of thinking. She's still the same person she always was. She just isn't in constant distress anymore.
On your second point, about women's history and the material basis of oppression: I don't disagree that women have been oppressed because of their sex. That's obviously true. I don't think acknowledging my daughter's existence erases that history or trivialises the challenges women still face.
But here's what I notice. You're telling me I haven't thought deeply enough. You're telling me I'm participating in sexism. You're telling me my views are disordered and prejudiced. And yet you haven't asked me a single question. You haven't engaged with the possibility that I might have reasons for my position that aren't stupidity or shallow thinking.
I'm willing to sit with the discomfort of disagreement. I'm willing to examine my own views. Are you?

It’s not about agreement, it’s about the reality of being a human.

There’s no such thing as a transwoman. No man enters the biological category of woman - the only category - through his ‘lived experience’. I can wear a saddle and live in a stable as my ‘lived experience’ of being a horse. Still not a horse.

But … but surgery, hormones? A woman is not a surgically or medically altered man.

But … but souls, inner feelings? So what? We all have beliefs, feelings, anxieties about ourselves. A man thinks he’s ‘really’ a woman, or would like to ‘live as’ a woman. Carry on, do your thing, but I no more have to validate his belief and feelings than I do somebody who believes the earth was created by a god.

A society set up for women is exclusionary if it admits men - exclusionary towards women, but some people think that’s just fine. It’s only women, why aren’t we being kind to men?

it will force some women to self exclude, others may decide not to join at all, others may avoid certain events and talks.

If that’s seen as being mean to men well, I can live with that. My concern is the exclusion, bullying and silencing of women by these organisations.

I'm aware you see my daughter as my son. You've made that clear. Repeating it doesn't change my view, and I suspect my disagreement doesn't change yours.
But to answer your actual question about relevance to the WI discussion:
The policy we're discussing includes trans women in non-membership activities. That's the stated position of the organisation. You object to it. I don't. We disagree about whether that policy is right.
My daughter is relevant because she's why I'm in this conversation at all. Before she came out, I probably would have had vague opinions on these questions and moved on with my day. Now I don't have that luxury. Every policy, every debate, every forum thread is about whether my child gets to exist in public life or not.
You might say that's emotional reasoning. That my personal stake clouds my judgment. Maybe. But I'd gently suggest that having no personal stake doesn't automatically make someone's judgment clearer. It sometimes just makes it easier to treat other people's lives as abstractions.
I'm not asking you to agree with me. I'm not even asking you to stop thinking what you think. I'm asking whether there's any version of this conversation where we're actually talking to each other rather than past each other.
What would you want me to understand about your position that you don't think I've grasped?

We expect all those who engage in the WI movement to uphold the same values.

I'm getting seriously pissed of with the 'doesn't align with our values' attitude. The gatekeepers of the only 'correct' way to do things.

our belief that being a woman is about biology and lived experience

You don't need lived experience to be a women, if you have to shove that in you not talking about women. When you reframe what a women so it will fit your demands you're no longer talking about women, so any claim to 'sisterhood' is offensive.

What would you want me to understand about your position that you don't think I've grasped?

That your son shouldn’t be sharing single sex spaces with our daughters. That’s one of my personal stakes so please do not presume we don’t have any.

about whether my child gets to exist in public life or not

Of course they exist in public life - always will do if they are in public.
It is a hyperbolic exaggeration to say this is about whether they will "exist".

They will never exist in public life as a girl/woman - because they are not female.
They will exist as a transgirl/transwoman, which is a different thing.

I'm standing on ten years of personal experience of fighting for women's rights against the hostile actions and colonisation by men with trans identities, involving harms to women from exclusion to public services and workplaces, police and court action for naming their needs, illness support groups and lesbian groups being closed or forced under ground to escape these men, and a number of women and girls who have suffered assault and rape. Oh and exposure to a social media deluge of death and rape threats, sexually violent ideology and the kind of stuff most people only encounter when working on a prison psychiatry team. We can all play the emotive anecdotes game.

All of the above came from nice women saying nicely to be nice. To look the other way, to not question when language and intent was twisted so that men could be women too, to give ground, to be mummy, to nurture and be the bigger person, and to suck it up and be that resource in a man's life. His agenda might just to use you as a resource to do womanly things next to - whether the benefit to him is emotional or sexual, or emotional AND sexual is not something you'll get to know - but your body is a prop in his performance and your needs and you as an equal person will not come in to it.

How can anyone not see the issue with this?

Men do not need the women's institute.

Women have needs too, that mean they like to have a space where it's JUST about women, and JUST for women, and they get a little bit of life for an hour or two where it's not all revolving around the louder, more demanding and much more important men.

Women are enough. They are not so boring or pointless that men need to be involved before the womanly things are worth it. What message is this pumping out to women and girls? The most important kind of woman is - guess what! The ones with a penis!

So the wangling of 'AND lived experiences' is not harmless, I am not going to 'open my mind' to that in the same way I'm not going to 'open my mind' to ooh is mugging always wrong. It's about making women let men into womanhood and then kneeling down and opening their mouths. It is pointless to deny that this has not been the experience of the past ten years when basically defacto self ID for men was in place.

Men were given this access. Against the law, they just took it while lying to everyone about the law, but they had it. They abused it. They broke it. They have destroyed a large number of women's resources, facilities and groups, they don't care about this or the women left behind them with nothing, having lost something they once relied on. Because if it wasn't all about this group of men then it was worthless to these people.

I see the language and I know exactly what it means. You cannot sugar it or glitter it to the point of hiding the very grim reality and values beneath it.

A good man - however he identifies - does not work to colonise and destroy women's resources as WI and GG have patently now been destroyed. They will end up just branches of trans activism, nothing else.

What do you think we should do and provide for the women who will walk out of a womens group when your son walks in? Have you any idea of the reasons why those women might be so affected?

Do you think those women's mothers would agree that your son is a far more valuable and important kind of human being and it's just and right that their daughters accept that their access to public life relies on being a resource and support animal for him? And that his feelings and issues - in a women's group - will always outweigh those of women?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the course of all this mess it’s that sometimes there are some people who are just plain wrong and there’s no changing their minds because of their personal stake

I present exhibit A

This ⬆️ 'Trans'parents will die believing because to admit otherwise would signal how badly they failed their children.

Well, I asked a question - what you meant by a "trans daughter" - and you didn't answer. Not even after I guessed wrong.

So why would anyone ask you any more questions? (But there I just did!)

Every policy, every debate, every forum thread is about whether my child gets to exist in public life or not.

Really? Nonsense. Your child can "exist" in public they just can't claim to be a woman and expect everyone else - well, anyone except their mother really - to go along with it. (And even a mother might have reservations, what with knowing what kind of baby's bottom she wiped all those years.)

Look, you can come and ask for sympathy. You'll get it. But you can't come here and "gently" talk nonsense without getting picked up on it.

I do understand parent's actions in supporting their children best, as they see it.

I don't understand how that gets parlayed into throwing women under the bus in terms of single-sex services, associations and other equality issues.

It seems like unwitting cakeism to me: I want my son to access women because it's what he wants and it makes him happy; but at the same time I want to be a good feminist. If I can convince myself to redefine what 'woman' means then I can do both at the same time.

That also involves believing that good women will enable said son and make him happy.

Once men with trans identities enter a women's group, the only women left are the handmaidens, as they will be allowed no other role, purpose or identity now.

I remember having a discussion with someone on here who had the traditional trans magical thinking and absolutely refuted the idea that humans are animals. Which rather begs the question, if we’re not animals what the heck are we?

the point being this is the level of reasoning you get with magical thinking

I can. An elected group have changed WI values without consulting members and with the implied threat of 'we expect everyone who belongs to uphold the same values.' They've been taking lessons from the cybermen, so maybe they should say 'you will be like us.'

Or to put it another way, would you be happy with 'we expect members to believe that biological sex defines womanhood because that is what the law says? Men who believe they are women have many clubs and places to gether but the WI isn't one of them.'

If this is specifically why you came here, then I think you may well be in the wrong place. Try trans reddit. You'll get the answers you want there because dissent from group think isn't allowed.

@OpheliaWitchoftheWoods

Your post today at 15.29 should be gold plated and permanently displayed at the top of this board.

Just brilliant. Articulating the distress and offence that women have observed and felt for years.

Because they know what members will say and so they're getting the guidance out now and hoping people will forget about it. Not a very principled way to do it, but sadly, all too common amongst the 'be kind to special men and trample all over women' brigade

I'm rapidly finding that MN's reputation for precisely that is well founded...

That's just silly. Nobody has blocked you or deleted your posts.

Yes, you'll find Mumsnet centres women without apology , and is less concerned about the feelings of men - regardless of how those men choose to present themselves to the world.

Reputation for what? None of the things in the post you’ve quoted have happened to you here