What is a lesbian?

What’s led to you accepting some men aren’t entirely supportive of women Gloryannie

‘No answer’ came the firm reply (or should that be No Debate)? .

I’ve just been reading about a transwoman who was the first to join the WI with a lot of support and welcome, but who now (after a short space of time) is a member of the governing body, making policy decisions about so-called ‘gender’ :ella:. Women can work and contribute to the WI for years and not manage that, and many are leaving with the loss of their social network because they object or are unable for whatever reason to socialise with men.

It’s like Kylie Jenner becoming ’woman of the year’ isn’t it? Anything that women had for ourselves is infiltrated by men and destroyed from within, with the support of women who seem to think that a male will know how to manage women better than we do ourselves, and if we don’t like it we can lump it.

Doodledog that’s appalling, but true.

I was going to ask where will this end but TBH I don't think I want to know what answer could be.

Doodledog, thanks for the WI update. It couldn’t be more depressing, or indeed predictable. The majority of teachers, social workers and nurses are female. The majority of managers male. No surprise trans women/ie people who grew up as men, are taking over the wi. I think similar is happening in the Girl Guides

I feel the same, Smileless and Molly.

It feels as though there is a concerted move to destabilise any group that exists for women - whether it is the WI, a lesbian dating event or women's awards. If misogynists can't get women's organisations banned, they infiltrate then disrupt from within. Even Guiding now includes boys, who can share tents with girls if the boys 'identify' as such.

Male socialisation (and in most cases male hormones as few transwomen medically transition) pushes them towards leadership roles, so they can boss women about and change policies. Many women leave as there is No Debate allowed, so the organisations are no longer for women, whatever the titles or mission statements would suggest.

I have no idea whether this is happening because of female infiltration of men's groups by transmen, as I don't impose myself into any. I doubt it though. If female-bodied people do join male groups their socialisation is more likely to mean that they are happy with that and won't expect to be running the show after a couple of years.

Here is an interesting-looking thread on Mumsnet, I haven't read it yet, but the OP is the perfect example of what I was getting at. It's profoundly depressing.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4889977-female-women-not-permitted-to-meet-without-male-women

Thank you Doodledog for highlighting how the WI is being infiltrated by the trans community, with the support of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes. I have written to them a few times saying how the WI is sometimes a sanctuary for abused women and this is no longer the case. They patronise me and say that transwomen are women, even if they are not fully transitioned! I then go back and ask about women only spaces and yet again they say, ALL members are women. What a travesty.

One of our members who has been in the WI since she was 18 and she is now in her 80s says she won’t renew her membership. The WI has been her life.

The latest WI magazine has 14 photos on the front cover promoting Pride 23.

Petra Welham (transwoman) who is moving up the ranks of the WI features on the Pride billboards at Outernet London.

The WI should change its name as it is no longer exclusively for natal women.

It feels as though the trans lobby simply can't bear the idea of women having anything that doesn't include them. I'm not in the WI, but was considering looking into joining - I won't be bothering now.

I agree that ousting committed members is heinous. There are people (particularly in villages and small towns) for whom organisations like the WI are integral to their social lives. Giving them up is like a bereavement. I hope that some of the other members take her under their wing and look out for her.

I also hope that women start to form new groups which have single sex membership written into their constitutions. It's disgraceful that we have to go back to that, after years of fighting for spaces of our own, but maybe it will have to happen every generation? FWIW I also think that making groups firmly single sex is a shame, as there will be transwomen who genuinely just want to discuss the same things as women do, and would be no threat to anyone. But if needs must I can't see an alternative.

Thanks for the link Doodledog I'd followed Sarah's story earlier. I had no idea she took them at their word and started her own group. So now the contemptible bullies intimidate venues into not taking their booking? It shows them for exactly what they are, women haters who can't cope with being told no. And we're supposed to accept they mean real women (descriptor used by Glorianny so I know it's acceptable) no harm.......
Hope you don't mind but I thought it useful to quote Sarah's opening post of that thread as not everyone clicks on links.

If you’ve been following my legal case you’ll know I’m trying to secure one single sex rape crisis support group for women in Sussex. This is in addition to the numerous mixed sex groups.

TRAs are really angry about this, angry that I had the audacity to ask a women’s rape crisis service to provide this. Along with the numerous death threats many of them said ‘why don’t you F off and create your own group’.

So women in Brighton & Hove have made our own support group. But the TRAs have emailed every venue in Brighton & Hove warning them not to allow us to meet. And the (male) venue managers are now saying we cannot use their facilities unless we include males in our group.

I’ve explained to the venues that trans men and non binary people born female are welcome as it’s a single sex support group, perfectly legitimate under Equality laws. Not good enough apparently.

I don't mind at all. Rosie.

The more people who come to realise what lies behind the claims that these people* are the 'most vulnerable and marginalised group in society', and think we should be 'kind' and 'tolerant' the better.

*Obviously not all transwomen are TRAs, (and not all TRAs are transwomen) - these are people who have hijacked the trans cause to further their misogyny, and we ignore their behaviour at our peril. The trouble is that they are using apparently reasonable requests, (eg one man joining the WI) to get power by stealth (he becomes a policy maker) so we have to stop all of it, get the law back on track so that it is clear what is allowed and what isn't, whether women can have safe places, female spaces or meeting places for ourselves, or whether we have to just give in to the males.

I wish politicians would get off the fence and tell us that they will stand with women on this issue. It's terrifying.

Here we go again

Glorianny, you posted a week ago that . . . the mainstream media . . . is becoming increasingly transphobic.

How can you justify that belief when you consider that this story appears to be about a female prisoner? Apart from one phrase at the beginning of the report - 'who identifies as a woman' - it reads as though the (female) prison officers were assaulted by a woman. When we see the photo, which I will put in a post under this one, it is clear, however much you routinely ask 'how would anyone know?' that this is a man.

Don't you think that it is misleading to use female pronouns to describe this prisoner, and that it minimises the attack on the officers, as the implication is that the person 'inappropriately' touching them by grabbing their genitals was a woman. It also gives the impression that women commit sex offences, which is only true in a small minority of cases. The more often we see reports of women behaving like predatory men, the more the case for protecting safe spaces for women is weakened. Far from being 'transphobic' as you suggest, this way of reporting is very detrimental to women, which may or may not be accidental, given the tabloid attitude to women in general.

For those who don't like links, the story is from the Mirror, and is C&P below:

Prisoner jailed for nurse sex assault groped female guards as they served her food
Katana Paris has convictions for 87 offences - including sexual assault by touching - she was given an extra six months on to the end of her sentence for attacking a nurse.

An inmate groped two prison officers while they served her food in her cell, after being locked up for sexually assaulting a nurse.

Katana Paris who identifies as a woman, assaulted the male and female staff members at HMP Forest Bank in Salford last year. The female officer was serving Paris, 27, breakfast with the help of two inmates. Paris walked towards her and touched her inappropriately.

The following day, while being served lunch by a male prison officer, she reached through the hatch in her cell door and grabbed his genitals. Paris, who was part way through serving a three-year sentence at the time for sexual assaulting a nurse, admitted two counts of sexual assault. At Manchester Crown Court, she was handed a six-month sentence to be added to her prison time.

Prosecuting, Megan Edwards said that on the day of the incident, a female prison officer was on breakfast duty at around 7.50am. "She approached the defendant's cell and unlocked the door in order to serve her breakfast," Mrs Edwards said. "She stepped out of the cell, which was unusual, as prisoners would normally remain in their cell.

"She asked the defendant to move back, but the request was ignored. The defendant then placed a hand on her hand, before sliding her fingers between her knuckles." The officer moved away and the two prisoners helping gave Paris with her breakfast. She then 'jumped up and down like she was excited', before moving over to the woman and touching her genitals.

"She did not say anything when she did this, but she was shocked and in disbelief that she deliberately touched her like that," the prosecutor added. One of the prisoners, the court heard, said to the officer: "Did she just touch your..." She he replied: "Yes, she just touched me."

Not wanting the rest of the inmates to know what happened, the prison officer continued to serve breakfast, before reporting the incident. A day later, a male custody officer was serving lunch when he went to Paris' cell. She was 'quite aggressive', the court heard. As he unlocked the hatch to her door and passed her food through, she reached her right hand out and grabbed his genitals.

"He immediately felt violated and used his body strength to push her back into her cell," Ms Edwards said. Paris has convictions for 87 offences - including sexual assault by touching. She was previously handed a 37-month sentence after pulling a nurse towards her genitals while in hospital, the court heard.

Mitigating, Rochelle Collins said her client was suffering with mental health problems and emotional regularity problems at the time. "She is extremely remorseful and tells me this happened at a time when her mental health was at its lowest," she said. "She doesn’t want to continue with these types of behaviours. There has been no further complaint whilst she has been in custody."

Sentencing, the Recorder of Manchester, Judge Nicholas Dean KC said: "Prison officers are placed in a vulnerable position - they are described as emergency workers. They are in a situation where they are vulnerable to these sorts of assaults and they deserve and require the protections of the courts when assaults such as this happen. I have read and considered a pre-sentence report, and I am not convinced you have shown any significant remorse. It seems to me you regard what you did as being rather trivial."

Paris is now at HMP Swaleside. She will be on the sex offender register for five years.

Here is the photo of the 'woman' mentioned in the post above:

Looks not merely like a man, but like a surly and aggressive one too.

If this prisoner was jailed as the sex he is, there would be no question of him being placed in a female prison.
It’s not transphobic to protect women from predatory males.
First we are presented with the trans gender card, (which we are assured is not a mental health issue).
Then the unacceptable behaviour of a male claiming that transgender card is excused on the grounds of mental health issues.

What next?

I’d be interested to see a psychiatric assessment of this man. Is it possible to include body dysmorphia or is that now dismissed as anti trans. He appears to be an aggressive sex offender, who attacks women.
His crimes are likely to be listed as being committed by a woman.
If that nonsense has to continue, we need a category - offence committed by male. Self ID 🪪 as female

Mollygo

If this prisoner was jailed as the sex he is, there would be no question of him being placed in a female prison.
It’s not transphobic to protect women from predatory males.
First we are presented with the trans gender card, (which we are assured is not a mental health issue).
Then the unacceptable behaviour of a male claiming that transgender card is excused on the grounds of mental health issues.

What next?

He is in a male prison. My point was that the report, far from showing transphobia as Glorianny suggests is the norm, is presenting him as a woman by using female pronouns. This implies that the assaults were woman on woman, and in one case woman on man - less traumatic than a M-F sexual assault.

A culmination of this supposedly 'transphobic' (but IMO misogynistic) way of reporting will make it seem that female sexual assaults are far more commonplace than they actually are.

Iam64

I’d be interested to see a psychiatric assessment of this man. Is it possible to include body dysmorphia or is that now dismissed as anti trans. He appears to be an aggressive sex offender, who attacks women.
His crimes are likely to be listed as being committed by a woman.
If that nonsense has to continue, we need a category - offence committed by male. Self ID 🪪 as female

Yes. It would be very interesting to see how many sex crimes are committed by men who 'identify' as women, and even better if we could see how many choose this 'identification' after being arrested.

There should always be a means of identifying sex, as opposed to so-called 'gender' in research proposals or any data collection, as we are at serious risk of having policies based on entirely inaccurate suppositions - not just about criminology, but about finance, pensions, housing, and all manner of other areas. This will almost always be to the detriment of women, as women usually come off worse in sociological trends, and with no means of showing this to be the case there will be no remedial action.

Deliberate? Just accidentally anti-feminist? You Decide.

DD He is in a male prison
Sorry. I misunderstood because of the mention of female guards.
Yes there should be a means of recording crimes committed by males however they define themselves.
Sadly, the quickest way to get current figures into the light and the misleading recording addressed would be to have a Panorama investigation into the matter. None of the political parties seem interested, even those not actively supporting an anti-female stance.

I had to google the prison, Molly. Again, that was not clear from the report.

One of our members who has been in the WI since she was 18 and she is now in her 80s says she won’t renew her membership. The WI has been her life.

That's horrible for her. It's like she's suddenly been bullied by her lifelong friend.

I also think that making groups firmly single sex is a shame, as there will be transwomen who genuinely just want to discuss the same things as women do, and would be no threat to anyone.

I don't think it's a shame because those transwomen are, nevertheless, male so their simply being there could cause others distress, could make it impossible for some to attend, and could well mean the transwoman magically moves into leadership.

You are right, of course, and given what we know now is happening (men deliberately disrupting women's groups to break them up) I would absolutely argue that no transwomen be allowed. And of course they do magically move into leadership roles, as men always do in female-dominated spheres.

I do, however, feel sorry for the tiny number of men who have historically wanted to be women - people like the late April Ashley, or the fictional Hayley Cropper - who might have wanted to join the WI (not attend rape support groups) and who will lose out if all women's groups become single sex. I am not saying that their rights should trump those of women, just that I think they are victims of the trans lobby's aggression and the proliferation of self-identifying transwomen too.

Anyone who hasn't read the MN thread - there is a post about men joining support groups for parents of stillborn and miscarried babies and making women listen to how sad it is that they are unable to get pregnant and carry babies because they have male bodies.

Others are claiming that they suffer from endometriosis, so join support groups for that, and listen in to women talking about their flooding periods etc. Now why might that be, I wonder? Could it possibly have any connection to the transwomen sniffing sanitary bins in the Ladies'?

There really seems to be nothing that these people won't do to exercise power over women, satisfy their fetishes and prevent us from doing anything without men.

Yes FarNorth I feel so sad for my friend in her 80s who feels her words/letters/pleas are being totally ignored.

The situation that the WI accepts transwomen who have not completely transitioned is so worrying and they have the audacity to say a partially transitioned man ‘is a woman’.

We are forbidden from showing other members/or anyone the content of the letters from the NFWI.

Sadly I feel it is the gradual death of the Women’s Institute.

The Women’s Institute Declaration group are trying hard to get a Moratorium organised whereby the transwomen who are already in the WI stay and then the ALL the members would have a vote (being democratic, but you wouldn’t know it) on whether to continue with this situation or return to female only.

I feel we are fighting a losing battle.

Wow, from the MN thread linked by Doodledog.
If you are 'on the trans-masculine spectrum', i.e. female & 'trans', an all-female group for you is fine.
But not for female survivors of sexual assault and rape.