 | |
| Formation | 2017 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Judith Green Ruth Serwotka Kiri Tunks [1] |
| Type | Gender-critical feminism |
Region served | United Kingdom |
| Website | https://womansplaceuk.org |
Woman's Place UK [lower-alpha 1] (WPUK) is a British political advocacy group founded in 2017. [2] The group is opposed to gender self-identification for transgender people in the UK, and has advocated restricting access to women-only spaces on the basis of "sex, not gender". [3]
The group was founded in response to the British government's launch of a consultation on proposals to change the Gender Recognition Act away from a medicalised system towards one based on statutory declaration. In late-July 2018, the group issued five demands:
In September 2018, Leeds City Council cancelled a booking made by WPUK at Leeds Civic Hall, stating that the group's views were "not in line with Leeds City Council’s values and policies on equality and inclusion" and venues that hosted previous events by the group had attracted safety concerns. [5]
In February 2020, WPUK held an event titled "Women's Liberation 2020" at University College London, including a number of panel discussions and workshops, marking 50 years since the first National Women’s Liberation Conference in the UK. [6] [7]
In November 2020, WPUK published accounts revealing that the University of Oxford was one of its biggest funders, having paid the group a £20,000 consultancy fee for its "support research into women's sex-based rights" one year earlier. [8] [9]
In December 2020, Lush gave WPUK £3,000 for "events organisation". [10] [11] After facing criticism for the donation, Lush issued an apology, stating that "we want to assure you that [deliberately funding campaigning against trans rights] would never be our intention and we are sincerely sorry that any of our funding has gone towards doing this". [12]
The group has been described as transgender-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). [3] [1] It has faced opposition from Pride Cymru and the Wales Equality Alliance. [13] The Labour Campaign for Trans Rights has described it as a hate group. [14] London Feminist Library organiser Lola Olufemi described the group as "a clearly transphobic organisation" after she withdrew from an event at the University of Oxford. [15] [16] In her 2021 book The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice , author Shon Faye described the organisation as "the most well-known grassroots anti-trans feminist group". [17]
The group has opposed being categorised as TERFs, stating that a number of trans women who oppose gender recognition based on statutory declaration, such as Debbie Hayton and Kristina Harrison, speak at their meetings. [3] [18] [19] In February 2020, 13 academics at University College London wrote an open letter to The Guardian arguing that the group was not a "trans-exclusionist hate group". [20] [21]
Transphobia consists of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger towards people who do not conform to social gender roles. Transphobia is a type of prejudice and discrimination, similar to racism, sexism, or ableism, and it is closely associated with homophobia. Transgender people of color can experience many different forms of discrimination simultaneously.
Sheila Jeffreys is a former professor of political science at the University of Melbourne, born in England. A lesbian feminist scholar, she analyses the history and politics of human sexuality.
Feminist views on transgender topics vary widely. Third- and fourth-wave feminists tend to view the struggle for trans rights as an integral part of intersectional feminism. Former president of the American National Organization for Women (NOW) Terry O'Neill has stated that the struggle against transphobia is a feminist issue, with NOW affirming that "trans women are women, trans girls are girls." Several studies have found that people who identify as feminists tend to be more accepting of trans people than those who do not.
The Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) is an American advocacy organization that opposes transgender rights and gender identity legislation. It has engaged in litigation on transgender topics, working against the Obama administration's Title IX directives which defined sex discrimination to include gender identity. WoLF describes itself as radical feminist, and according to its mission statement, it wishes to "abolish regressive gender roles and the epidemic of male violence using legal arguments, policy advocacy, and public education". It has been described by news sources including The Washington Post, The Advocate and NBC as feminist, but progressive and feminist organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)and the National Organization for Women (NOW) challenge this characterization, with NOW describing WoLF alongside Women's Declaration International as "anti-trans bigots disguised as feminists."
TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. First recorded in 2008, the term TERF was originally used to distinguish transgender-inclusive feminists from a group of radical feminists and social conservatives who reject the position that trans women are women, including trans women in women's spaces, and transgender rights legislation. Trans-inclusive feminists assert that these ideas and positions are transphobic and discriminatory towards transgender people. The use of the term TERF has since broadened to include reference to people with trans-exclusionary views who are not necessarily involved with radical feminism.
Selina Todd is an English historian and writer. From 2015, she has been Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Todd's research focuses on the history of the working-class, women and feminism in modern Britain. Since 2017, Todd has also been president of the Socialist Educational Association.
Transgender rights in the United Kingdom have varied significantly over time, with the British transgender community facing ongoing challenges not experienced by cisgender (cis) Britons. These include various laws and public attitudes in regards to identity documents, as well as anti-discrimination measures used by or pertaining to transgender people, in the areas of employment, education, housing and social services, amongst others.
The term womxn is an alternative spelling of the English word woman. Womxn, along with the term womyn, has been found in writing since the 1970s to avoid perceived sexism in the standard spelling, which contains the word man.
Shon Faye is an English writer, editor, journalist, and presenter, known for her commentary on LGBTQ+, women's, and mental health issues. She hosts the podcast Call Me Mother and is the author of the 2021 book The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. She was an editor-at-large at Dazed and has contributed features and comment journalism to The Guardian, The Independent, VICE, n+1, Attitude, Vogue, Verso and others.
Kathleen Mary Linn Stock is a British philosopher and writer. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex until 2021. She has published academic work on aesthetics, fiction, imagination, sexual objectification, and sexual orientation.
Magdalen Berns was a British YouTuber, boxer, and software developer. Berns, a lesbian radical feminist, produced a series of YouTube vlogs in the late 2010s focusing on topics such as women's rights and gender identity. Berns's vlogs attracted attention from transgender rights activists, some of whom characterized her as being transphobic and a TERF. Berns co-founded the non-profit organisation For Women Scotland, which campaigns against possible changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004, among other things.
The LGB Alliance is a British nonprofit advocacy group founded in 2019, in opposition to the policies of LGBT rights charity Stonewall on transgender issues. Its founders are Bev Jackson, Kate Harris, Allison Bailey, Malcolm Clark and Ann Sinnott. The organization has said that lesbians are facing "extinction" because of the "disproportionate" focus on transgender identities in schools.
Holly Lawford-Smith is a New Zealander-Australian philosopher, scholar, researcher, author and Associate Professor in Political Philosophy, University of Melbourne.
The Labour Campaign for Trans Rights (LCTR) is a British pressure group within the Labour Party, founded in February 2020.
For Women Scotland (FWS) is a Scottish campaign group that opposes proposed reforms allowing individuals to change their recorded sex in legal documents by means of self-declaration. The group campaigns against changes to transgender rights and has been described as anti-trans, as trans-exclusionary radical feminist, and as a "gender-critical feminist group".
Transgender Trend is an anti-trans British pressure group, which describes itself as a group of parents, professionals and academics who are concerned about the number of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria. It was founded in 2015 by Stephanie Davies-Arai.
"'We're being pressured into sex by some trans women'" is the original title of a BBC News article written by Caroline Lowbridge and published on 26 October 2021. Produced by the BBC's regional service in Nottingham, the article claims that lesbians are being pressured by transgender women into having sex with them. The article received widespread criticism among the LGBT community as transphobic. It drew particular attention for the inclusion of comments from American pornographic actress Lily Cade, who wrote a blog post after the article's publication calling for the "lynching" of high-profile trans women. Cade's comments were subsequently removed from the article.
The Women's Declaration International (WDI), formerly the Women's Human Rights Campaign (WHRC), is an international advocacy organization founded in the United Kingdom. WDI has published a Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights, and has developed model legislation to restrict transgender rights that has been used in state legislatures in the United States. The organization has been described as gender-critical, anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-gender, trans-exclusionary, trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF), and as a hate group, and in several countries the group has been linked to the far right. It has been noted by Southern Poverty Law Center as being part of an "anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network".
Gender-critical feminism, also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminism or TERFism, is an ideology or movement that opposes what it refers to as "gender ideology": the concept of gender identity and transgender rights, especially gender self-identification. Gender-critical feminists believe that sex is biological and immutable, while believing gender, including both gender identity and gender roles, to be inherently oppressive. They reject the concept of transgender identities. These views have been described as transphobic by feminist and scholarly critics, and are opposed by many feminist and LGBT rights organizations.
FiLiA is a British gender-critical feminist charity founded in 2015 that describes itself as part of the women's liberation movement. FiLiA organizes a conference, held first in 2008 as Feminism in London, in different cities, which it now describes as the "largest annual grassroots feminist conference in Europe". FiLiA is gender-critical, and states that it supports "sex-based rights." It has lobbied against gender recognition reform and considers gender self-identification a threat to "women's protected rights." Critics describe it as anti-transgender and transphobic. FiLiA is critical of the sex industry and considers pornography harmful. It has campaigned on behalf of women internationally, including in Iran, Cyprus, and Kenya. It has been described as one of "the most important 'gender critical' groups" alongside Women's Declaration International.