Where Do We Go From Here?

 

When For Women Scotland won the appeal against the Scottish Government which in turn, cemented and clarified in law what we already knew, that women were and have always been biological women; I innocently thought that the fight had, not been won, but that we could move forward on the basis that the ruling would be adhered to.

Oh sweet summer child.

Some organisations have capitulated, the Transit Police for example rolling back their ridiculous decision to give biological men the power to strip search women. 

Crimes will no longer recorded as chosen sex, but the person’s actual sex (although I note some crimes go reported with no sex at all listed).

Many sport associations are no longer allowing men into women’s sports.

What has become apparently however, is that the powers that be simply don’t care about the ruling.

Unison, the country’s biggest union recently allowed a biological man to run for a female seat.  The Labour Women’s Conference has been postponed.   Some NHS Trusts and Local Councils are blatantly ignoring the ruling, still allowing men into women’s toilets and changing rooms, claiming that they need “further guidance”.

What further guidance is needed I ask?  Men cannot ever become biological women or be acknowledged as being so.  So says the Supreme Court.  They therefore do not belong in women’s spaces.

What these organisations are telling us, what the Labour Government is telling us (see also the text messages spread around by MPs after the ruling) is that they do not care.  The ruling means nothing to them and they intend to carry on as they wish.

For Women Scotland went through two judicial reviews and an appeal at the Supreme Court, expending over two hundred thousand pounds in the process to get there, not to mention hundreds of hours of time; only for us now to effectively be told that it doesn’t matter.

So what does this mean for women’s rights? When we win in the highest Court in the land, yet that ruling is simply ignored by those who wish to.

I think in some places the ruling was welcome.  I do not believe that many sport associations wanted a crossover of men in women’s sports, effectively ruining every sport that they entered.  But for many other organisations, Trusts, Councils, the Government; it clearly was not.

The trans agenda brings profit.  It allows control.  It brings a distraction when needed for the Government to wield. 

The trans agenda was welcomed, encouraged, assisted and promoted by those in power because it is useful to them.  Because they have their own agenda.  Why else let organisations mutilate children’s bodies with drugs that stem their growth and reduce their bone density.  Why else tell children that they can be born into the wrong body and that there is a quick fix to all their problems.   Why else wave through women’s bathrooms being made into gender neutral, allow men in our changing rooms and our rape crisis centres, removing our safety and safe spaces in the process.

What do we do now in the question?  Someone brings a Court case for each time the Supreme Court is ignored?  They know that this is going to be an impossible feat, not just from a financial point of view, or the time involved; but also because we now have to wonder, is there any point?

If the Supreme Court are to be ignored which it appears in many cases that they are being, how can we fight this?  Especially when our own Government clearly did not want the ruling and by “postponing” the Women’s Conference, they have made their stance quite clear. 

What I fear is that this will now escalate.  I fear that they will do away with the Equality Act all together, rewriting it so as to make the rights of men who pose and cos play as women, front and centre.

What I see is that the Government allowed this ruling to change the situation in things like sports, but had no intention of following through with anything else.  Which poses the question. 

How far down this rabbit hole of hell are we going to go?

Big Changes Afoot

 I started this year with a big change, the only change that I thought possible this year.  I moved into a new home with my boyfriend.  A house that would be ours.  To create new memories.  A new chapter.  It was to be the start of the rest of our lives together and still is.

But it appears that the world of change was not done with me yet.

I have worked for the same company since I was 18 years old.  Over 25 years ago, over half of my life.  I grew into an adult with that firm.  They saw the many stages in my life, the way that I grew and the various iterations of the person that I would eventually become.

People came and people went over the years, but generally it was a firm that people stayed with and some I have known for as long as I have been there.

But as everything does, things changed; certainly over the past couple of years.  The firm was bought out and the company that I knew, changed.  The soul of the firm was different.  Everyone feels it.  Suddenly, the thought of working elsewhere crossed my mind.

It was not just the change of the guard, it was other things too.  The person I had worked with for so longer was coming towards retiring.  I had moved departments with him a few years ago and the cases that we now deal with are traumatic.  The type that you take home at night.  That torment you. 

Last week I was approached by another firm, offering me a new job.  A new department, more money and a security that I felt was slipping away at my current firm.  At my age, an opportunity that I could not ignore.

So I went for an interview.  

Without telling you what I do,  I can tell you that people who want to do, actually do, my job are rare.  They don't want to be that busy.  They see it as a stepping stone.  They see it as something that you move on from.  

I am a lifer when it comes to what I do.  I am good at it and I enjoy it.  My aspirations in life are work to live, not live to work.  This is rare in my field.  As such, finding someone like me who wants to stay and commit is rare.  Sought after.  Something I didn't actually understand, until I went to the interview.

I was offered the job.

Yesterday, after much deliberation, soul searching and a lot of worry, I decided to accept and handed my notice in.

Is it the right decision?  For me, now, yes.  Will it be the right decision in the long run?  I hope so.  Only time will tell.  What finally clinched my decision however was the realisation that if this new job went south, would I want to go back to my current job and the answer was no.  

I have loved my current job and moving away from it will be hard and strange and new.  But I have changed so much over the years.  I have grown and the person who started at the firm all those years ago is not me anymore.  I am ready for a new challenge.

Another new chapter.  That is two this year.  Wish me luck!

When Older Men Hit On You - What I Needed to Hear at 15

I just saw a post on Reddit that made me pause, and remember.

The question was "Women who were hit on by grown men when you were a teenager, what did you do?"  The girl asking the question was 15 years old.

The one thing that men will never understand is how this feels when you are a young girl.  Your whole world changes, forever.  It is the moment your childhood ends because you realise that you are no longer safe.  You can no longer dance carefree through the world as you used to.  It does not change in one day, it happens incrementally.  The rules that will change you and cage you appear so very quickly.

I hit puberty early and started to develop breasts when I was 11.  

I used to go to a park very close to our home which had swings, a roundabout and a slide.  I used to like going to play there when I was younger and even at 11/12 I would still go there, on my own, swinging around on the roundabout with a book.

That particular day, while happily sitting on the roundabout, a group of older boys turned up.  They were probably 15 years old.  They started to talk about me.  "Look, she's got tits already!".  They could see I was still so very young.  They came closer to me, asking me if they could touch them.  I ran away home and thankfully nothing more happened.

There was an awkwardness, a lack of understanding and some fear about that day.  But it was explained away as silliness of older boys and not to worry about it.  Although with a warning perhaps not to go there alone again.  

Don't go out on your own, it isn't safe.

I started to notice that adult me were starting to treat me differently.  At first I brushed it off until I started to recognise the signs.  The way they spoke to you was different.  Not like you speak to a child.  Almost flirting.   But subtly.  It was the look in the eyes that did it.  The way they would tell me I was so pretty and that all the men would be after me soon.  With a certain look in their eyes.  The way they pressed just that bit closer than I was used to, than I felt uncomfortable with.

Back then, I  did not understand their intentions, but I knew that something had changed and I did not like the way they looked at me.  The way they stepped that little bit closer to me.  I felt like a rabbit being eyed by a fox.

Be careful with adult men.

The older I got, the more developed I looked, the more this came to happen.  Some men, even men I had known as a child looked at me in a different way.  Like I was a woman.  Except I wasn't.  By the time I was 13 my fellow male pupils started to notice my shape too.  The size of my breasts gained me a nickname at school, which I won't share here.  There was also a presumption that I was "up for it", purely based on that my breasts were large.

Cover up or you are asking for it.

Over time, as we all do, I learned how to get away from the older men and deal with them.  Boys were a a different story and the lessons of how to deal with my peers look far longer.

That is the advice that I shared on the Reddit post.

 I went through this. From 12. Be strong is the first thing. It can be hard and they can be persistent. I will tell you what I used to do, which worked generally.

Say loudly "You do know I'm only 15 right? Then walk away.

If you are stuck in the conversation or the room with the man, say at a family party or something, look at him direct in the eye and say to him in a normal tone "This isn't the way you should be speaking to a 15 year old. Leave me alone". Then walk away.

If you are in public, go up to the nearest woman and tell her what he is doing/saying. She WILL look after you. I never had a woman walk away from me. Because we have all been there.

Be strong OP. Look them in the eyes when you say the above to them. Make them feel as uncomfortable as they did to you.

Looking them in the eye was definately the key for me. Making them understand that I knew what they were doing and that I knew that he knew that how he was behaving was wrong.

Sometimes if I was at a gathering or party where I knew other women, I would repeat what the man had said to me to the nearest woman. "Hey Aunty June, Bob thinks I should go out on a date with him, what do you think?"

I was strong because I had to be. But there are things that I wish that I could tell that 15 year old girl now.

• Your worth does not go up and down depending on what you look like.
• If he is over 5 years older than you and he is flirting with you, do not trust him.
• It is not "cool" if an older men is flirting with you, no matter how attractive he is. He is a predator.
• If someone does something bad to you, TELL SOMEONE. It is not your fault.
• You will be ok, I promise.

What would you tell your 15 year old self?