#lgbtqa

The Guardian reports that several Women’s Institute (WI) groups across the UK are shutting down following the national organisation’s decision to ban transgender women.

The policy change, introduced by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI), has triggered what local leaders describe as “carnage,” with resignations, community backlash, and the loss of meeting venues.

Some halls and churches have refused to host WI groups that enforce the exclusionary rule, leaving branches unable to operate.

Many volunteers have stepped down in protest, arguing that the policy was imposed without meaningful consultation and has fractured previously harmonious local groups.

From the article:

Emma Hawley, chair of Social Lites WI in Urmston, Greater Manchester – a group with nearly 140 members that has run for 13 years – said her entire committee has decided to step down. “None of the other members want to take our places – many immediately said they weren’t even going to renew their membership,” she said. “We’re all heartbroken. I’ve put 13 years into running this amazing group but I can’t, ethically or morally, be a member of something that excludes transgender women,” she said.

This proves what many have said: The transphobic "gender critical" TERFs are not representative of British women.

(spam this to see them all!)

I'll add smth here cos I learned after posting this on IG that people still aren't entirely understanding how scary and dangerous this is. Ppl kept saying to me 'I can still buy your book in shops though' or 'Its okay, I'll order your book into my library!'

I dont give af about my book lol No one outside of Ace ppl ever read it, its yearly sales don't even cover a month of expenses for me.

The thing you should all be concerned about is that a totally benign unheard of book about someone's every day life is being banned. And those laws listed above are passing through US government right now. One of those laws would make it so that any teacher/librarian in the US could lose their job/go to prison for simply sharing 'ideology'- and I don't mean only lgbtq folk, these laws are attacking black history, civil rights history, disability rep in books. Just talking about these things will now legally be considered a 'dangerous ideology'.

And once that's set into law, the US government has backing via law to go ahead and say 'if these books aren't legally allowed in schools, then they shouldn't be allowed in shops, either.' And from there it sets up a great argument for 'The dangerous content in these books is lawfully being removed from public, shouldn't we be lawfully removing the people living out/promoting this ideology too?'

I can see why ppl don't fully understand how dangerous book bannings are, if they're not familiar with the history of fascism. If you're interested, there are plenty of graphic novels that share this history via first hand accounts- Maus, Persepolis, Banned Book Club.

But guess what? You're on limited time to get these via libraries...cos all three of these books are on banned lists too, and they got nothing to do with lgbtq rep, and everything to do with warning ppl about fascism.

And the US government knows it can get away with this, because they are passing these laws as we speak and barely anyone is doing anything about it or talking about it. I've been trying to talk about it for years and no one does anything except say to me 'don't worry, I'll buy your book!' or say its a badge of honour that I have a banned book.

its 666 day

6/6/26

AND its pride month

we are the strongest