WiT (Woman is This) was formed in 2021. It is a collective of women who have been negatively impacted by the promotion of the concept of gender identity and its underlying ideology. We understand gender ideology (GI) within an historical context of the global oppression of women and girls.
We seek to consider whether the replacement of sex with gender identity as the marker for what constitutes a woman is in conflict with women’s progress in the world, women’s understanding of self and the nature of being a woman. Of particular interest to us is the psychological, emotional and mental health impact on women by gender ideology being promoted across many areas of their lives. To this end we invited women to speak of their thoughts and feelings about the widespread promotion of gender ideology and the abolition of sex as the criterion for categorising women and men. They were also given the opportunity to speak of any material losses they might have experienced due to the promotion of this ideology and/or their questioning of it. We want to challenge the ways in which critical attitudes to gender ideology, or complete rejection of it, leads to a hostile environment for women at individual, cultural, organisational and institutional levels. We are interested in the psychological, emotional and ethical harms caused by these losses.
The WiT collective is transparent about our rejection of gender ideology. We believe that women’s rights as a sex class to organise, express and collectively define as a group are being dismantled by the notion of gender as an individual identity which supersedes sex. Sex is an immutable biological characteristic and it is impossible to change sex. Gender is a social construct that has no basis in material reality. We recognise gender as a hierarchy of socially constructed sex roles where the role allocated to women is held in an inferior position. These assumed roles have been used to oppress women materially and psychologically. By separating sex from gender and challenging the veracity of gender, second wave feminists succeeded in securing rights for women on the basis of our sex whilst also dismantling many of the dehumanising assumptions about women’s intellectual, emotional, moral, cultural and even spiritual capacity through these stereotypes.
Sex role stereotypes change over time and place but their hierarchical nature is constant. In recent years the sex role stereotype imposed on women in western countries is heavily influenced by pornography.
WiT accepts only one definition of woman: an adult human female. We understand that women who claim to be men continue to be women. We do not exclude them from the category of woman.
The name of the collective references the practice of radical (or second wave) feminists in the 1970s/80s placing messages inside the pages of pornographic magazines on display in shops. One message sometimes written on these inserts was, ‘Woman is not this’.
We are grateful to the many women who took the time to complete this very important survey. It has been an honour to read all of the comments, sometimes deeply moving, occasionally amusing, always informative, and never ever dull.
Fourteen women played a direct role in producing the WiT Survey and Report, with many more playing an indirect role. In helping to gather and record evidence of the negative impact of gender identity ideology on women, all of the women who helped with the WiT Survey have recorded, for now and for the future, the truth about this time in history when women’s rights are being dismantled and misogyny is running amok. These women must be acknowledged for this important contribution to the fight for women’s liberation.
WiT is unfunded other than small donations made by members of the collective. We thank these women for their kind donations. All work has been carried out by women in their free time and without renumeration.
The WiT Survey: its Purpose
WiT has undertaken a survey in an attempt to establish whether women who reject gender ideology experience mental distress or harms to their general wellbeing due to this ideology and/or their rejection of it. The survey aims to collect data on the impact of gender identity ideology on women’s mental health, focusing exclusively on women who do not accept that it is possible to change sex through medical interventions, the use of language or by any other means.
The survey was shared with women through networks within the global women’s movement with the aim of gathering large scale empirical data that can be shared with policy makers, practitioners, researchers and the general public.
Many women who do not accept the tenets of gender ideology refer to themselves as gender critical while other women who reject the concept of gender altogether, rejecting any acquiescence to gender ideology, may call themselves gender abolitionists or/and radical feminists. Other women who do not accept gender ideology may have other language to refer to themselves or none at all.
Although these groups of women might disagree on the nature of gender and how we should respond to the imposition of this ideology onto us, the survey is aimed at all of these groups as the single target group. What unites them is concerns about the implications of the abolition of sex to categorise women and men. The term gender critical is being used for the purposes of this survey as an umbrella term for all women who challenge, question or oppose gender ideology, however the usefulness or accuracy of the term gender critical is contested by many who reject gender ideology. We recognise the use of the term gender critical as an umbrella term is a compromise made for the purposes of practicality.
In designing the survey, we took as a starting point our own experiences and those of other women who have been psychologically harmed or distressed by the imposition of gender ideology. Our interest was in establishing whether the distress and harms experienced by members of the WiT collective are widespread amongst women who do not accept this ideology and its imposition on us.
The survey offered women an opportunity to speak of why they reject this ideology, what aspects of it are of concern to them and if, or how, it has impacted on their lives. It invited women to speak of psychological harms and moral injuries they have experienced by its imposition. Women were also given space to speak of how they have been treated in many areas of life as a result of non-acceptance of gender ideology.
Background to the Issues
In many countries, in particular western countries, there is a move to replace sex as the determining marker for what constitutes a woman or a man with something referred to as gender identity. We understand this as being a movement driven by a belief system that amounts to an ideology and is variously referred to as gender identity ideology (GII) or gender ideology (GI).
This ideology is made difficult to define because of the shifting use of language it deploys. It takes advantage of the fact that gender, which is sex role stereotypes, has come to be conflated with sex; the biological fact of being female or male. It argues that everyone has a sense of themselves as a woman or a man, a girl or a boy, which is independent of their sex. This is referred to as a person’s gender identity. When scrutinised it seems invariably to refer to having a sense of the self as being aligned in some way with sex role stereotypes, which is gender. It is claimed that this identity is known unequivocally to the individual, including children and even infants. It can also, apparently, be fluid. Under GI, when a person declares their gender identity it is incumbent on others to accept and respect this. Since gender ideologists have taken the words man and woman to refer to their gender identity rather than their sex, they have changed the definitions of the words man and woman.
As the rights of women are sex based, this move is in direct conflict with women’s rights. Women are being forced to redefine themselves according to compliance with sex role stereotypes, i.e. gender, rather than according to their sex. This action, together with the methods used to suppress opposition to it, is having a profound impact on the lives of many women.
The replacement of sex with gender identity is not happening through a democratic process but by a combination of stealth, deception, obfuscation and coercion. It has been happening apace at a global level and is being facilitated and extolled by our institutions, including our governments and intergovernmental organisations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation. Women who question gender ideology are being silenced such as to retain the wider public in a state of ignorance while at the same time there has been a bombardment of pro gender ideology propaganda emanating from all of our institutions.
It is important to clarify the distinction between sex and gender:
Sex is defined by the United Nations as “the physical and biological characteristics that distinguish males and females.’’ (Gender Equality Glossary, UN Women)
Gender refers to “the roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society at a given time considers appropriate for men and women… These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and are learned through socialization processes.’’ (Gender Equality Glossary, UN Women).
There is a history of men dressing as women and mimicking the mannerisms of women for sexual pleasure. In the UK an act of parliament was passed in 2004, the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), granting legal status as women to men who claim to be women following a medicalised process and the same for women who claim to be men. These medical procedures cannot change a person’s sex but are body modifications to give the person some outward appearance of aspects of the opposite sex. The GRA has created a legal fiction whereby society is required to pretend that a man has become a woman or a woman has become a man.
It is now demanded of women that we recognise any man, (both those with and without a GRC [gender recognition certificate] in the UK), as literally being a woman in every sense if he says he is. If we accept that a man has become a woman it follows that these men must be free to access all of the rights and spaces that women have fought for over the past century. There is widespread conflation of the words sex and gender which is confounding the issue for the general public and even for politicians who are in a position to change laws.
Replacement of sex with gender identity changes the meaning of the word woman from an adult human female to someone who feels aligned in some way with aspects of femininity, that is, socially constructed female sex roles. When second wave feminists secured protections for women, these were won on the basis that we were oppressed due to our sex. When sex is no longer the criterion for defining a woman, these sex-based laws and protections are compromised.
Gender, or sex role stereotypes, are hierarchical with those roles allocated to women being held in an inferior position. Redefining the word woman as being based on conformity to sex role stereotypes repositions women in this inferior position of old, a move which effectively lowers the cultural worth and, potentially, self-worth of women.
Feminists of the 1970s and 80s identified gender as a social construct imposed on both men and women for the purposes of oppressing women who, by virtue of their sex, play a different and more demanding role in reproduction. Feminists challenged the veracity of gender as an innate feature of being a woman, arguing that such stereotypes were not the truth about women. Conversely, gender ideology encourages women to accept gender as being central to our womanhood and argues that everyone has a gender identity which is essential to the sense of self with the sexed body as having little, if any, bearing on the sense of self or with the material conditions of one’s life. The idea of gender identity being innate contradicts the United Nations definition of gender as being socially constructed.
WiT SURVEY RESPONDENT COMMENT: “I am a second wave feminist from the 70’s and have spent most of my 72 years working to show gender sex stereotyping for what it is and to break it down. It is the cornerstone of patriarchy, and it is a vital component that keeps it in place.”
It is deemed justifiable by GI activists to compel others to affirm their gender identity unquestioningly; that the freedom to express it and have it validated is paramount. This is being enforced despite there being no empirical evidence that anyone has an innate gender identity. Regardless of the lack of material evidence of its existence, gender identity trumps sex under gender ideology. Acceptance of an innate or inexorable gender identity means that the oppressive nature of sex role stereotypes cannot be challenged and are thus depoliticized. There is, for some individuals, an opt out option of declaring oneself non-binary, i.e. aligned with both or neither sex role stereotypes, albeit with the acceptance it is sex role stereotypes that determine men and women.
Gender ideologists assert that this gender identity is more likely to make itself known to individuals whose interests and social presentation do not align with the sex role stereotypes traditionally associated with their sex. When people say they do not have a gender identity they are told that this is because there is no mismatch between their sex and their gender identity, so the latter is imperceivable to them, they have no discomfort to alert them to an incongruence between their sex and their gender identity.
We are to believe that gender identity and expression must be validated by others so that the person can live as their true self. The material reality of sex is reframed as being no more than a social construct that need not be validated. In contradiction to this, it is also argued that the sexed body must be altered or “transed” as a matter of urgency, to bring it into alignment with the required gender, suggesting that the sexed body is of some importance after all, albeit as a pliable or disposable thing. Others argue that no bodily changes are required and that the person becomes the opposite sex simply by declaring themselves to be so or by claiming to have an inner sense of being the opposite sex.
To accommodate those who believe they do not fit neatly into traditional sex role stereotypes, a multitude of neo genders have been created that one can choose from. There is no meaningful escape from gender under GI, one is always required to think of one’s self in relation to sex role stereotypes.
Despite being characterised by gender identity ideologues as a normal aspect of diversity and difference amongst human beings, the psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria in the DSM 5 is offered by some as an explanation for the transgender phenomenon. This diagnosis has been used to argue that those who question anyone’s claim to be the opposite sex from their actual sex is being unkind, thus casting dissenters as bad people. This has resulted in abuse being levelled at anyone who does not accept transgenderism. Although this psychiatric diagnosis has been used to explain transgenderism, we are told that transness is not to be pathologized.
Transgenderism has attached itself to lesbian, gay and bisexual rights and organisations despite sex denialism being contrary to same sex attraction. Thus, it is feeding off of past struggles and successes of LGB people. This has served to further misinform the wider public who think it is the same struggle.
The WiT survey invited women to comment on the contradictions and discombobulations within gender identity ideology.
The theoretical origins of sex dimorphism denial can be found in concepts derived from postmodern philosophy and queer and gender theories. It is not the remit of this report to expand on these theories other than to say that the sudden explosion of transgenderism, the speed and ubiquity of it being embedded into our societies, surely cannot be accounted for by any widespread support for these theories since most people are unfamiliar with them. After all, how many people are au fait with postmodernism and queer and gender theories? The more prosaic origins are the result of well-funded and aggressive lobbying by men who have the sexual paraphilia of autogynephilia and/or a rejection of their homosexuality, together with the medical and pharmaceutical industries capitalising on “transitioning”. For women it may be an attempt to escape the inferior status of being a woman.
The American researcher Jennifer Bilek (see https://www.the11thhourblog.com/) points to the vast sums of money behind the marketing of the “trans” industry and its links to emerging transhumanism.
Since gender identity is deemed to be innate, we are to believe that children, perhaps even infants, can express a gender identity which may not align with their sex by favouring the toys and clothing marketed for the other sex. Hence the term “trans child” has entered the lexicon.
We understand transgenderism as a men’s sexual rights movement, a regression back to rigid sex-role stereotypes, and in particular the eroticisation of these stereotypes. We also recognise that by relegating the physical body to a lower status than the now pre-eminent gender identity, the individual is primed to discard their body as being a part of, or all of, the location of self, thus lowering the physical self-protection instincts.
As the body ceases to be a meaningful part of the self, safeguarding and respect for the body is discarded, thus preparing the way for the abuse of children’s and women’s bodies, including the encouragement of medical interventions on the body known as gender affirming care, the commercialisation of women’s reproductive role such as in surrogacy, removal of safeguarding precautions, normalisation of pornography and sexual exploitation, contempt for the female body and the consequent rejection of the female body, in particular amongst girls and young women. Having decoupled the physical body from the self, men are free to take for themselves whatever they want from the female body with impunity.
The implications of replacing sex with gender identity extend to all areas of life including what we currently understand as human rights.
The survey asked questions relating to these issues.
The women who formed the WiT Collective and conducted the WiT survey took as a starting point our own experiences and those of other like-minded women in order to draw up a questionnaire with the aim of identifying, quantifying and speaking of the psychological impact on women who reject gender identity ideology.
Scope of the Report
The report states the position of WiT on gender identity ideology and proposes the notion that the experiences and concerns of the women in the collective are widespread amongst women who reject this ideology or who question it.
It gives a full overview of responses to both quantitative and qualitative questions.
The survey was wide-ranging, asking questions about a number of issues that emerge from GI which have the potential to be a source of distress for women.
Questions on demographics of the target group covered age distribution, country of origin and country of residence, sexuality, ethnicity and disability, including living with mental distress.
The survey began by asking a direct question about whether gender identity ideology has had an effect on respondents’ mental health. It then asked about specific issues such as how women feel about the impact on children and young people, holding gender critical or gender abolitionist views, experiences of professional spaces, the use of information and misinformation in GI, racism, lesbian erasure, language, data collection and more.
Using scales for answers, the survey gathered quantitative data. The resultant statistics are included in the report. A number of open questions gathered qualitative data which is included in the form of themes identified in the responses. At the end of each question there is a selection of women’s comments; a far more extensive selection is included at the end of each topic covered. This makes for extensive reading however a summary will provide an overview of the issues raised. The report can be read in its entirety or in parts according to topics of interest.
Many of the comments provide testimony to women’s experiences and views, explaining in women’s own words the harms they have experienced and why they do not accept gender ideology. Women provide personal stories of loss, fear, worry and anger.
Reading the comments in full will afford the reader an understanding of how gender identity ideology impacts on women’s lives, some comments also give insight into the theoretical and political objections women have to this ideology. They reveal what is really happening to women in the name of “inclusion” of people who claim to be the opposite sex from that which they are.
It is in view of the profound breadth and depth of the insight provided in the comments that the decision was made to include so many of them in the report.
A glossary of the key terms used is included. The report author also makes comment on popular assumptions about mental health, including the concept of gender dysphoria.
This report serves as an impact statement by women who do not accept gender ideology. It can also be viewed as a victim impact statement.
We note that governments have failed to conduct any impact assessment on women and girls despite allowing an ideology of this enormity to permeate all of society. Furthermore, the dissemination of misinformation together with the silencing of dissent has meant that a large number of the public is having vital information about, and discourse around, gender ideology withheld from them despite being forced to embrace it.
A summary is included in the report and recommendations are made.