

The organisation in question is one that has a mixed history on transgender inclusiveness. Until recently, the corresponding terms would have been "women only" and "men and women", with the unspoken implication that all transgender people would almost certainly be expected to attend the "men and women" group unless they passed as cis women (I mean, probably: as a transfeminine person I don't usually feel welcome at gender equity events so I rarely attend).



The impression I have is that senior folks have been made aware of the transphobia implied by the original phrasing, and so now we have these new labels, "females only" and "all gender identities". My reading of this is that it's a superficial change: what they've done - but not stated - is used "all gender identities" as a more inclusive version of "men and women" (yay for non-binary inclusion!) but the the shift from "women only" to "females only" is... odd. To me it reads like a dogwhistle, because of the striking similarity to trans-exclusionary language used by some second wave feminists. Otherwise why make the change from "women" to "females"? I feel like what happened is that someone felt uneasy about the possibility of including trans women - who "merely" identify as women (sigh) - being allowed into the women's group, and subconsciously shifted to "females" so as to strengthen the implication that the "females only" group is being defined in biological terms, using coded language to avoid being forced to explicitly say something trans-exlcusionary. I doubt there's deliberate maliciousness here, but it's bothering me a little.



In any case, the question I need answered is whether other people - especially other transgender people - would read the same implication into the "females only" versus "all gender identities" that I'm seeing. I ask knowing that I have a tendency to get a little distressed about these things, and I'm trying to work out if it's worth quietly mentioning as an issue to anyone. My feeling is that if other transfeminine people would read it the way I do, then it's worth mentioning, but if it's just me then it's best to let it slide.



So is that implication there, or is this just my personal anxieties about gender coming through?

An event on gender equity I've been asked to participate in has separate sessions, one open to "females only" and the other open to "all gender identities". I'm trying to guess the intended scope of these two terms (please take it as given that there are reasons not to explicitly ask right now).