Merched Cymru is a grassroots organisation of women in Wales working to protect and promote the rights of women and girls.
Today Hannah Blythyn, the Deputy Minister for Social Partnership, gave an update on the Welsh Government’s LGBTQ+ Action Plan.
The responses to the consultation have not yet been published – possibly because many were critical of the way in which the Plan undermined the sex-based rights of women and girls – but Welsh Government are pushing ahead regardless. Continue reading “Policy-making in Wales: Evidence-free, anti-democratic, and misogynist”
Welsh Government have commenced consultation on its LGBTQ+ Action Plan. They have issued the draft plan to much fanfare and have commissioned Stonewall Cymru, the leading Welsh LGBTQ+ NGO, to pull together ‘queer’ perspectives. So far so good one might think. But of course, anyone paying attention, any politician with their finger on the pulse, knows that it is not as simple as that. Politicians can no longer pretend that there is only one point of view that matters when it comes to ‘queer’ voices; that of Stonewall. The terrain is fraught with increasing numbers of people, especially women and lesbian and gay people themselves, raising serious concerns about Stonewall’s approach. Continue reading “Pushing back women’s rights in Wales”
I qualified as a social worker in 2000, and for 21 years I have worked in the specialist field of violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence (VAWDASV), culminating in becoming the designated ‘expert’ for my local authority and the person they consulted with on all matters concerning violence against women. The recognition of the myriad forms of violence and abuse experienced by women at the hands of men came about by the sheer hard work, stamina and courage of the women like me who never gave up fighting for women and girls regardless of the opposition we faced.
The LGBTQ+ Action Plan for Wales could be renamed the Stonewall Agenda for Wales in its slavish adoption of all Stonewall’s demands, along with Stonewall’s substitution of sex with ‘gender identity’ as the basis of human rights and protections.
The undifferentiated acronym ‘LGBTQ+’ groups together a diverse section of society based on their personal feelings and self-identities; from the heterosexual man who identifies himself as ‘non-binary’ or ‘queer’ to the lesbian who faces real discrimination on the basis of both her sex and her sexual orientation. Continue reading “Wales’s LGBTQ+ Action plan is Stonewall’s agenda”
In June, the Welsh Government announced that it was awarding Pride Cymru £25,000 this year, as part of a long-term plan to ‘embed support for the organisation’.
The Welsh Government has supported Pride in the past, but now we are putting this support on a firmer footing, to help with long-term planning and sustainability, not just for a single event but in recognising the role Pride plays as a grassroots movement.
