NION Women are a collective of cisgender women who are allies in the fight for trans rights, supporting trans people living freely.
In a climate of increasing and legal hostility towards transgender and nonbinary people, particularly targeted at transwomen, our community is in desperate need of allies. As a very small percentage of the population, we are vulnerable to a continued climate of unsafety without them. Enter NION Women, an organisation made up of cigender women who are standing on the front lines of the fight for trans people to live lives of peace and dignity. I spoke with them to learn more about their organisation and what motivates their collective to stand firm in their support of transgender people.
Who are NION Women?
NION (Not In Our Name) Women is a grassroots collective of cisgender women who came together in response to the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling, which redefined “woman” and “man” in the Equality Act to mean “biological sex” (sex assigned at birth) only. The ruling, which has subsequently led to the rollback of trans+ rights in the UK, has been presented, time and again, as a win for cis women.
However, as cis women, we do not recognise this as a win. In fact we see it as a harmful redirection of energy and focus away from the real, well-documented causes of harm against women and girls, the overwhelming majority of which is carried out by cisgender men.
Rather than stay silent, a few of us came together to see how we might empower others who felt the same way to speak up.
This is such a toxic and polarising conversation that we wanted to make it as easy as possible for those who believed in trans+ people’s right to dignity and respect, to show their support without them having to get into the weeds – something which so often puts people off.
So we wrote a letter with a very clear message – trans+ people are not the problem, let’s refocus on the proven causes of harm against women and girls. We published it, and within days, thousands of cis women were signing it.
In October we received the backing of the Good Law Project, which funded our move off Change.org – where we had originally set up the letter – to our own home at www.notinourname.org.uk. Over the following months through a combination of sharing the letter in our personal networks, blog writing and social media amplification, media relations, podcast appearances, endorsement from well-known personalities – including Sandi Toksvig, Denise Welch, Zack Polanski, Georgia and David Tennant, Deborah Frances White and Russell T Davies – signatures began to soar.
As fate would have it, we hit the 100,000 mark on the 1st anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling – which was a fantastic achievement, and we have now passed 110,000 signatures with the number increasing by the hour. We continue to share the message as widely as possible and while our letter is specifically for cis women based in the UK, we have seen independent NION-inspired groups begin to pop up all over the world, including in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Norway.
The overwhelming narrative would have us believe that cis women do not support the inclusion of trans+ people. Our letter is clear evidence that this is not the case. Every single signature represents a cis woman speaking up not only for herself in support of the trans+ people who are directly impacted by this harmful framing.
We’re now looking towards the future and how we can secure NION Women’s voice in the conversation for the long-term. We hope to be able to do much more work offline, as we know hearts and minds are rarely changed online. We already have a Go Fund Me set up which people who want to support our work can donate to.
What are the misconceptions that shape why cis women aren’t willing to support trans and enby people?
There are some common misconceptions that come up again and again, and it’s worth naming them plainly rather than dismissing them, because most of them come from a real place even when the conclusion may be wrong.
Trans+ inclusion means less safety for cis women
This is the big one, and it’s built on a false substitution – treating trans women and male violence as though they’re the same category of risk. The evidence doesn’t support that. The overwhelming source of harm to women is cisgender men who already have a track record of abusing their power. The evidence shows that trans+ people, and trans women of colour in particular, are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it. Redirecting fear toward trans+ people doesn’t make anyone safer – it just means the actual causes of harm remain unaddressed.
This is a new and untested idea
It isn’t. Trans+ people have used facilities and spaces in line with their gender for decades, quietly and without incident. What’s new isn’t the practice – it’s the level of political and media attention that’s now being paid to it.
I don’t know enough to have an opinion, so I should stay quiet
Many cis women hold back because they’re worried about terminology, about getting it wrong, about wading into something that looks hostile from the outside. But you don’t need to be an expert to believe in basic dignity. Our letter isn’t a test of knowledge – it’s a statement of a simple principle.
All cis women believe the Supreme Court Ruling on the definition of sex is a win for women’s rights
They don’t. The women with the loudest, most polarised views have become emblematic of what women supposedly think – but we believe that the vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle: not activists on either side, just people who want to live our lives and who don’t believe that scapegoating a minority group makes us safer. We also recognise that this playbook isn’t reserved for trans+ people. Many of those same narratives that claim to “protect women and children” are also used against other minorities including migrants and people of colour. NION Women exists to empower those in the middle so they feel more confident to show their support.
Supporting trans+ people means putting cis women’s issues second
The systems that fail women – that protect abusers, underfund services, blame victims – are the same systems that fail trans+ people, often more brutally. We don’t see solidarity with trans+ people as a trade-off, we see it as uniting for better outcomes for us all. Because we are all impacted – you only have to look at the application of the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of sex, which in practice has boiled down to who can use which toilet when they are out and about. When the public toilet we are allowed to use requires us to meet a threshold for how female we look, something has gone terribly wrong.
How can cis women be better allies?
Being a good ally doesn’t require expertise, and it doesn’t require getting everything right the first time. A few things matter more than perfection:
- Allyship can come in all shapes and sizes, and we believe in meeting people where they are at. For those new to these discussions, a first step can be as simple as following us or other organisations that support trans+ inclusion and learning more about the issues. Something as small and quiet as signing our open letter can also be a great way to show support.
- Some of the best allyship can happen in everyday conversations with colleagues, friends, neighbours or family. This could mean speaking up to correct disinformation, sharing positive stories about trans+ people and gently using your voice in support.
- Lead with evidence, not defensiveness. When someone raises an unfounded fear about safety or spaces the instinct might be to argue. It’s more effective to acknowledge the concern is real to them, and then point gently to what the evidence actually shows about where risk comes from.
- Don’t wait to feel like an expert. You don’t need to know every term or every debate to recognise that trans+ people are being used to distract from the real causes of harm. Waiting for total confidence before speaking up just extends the silence.
- Bring people with you, don’t leave them behind. Not everyone starts in the same place, and a lot of women are unsure or dismissed by both extremes of this conversation. Meeting them with patience – rather than writing them off – is how the movement grows.
- Make space, don’t speak over. Allyship means amplifying trans+ and enby voices and experiences, not narrating them. Ask what’s needed rather than assuming.
Your work with the Good Law Project – how it came about
We launched our letter independently, on Change.org, with no funding and no infrastructure – just an idea and a growing number of signatures. Within the first week we’d gathered 10,000 signatures from cisgender women, which was enough to get the attention of a few key stakeholders: the Good Law Project was one of them.
The Good Law Project uses the law to challenge injustice and is a prominent campaigner for trans+ people’s right to live with dignity, they have a new initiative called Good Law Nation which supports independent projects like ours, giving them support and backing to help them to grow during their initial set up phase.
In October, they partnered with us to develop our own website: notinourname.org.uk, so we could move away from where our letter was being hosted and build out our work in a more meaningful way. The impact was immediate: the announcement of the partnership alone brought in another 10,000 signatures in a single weekend, giving us a huge boost.
That partnership gave our grassroots collective the institutional weight to be taken seriously by media, MPs and other organisations, without ever changing who we were or what we wanted to say. We were still a collective of ordinary cisgender women, Good Law Project gave us a platform to say it louder.
Why do cis women need to speak up, if we aren’t the threat?
Because the narrative doesn’t correct itself. When politicians and parts of the media invoke “women’s safety” to justify excluding trans+ people, they are speaking in our name, whether we agree or not. If the only women’s voices we hear are a small number of very strident people who actively support the idea of segregation it’s easy to see how that might become the overriding narrative. Even if far more people have no issue with trans+ inclusion – either because they are unaware, or the subject of trans+ rights doesn’t impact them directly – their silence gets read as consent.
That’s why it’s essential for cisgender women who do believe that trans+ people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, to push back against the blanket narrative that the rights of trans+ people and the rights of cisgender people are in conflict. This is more important than ever as we begin to see the real life repercussions of the Supreme Court ruling and the updated EHRC Code of Practice. The Code was introduced in an attempt to guide organisations on how to remain within the law when it comes to who is allowed to access which service, in cases where service use is based on sex at birth. Described as unworkable, this guidance has merely served to further ostracise the community – and embolden those who are intent on causing harm.
There’s also a practical reason it has to be cis women specifically. Trans+ people have been saying for years that they aren’t the danger they’re painted as – and they’ve largely been talked over, or accused of having a stake in the answer. When cisgender women say the same thing, about our own safety, it’s much harder to dismiss. That’s not fair, and it shouldn’t be necessary – but it’s true.
Speaking up also isn’t a favour done for someone else. The systems that lead to the targeting of trans+ people – moral panic, weaponised fear, politicians avoiding the real causes of harm – are the same systems that fail ALL women. Every time attention gets redirected toward a fabricated threat, it takes attention and funding away from tackling problems such as misogyny, gender inequality, or male violence, the actual, well-evidenced source of harm. Standing up for trans+ people is not a departure from women’s safety advocacy. It’s part of it.
You can read NION’s letter in full, and add your name, at www.notinourname.org.uk
