Op uitnodiging van Europarlementariër Stephen Bertulica uit Croatië heb ik vandaag bij een ronde tafel gesproken over de debanking van de stichting Voorzij. Er spraken deskundigen uit Venezuela en Amerika en er was ook een ervaringsdeskunige journaliste uit Oostenrijk.
Wereldwijd wordt debanking gebruikt als politiek middel om mensen de mond te snoeren. Immers zonder bankrekening kun je in de huidige maatschappij niet meer functioneren. Je kunt je salria niet ontvangen en je huur niet betalen. Als organistie kun je geen giften ontvangen en geen activiteiten ontwikkelen. Daarom wil Berttulica dat het zwijgen over debnking wordt doorbroken en er maatregelen worden genomen die transparant en controleerbaar zijn. Hij vindt dat iedereen recht heeft op een bankrekening en dat alleen criminele veroordeling zou mogen leiden tot het opzeggen van een bankrekening.
mijn speech luidde ongeveer als volgt:
Dear ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for inviting me here today for a testimony about our debanking experience.
Let me first introduce myself. I am Caroline Franssen. I am self employed since 25 years as a trainer of coaches and therapists.
And I am the founder and initial chair of the Dutch women’s organisation Voorzij, translated ‘for her’ .
I initiated this foundation to stand up for women’s right to privacy, dignity, safety and human rights.
It was necessary to start a new organisation for women, because all the other Dutch women’s organisations had stopped being women’s organisations. They became mixed organisations because of transgender ideology. They all decided to stand up for privileges of trans identified men.
There are only two sexes: men and women. Men cannot become women, as humans are mammals and mammals cannot change sex. Every cell in our body is formed by our sex and so are all our organs.
To believe men can declare themselves women and therefore become women, is a dangerous belief, pushed upon us by a powerfull cult.
When you add even one man to the category women, you erase the category women. You turn to the category women into the category ‘human’. And that leads to the denial of women and girls and their specific needs and their position in society.
Women need provisions where men are not allowed. We need to be able exclude men from places where we want privacy or are vulnerable for instance because get undressed or because we sleep there. We also need fair sports as men are stronger and faster than women and will always win mixed competitions.
Men found a loophole to include themselves in the women’s category : they call themselves transwomen. and by using that word that they think they belong in the women’s category.
These men managed to influence society and even women’s organisations. So nobody was standing up for women’s rights anymore and that’s why we created Voorzij.
Voorzij is the first Dutch organisation that doesn’t agree with this notion. Men don’t belong in the women’s category no matter how they identify. Men don’t belong in women’s locker rooms, sports, rape crisis centres and women’s prisons.
We state that when you’re born a man, you will belong in the male categorie your whole life. No matter how you feel about it. No matter which medications you take. Even cosmetics surgery doest make you change category. Although this is the biological reality, nowadays this is a very controversial point of view.
We were treated as controversial from the start. They call us transfobes, bigots and Nazis and say we are not worthy of existing as persons and as an organisation. It was dystopic it felt like we were in a sort of communist country or in a war on women.
We have experienced threats, doxing, vandalism, defamation and debanking. I have been at the police station four timesto report crimes against me.
So that’s the background.
Our foundation had a bank account with Bunq bank four 1 1/2 year. When we open the bank account, we had to handover our bylaws. They were clear about our intentions to stand up for the rights of women and girls only.
But after complaints by trans activists Bunq decided to close our account.
They did announce the debanking without explanation by a random note in their app. We didn’t receive an email or a letter explaining that their viewpoints changed.
As it was in the holiday period, we discovered this note in the app too late to protest, our account was allready closed.
As an organisation need a bank account. We need a bank account to collect money, from gifts and paid activities. We need a bank account to be an organisation and for instance have and pay for a website and or pay for a zoomaccount to organise online meetings. It was in the Corona period, so we were not allowed to meet each other in person.
We tried to fight this decision with a lawyer. I set up a Go fund me to raise money to pay for a lawyer. From a lot of countries people were willing to help us and we raised a few thousand euros. But we never received the money because after complaints by trans activists our GoFundMe was cancelled. And all the money was sent back to generous givers.
Then I tried to raise money for a lawyer with PayPal. Well by now you know the story: trans activists complained and PayPal cancelled us too.
Fortunately, I managed to withdraw the funds from PayPal before the account was actually closed.
We hired a lawyer but he didn’t manage to persuade Bunq to restore our account. Our protest wad denied by the banking supervisor. You have rights as a person but you don’t have the same rights as a foundation or an NGO in the Netherlands.
This means Bunq and other banks are allowed to cancel our account. They can disrupt our organisation. And we couldn’t do nothing about it. Of course we made a fuss and went pUblic. When asked by the newspapers Ali Niknam, up the chair of bunk Bank said we were discriminating trans women and we should stand up for their rights as well. So we are in a position now where men can claim to be women and these men and their rights are more important than women themselves.
Fortunately I found a new bank for voorzij: the ING.
But we are still cancelled by Paypall. And this has a serious impact on our organisation. It has led to a minimisation of the activities of our foundation, because we couldn’t sell tickets to our international online events anymore.
We used to invite inportant writers and activists from all over the world as speakers. They came from the UK, Canada and America. We earned some money because we charged for a ticket.
But we couldn’t continue this activity, because we couldn’t receive money from abroad anymore.
So debanking really hurt our organisation.
We were marginalised and it hurt.
Women are still treated as secondhand citizens, even by the banks.
