and of course some of those women will be murdered…

[TheShadowyFeminist]

This is hugely important & should prick the conscience of those who cultivate & help maintain a culture of silencing women who raise concerns over male inclusion policies in the women's third sector orgs.

A Scottish Sister Speaks

But the title I've picked is from the piece linked. It's referring to the women who are & who will self exclude from vital services because they're wilfully obscuring the impact that male inclusion has on vulnerable women who have been subjected to male violence & male sexual violence. They are and will self exclude as a result of male inclusion policies.

"... and of course some of those women will be murdered…"

Then the trouble is when they (women needing rape and dv services) are faced with a male in their spaces, they are so disadvantaged they expect to have nothing, so when they get a substandard something, they are still grateful. They would never say, why have I got a man in my woman’s group, what they will do is they will self-exclude, and they are! I have two women I work with that have already told me as rape victims they will not access the services available to them because of these policies and that is just the two I know; I have heard of more. Women like that will not cause a fuss, they will just quietly go away.

Shonagh: Yes, I have heard that too, so when the claim that this isn’t a problem is stated, we would need to ask how on earth they can possibly know that data, because they don’t know the number of women who haven’t turned up?

Jessie: Well yes, and of course some of those women will be murdered…The services that are meant to be there for women don’t act with them in mind, and the cry for ‘oh we must be inclusive’, well you exclude the very people that you were set up to help.

This should be on billboards and on the desk of every single MP.

Thank you for the link. It's made me very thoughtful, and really widened my understanding. I can see further problems ahead with constant inclusion - some groups exist for specific people, and if you aren't one of those specifics then the group isn't for you - and it's hard to see how to express that without seeming to deliberately exclude others. But the truth is that the group isn't deliberately excluding anyone; it's just targeting those whose needs coincide with what the group offers. Those who have different needs should have a different group specifically dealing with those needs. One group fits all doesn't work - all it does is unintentionally exclude those who were its original target group.

I hope to hear from Shonagh Dillon in public spaces and discussions. Her recently published PhD was an eye-opener.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4287881-Congratulations-Shonagh-Dillon-for-Defending-Your-PhD-TERF-Bigot-Transphobe-We-found-the-witch-burn-her?msgid=108769551

It's a very powerful piece.

This was an interesting read thanks OP. I hope others see it.

Thank you for posting this.

In addition to the quote above, the most chilling aspect of the article was about a woman being turned away from the service because of their insistence that she had been abused by a TW, not a man. How dare they reframe the victim’s experience to suit their own ideological agenda?? It makes me furious.

Who is this organisation actually FOR?