I think I've figured out why the Guilty Feminists feel guilty...

[quote BetsyM00]FindTheTruth

btl comment here: forwomen.scot/11/08/2021/scottish-womens-aid-have-failed-the-womens-aid-network/[/quote]
Oooh Betsy Littlebrowndog this is gold. For anyone on here wondering what the various crisis centres are saying, it's all here, especially in the comments

This is what Little shared PP:

"I am the Board chair at Glasgow East Women’s Aid and these concerns are front most in our minds. We recognise trans women and would not turn them away but we cannot support them in refuge. We are a women’s organisation and are protected by the Equality Act 2010 which recognises that there are organisation who support women and children specifically. We do not support men, work with men nor do we have any intention of doing so. Women and girls need to have access to safe spaces to be able to survive domestic abuse in all it’s forms. We are reluctantly affiliated to SWA due to the funding given to SWA which they will distribute to us. The women we work with need us to have as much funding as possible to allow us to support them. SWA do not appear to represent the voices of women’s aid and we now need the SG to engage with the wider WA organisations to allow us to be heard and to shape the future more positively for women and women’s aid. We need to come together to actually be heard."

Someone said on another thread that Edinburgh Rape Relief does not have refuges. Which again raises the question of what this organization actually does. Do their employees/members provide counselling or are they just a referral service to other counsellors? Would one of their employees/members provide victim services like accompanying the victim to the hospital, police or trial or is that another organization? I harp on about this because I am beginning to suspect that these organizations do very little which is why they can be so dismissive of women's wishes and hire seemingly unsuitable people.

The Student
'An insight with Mridul Wadhwa into working in a rape crisis centre'
by Karolina Zieba, 5/04/19

(extract)
"The work is incredibly emotionally draining, so Wadhwa has to be balanced and mindful of her own emotional state. The Student asked her what she does to take care of herself: “Well I don’t deal with individual survivors every day, so for me what I do in terms of self-care is a lot of avoidance. I do see survivors – four a week usually – who help me stay connected to the cause…but it’s important to keep it fun. We should be able to laugh and use humour at work. In terms of my team, I try to cook for them once a week or every other week.”

Beyond that, she recommends debriefing: “By talking about what it’s like for you, you are creating that distance and also you remind yourself that the survivors who come to our centre have other lives outside of the centre.”

Most importantly, rape crisis centres are spaces for those affected by sexual violence, most of whom are women. The Student asked Wadhwa if she believes a man could be a successful rape crisis centre manager. She does not: “I don’t think men are ready to go out and set up services of this nature. Women’s aid organisations and rape crisis centres have been set up with the blood, sweat, and tears of women. It’s about the women’s experience of sexual violence. Our workforce is reserved for women only.” (continues)
studentnewspaper.org/article/an-insight-with-mridul-wadhwa-into-working-in-a-rape-crisis-centre

Is Wadwha's successful imitation of Americans valued whilst working in an Indian call centre the relevant transferable skill?

A BAME, trans, immigrant who came to Scotland to escape from violence and transphobia, who achieved academically, fosters children and wants to support traumatised women? Useful person to have in your arsenal.

Mridul was privately educated at a Catholic school in India. The family were wealthy enough to fund travel, fees for Edinburgh Uni, and associated living costs.

FindTheTruth

btl comment here: forwomen.scot/11/08/2021/scottish-womens-aid-have-failed-the-womens-aid-network/

A BAME, trans, immigrant who came to Scotland to escape from violence and transphobia, who achieved academically, fosters children and wants to support traumatised women? Useful person to have in your arsenal.

Is that the reason Wadwha moved to Edinburgh or was it to complete a Masters degree in 'training'?

@littlbrowndog where did you find the statement by Patricia Currie? "I am the board chair at Glasgow east womens aid and these concerns are front most in our minds"

very interesting and want to get the text and context - i.e. where it was said and who to

It still doesn't make any sense to me.
What does reframing trauma look like?
If a women says she wants a female therapist what actually happens - is she thrown out, shouted at, lectured for hours?
The women working in the refuge centres will have worked with women for years, are they silently still supporting women whilst hating and ignoring their CEO?

It’s Scotland. Captured Scotland rowan

Interlinked by the same people. Money ? Power ?

Seems that MW has none of those. Or lived experience. Or empathy. Or insight. Or a GRC.
Seems that MW only has opinions.

Seems likely that MW has useful connections.

Thanks for that R0 - I had seen that MW had qulaifications in training, but, I assumed that a CEO of a rape crisis centre would also have some sort of qualification in counselling, 3rd sector, law, health care, prison services or policing.

It's likely that whilst employed by Shakti Woman's Aid, Wadwha obtained additional qualifications that enabled progression within Women's Services.

(2016 Shakti board's four priorities includes commitment to staff training see screenshot)

Interesting

Like before working in women's services, I used to teach people how to sound American in India, in a call centre. So it is not by design that I got into this work. But I stayed by design because in fact, I moved back to India and then moved back again to work at Shakti Women’s Aid."

Karen Davis examines the context and consistency of Wadwha's claims to have imitated an American in a call centre role managing access to food stamps and cash benefits for US citizens. Wadwha describes enjoying the "sense of power" associated with this role in a Provoke interview: www.buzzsprout.com/1219151/4569950-provokecast-episode-1-mridul-wadhwa

'MRIDUL AND POWER. HAVE YOU HEARD THIS, EDINBURGH RAPE CRISIS?'
6 May 2021

It still leaves the question around the psyche of males obsessed with and demanding entry to spaces for female bodied violence, trauma, bodily funcitons.... Narcissism sure but it's more than that...

I think the term you are looking for is sadistic

I am struggling to understand why/how someone male whose previous experience was training Indian telesales staff to mimick Americans came to be employed by a domestic abuse organisation providing specialist support to very vulnerable women and their children.

Quite.

Seeing (for example) Sikh Womens Aid (based in the West Midlands) state that they only employ women in refuges makes me wonder how all the people shouting "bigot" are going to square up the conflicting issues that they are a) terrified of being seen as transphobic and b) terrified of being seen as racist.

What are MW's qualifications?

Wadwha became involved in Women's Services via Shakti Women's Aid. Shakti Women's Aid is a grassroots organisation formed in 1985 and incorporated in 2004.

from website:
Shakti Women’s Aid helps BME women, children, and young people experiencing, or who have experienced, domestic abuse from a partner, ex-partner, and/ or other members of the household.
shaktiedinburgh.co.uk/about/

One Scotland Case Study:
"Shakti Women’s Aid came into being in September 1985, when a small group of black women applied for funding, with the help and support of Edinburgh & Lothians Women’s Aid, to the (then) Edinburgh District Council, for funding to set up a separate refuge for BME women and their children fleeing from domestic abuse. In April 1986 the Edinburgh District Council Housing Department approved funding for office premises and two part-time workers, and by September 1986, the workers were in post.

Shakti’s definition of Domestic Abuse is wider than most, it not only recognises perpetrators as a partner or ex-partner, but also other family member such as in-laws."
[[https://onescotland.org/nacwg-news/case-study-shakti/
]]

SHAKTI WOMEN'S AID
Company number SC273279
find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC273279/filing-history

transcript extracts:
MW "It happened not to deliberately. When I graduated, I did a Masters at Edinburgh University, there was a job going at Shakti and I just completed a masters in training. And they needed someone to do some training. It wasn't by design. I just applied for this job, it looked interesting. Obviously, I had been around violence. I grew up in a home with domestic abuse. I'd experienced violence as a transwoman in India. And so it looked like somewhere I wanted to work. And I applied and I got the job. And I just stayed.

Like before working in women's services, I used to teach people how to sound American in India, in a call centre. So it is not by design that I got into this work. But I stayed by design because in fact, I moved back to India and then moved back again to work at Shakti Women’s Aid."

"So I've worked in the women's sector now since 2005, so quite a few years. And when I worked at Shakti Women's Aid, you know, it was eye opening, not just to see an experience, like what does domestic abuse really look like" (continues)

I am struggling to understand why/how someone male whose previous experience was training Indian telesales staff to mimick Americans came to be employed by a domestic abuse organisation providing specialist support to very vulnerable women and their children.

Me neither. So women’s aid Scotland was frightened by randoms on Twitter saying stuff

These women get paid a lot of money to support women. A lot of money.

But yet they can’t support women. Too afraid.

They may well be from survivors expressing their disgust at Rape Crisis Scotland's last-minute objection to granting the wishes of the survivors they'd supported until that point (including btw on this particular request to specify sex). That objection took the form of briefing against that point in the law by lobbying both government and all MSPs and articles in mainstream media.

That upset a lot of survivors, because RCS was working with them and the single biggest issue female survivors talked about in parliament was being able to request to be examined by someone who was also female.

On that occasion RCS claimed a) that wouldn't make any difference anyway and b) bigots were using this issue as a smokescreen for transphobia, so survivors shouldn't have that right.

I'll never understand why random idiots on Twitter being mean about this issue should lead the professional advocates for survivors to decide to deny the wishes of survivors, but I'm sure it made sense to Sandy (CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland).

The blog post/ statement is in response to a different matter:

So Women and Girls in Scotland who surveyed 2000 women and published a report on female-only services in 2019, have been trying to help female survivors find out if their local rape crisis centre would a) offer them a female-only service and b) would penalise you for asking for a female-only service if they didn't.

Rape Crisis Scotland refused to answer which centres do or don't, hiding behind the excuse that they're just the umbrella organisation and that all centres within the network are independent. Which isn't really true in the way most people understand that concept.

But anyway, Rape Crisis Scotland told Women and Girls in Scotland that they should ask each individual centre if they offered a female-only service. Which is easier said than done, for reasons I have written about here before.

But anyway, Women and Girls in Scotland did ask the question and on 9 August published a thread on Twitter about this work done on the request of survivors and stating at the end that so far they could say what the position was of two out of the 17 local Rape Crisis Scotland centres. (One yes, one no)

And that thread prompted the RCS blog claiming that there was an attack etc. What actually happened is that the women who are the very people for whom Rape Crisis Scotland receives state funding are asking can you provide the service I need or not.

That's not called attacking an organisation but the first step towards holding it to account - finding out if it actually delivers the service it is paid to deliver. Obviously criticism is the expected next step once the basic facts about provision are established. Because even if all 17 provide a female-only service on request, the umbrella organisation is deliberately refusing to confirm that to make an ideological point. Which is having a detrimental impact on survivors who take on board Rape Crisis Scotland management rhetoric that only bigots object to trans inclusion in female-only services.

Content Note: Contains screenshots of abusive tweets.

Is it just me, or are those some of the tamest "abusive tweets" ever seen? A bit sweary, and not nice to receive, but nothing like the variety of threats aimed at women who are standing up for women.