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

Twitter is getting interesting. #askrapecrisisscotland is trending at number 1 which is likely therefore to generate a wider conversation.

Do have a browse.

I don't post very often but follow with interest and increasing concern.

It's clear RCS are captured and unprofessional. First with their actions and at the moment with their Twitter. Releasing pics of criticism is an antagonistic and destructive approach. (And the tweets they have published are quite mild).

I assume the target for my (our) concerns should be the governing body.

The emotional abuse this has the potential to unleash on women is obviously the main concern and I assume runs against the purpose of the organisation.

To make a clear argument to a governing body though, the broken rules need to be explicit.

So my understanding now is that the CEO does not have a GRC. Does that mean that they don't come under the category woman or do they not need that certificate? That's where I will start my thinking.

I then wish to review the evidence for sex and gender of care providers in the wake of trauma related to sexual assault and rape.

This organisation cannot be run based on feelings. It has to be about the evidence and the purpose of the charity. They must match.

I'm outraged that we can't stick together to support the vulnerable in our society. It's uncivilised and regressive and sickening actually.

I think of underage girls and women who either don't speak English or have an abusive household. I believe if they asked to only be tended to by a child that would be reasonable tbh but asking for a woman is more than fine.

It may well have been exempt, but I don't know that for sure.

It's here:

guiltyfeminist.com/episode/?episode=323

Go to 1hr 14m for the quote.

Lisa is very right.

It makes the comments about migrant women at the end of this transcript seem even more nauseating and cynical.

I'm sure lots of you have already lauded PlayYou, but I'm starting at the beginning of the thread!
forwomen.scot/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Mridul-Wadhwa-Guilty-Feminist-transcript.pdf

Our services were mainly phone-based, with a very few F2F appointments. Phone lines were open limited hours because of the difficulty of getting, training & retaining enough volunteers, so the hours were all over the place in order to offer help to as many women as possible, e.g. a couple of days mornings only, others afternoons only, others evenings only, the same arrangement each week.

Other than that, we had a meeting for staff once a month, interviewed potential volunteers & ran training courses. I think some more experienced staff gave talks.

We didn't officially refer anyone anywhere. When I left, changes were starting to happen. With austerity & compassion fatigue, charities began to offload anyone they could onto other charities - including onto ours which was already fully stretched. The government mooted changes which could've meant us needing to make records available to the police or the courts.

Later on my old organisation was given money to recruit a paid manager. I lost touch with it, so I don't know how that works.

Just seen this on Twitter, which the poster has attributed to Lisa Muggeridge in 2018

GOOD GRIEF. The scenario that DFW imagines, where the “very structurally violent flicks of eyes” lead inevitably to physical violence - that scenario is completely made up. It’s not a real story, it’s not based on statistics, it came out of her own head. It may well resonate with trans women and express something they feel about an ongoing threat of violence, which would would make me empathic if it came from a trans woman’s own real experience. But DFW uses this imaginary scenario to tell women to subjugate what they feel about their experience of violence. It is a fiction to give a back story to her narrative of herself as an ally, and to justify a stance that belittles women’s experience.

It’s a bit like the academic’s phantom pile-on (see the Maya / Index on Censorship thread). If Maya is correct, then the academic felt awful about a pile-on that apparently did not actually happen.

Policy making by zombie (misleading or badly researched) statistics was bad enough, but policy making by sharing fearful fictions is something else.

#AskRapeCrisisScotland still trending.

this is a good Q:

Adele@AdeleMcVayHV
I’d like to #AskRapeCrisisScotland why their Male CEO thinks it’s okay to announce the services plan to discriminate against rape victims who hold gender critical beliefs, when it has been established that those beliefs are protected in law. #EA2010

So awful. And this person gets to choose which bigot gets allowed to use the rape service for survivors funded by SG

Wonder if service users are quizzed on their beliefs in religion or betting or anything.

Is it just the TWAW is the only belief they would be quizzed on

MW says he doesn’t know if MW would have been hired if they knew they were trans 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Did the job advert not say it was for women under exemptions of the act

Have just caught up with all of this - what the fuuuuuuuck?!

I don't mean to be goady but what do these rape crisis centres actually do on a day to day, hour by hour basis? Reading the rapecrisisscotland website, under a title "if it's just happened" there is a list of organizations to contact: police, hospital, family planning clinic, friends. But what do the rape crisis centres do that justifies the administrative costs? What does the CEO do? How many women do they help in a given year? Do they just refer people to other services?
The services may be "trauma informed" but what are the services? I am not very familiar with this sector and would appreciate it if someone who has either used or provided these services could shed some light on this.

Jeeps. Fun.

Do they not consider that a woman might turn up and not understand that their 'women only' statement actually means 'mixed sex'?

What do they do if a woman is traumatised by the unexpected presence of a male?

'Educate' her?

They need to be very clear on what they mean, then. Because if a woman is looking for 'woman-only' service and specifically needs that because she is suffering trauma, perhaps in crisis, then to use 'woman only' as a term that includes men, but isn't very, very clear on it, is the cruellest and most disengenuous statement I've read in a while.

re: RCS & 'women-only'

So "women with a diverse range of lived experience" apparently means men FFS