Apparently female rape survivors 'need' mixed sex groups

Finally managed to get my contribution to the garden accepted.

You might like to know that for the last five years I have been making that point every time we make an application to various funding streams. I am not the only funding manager doing that 🤭

I imagine a lot of dedicated support services for trans people could have been set up using the money wasted by Stonewall and SN trying to fight against women having single sex support.

Which proves how misogynistic their whole campaign is. Not about meeting trans people’s health and welfare needs. This needs to be publicised and pointed out at every opportunity.

I imagine a lot of dedicated support services for trans people could have been set up using the money wasted by Stonewall and SN trying to fight against women having single sex support.

Reed Smith could also have donated 50 hours' worth of the hourly charge out rate of the two lawyers working on this pro bono so they could get on with some actual work too.

I don’t imagine it would be very difficult for trans men to get their own funding to form their own groups.

But it IS worth asking about trans men: Which group would they go to, and are there any limitations on their choice of a support group?

Here they are actually harder to support than transwomen. We have a blanket policy about transwomen but have found it harder to justify ANY policy about transmen.

They are female.

But almost all have all the surgery going and do tend to be more 'masculine' looking, keep up the voice coaching etc. So they do, unfortunately, trigger a few female clients. We have experienced this a couple of times and still don't have a policy we are comfortable with.

So we talk to them and find out which group they would prefer to be in, explain that we have to take the lead from our current clients base. Guess what? We have had no problem and understand the issues. We have had one group that was very welcoming and a second that tried but couldn't relax, the transman asked to be transferred to a mixed group. It was all so very goddamn polite and understanding on all sides. - cake was baked!

Very different from the one transwoman we had who was upset and loud. Others have agreed to go to the mixed group with no problem.

It causes us all sorts of issues as we don't always know before we meet them, at our 'secret' location. It has caused us issues with our client group that we could well do without. We have 'educated' our referral partners, but some of them just don't think!

Ok, so if the trans woman passes visually and aurally as a cis woman, it would be ok?

No, but if they passed that well (which hardly any do) who would know, unless they told them. Then they would be received the same as any other male.

So what you’re saying is that women need spaces free from people who look like men.

No, just from all males, regardless of identity, in these very important circumstances.

Anyone else having difficulty with the gardening site? Get to submit and then nothing happens.

Why is there no reference for the 'research' which shows that 'cis' women (I assume they actually just mean women and not the tiny percentage of women who define themselves as cis) are happy for biological males to be in purportedly single-sex support groups.

There was a reference - Discovereads gave it above.

The obvious flaw is that they were surveying people using mixed-sex "women's" groups.

So obviously any women who had left, like Sarah, or who had chosen not to take part in the first place, weren't able to say they objected.

And of those still using the service, I wonder how much they feel able to complain. We see what happens to those who do, like Sarah.

To be fair, they talk about 'adding value' and don't say for whom it adds value. Clearly it is for men.

Does anyone else think it's bonkers to say that: "To suggest that the value in women-only spaces lies solely or primarily in the exclusion of men significantly undervalues the inception, the purpose and the continuation of women-only spaces". Obviously definitionally women-only spaces exclude men. Or they're not women-only spaces. This is an argument for mixed sex only surely?

It also says this: Trans people are amongst the most marginalised in society. They are the subject of significant levels of hate crime, including nearly 1 in 5 having been subjected to or threatened with sexual assault". Thing is, they're not even in the top 50% of marginalised people in society by this reckoning given than 1 in 5 women have been raped or sexually assaulted (rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence/) not just threatened and 97% of women have been sexually harassed (www.openaccessgovernment.org/97-of-women-in-the-uk/105940/).

Why is there no reference for the 'research' which shows that 'cis' women (I assume they actually just mean women and not the tiny percentage of women who define themselves as cis) are happy for biological males to be in purportedly single-sex support groups. They have references for other things. I expect is it because this research is far too flawed or small scale to over-ride the vast swathe of information which suggests that a whole heap of women actually seriously and absolutely DO mind.

I see this letter as a hate crime in and of itself.

Solidarity Sarah and I am so sorry that you are being abused again by a system which refuses to consider that your rights and needs might be important. There are women on this thread who get it and I hope you can take some comfort knowing that we can see what is really going on here.

I was wondering about trans men, too. It's hard to get statistical evidence of reported rape rates for all the groups we are discussing here, as most of the trans-related statistics come from studies done my alphabet-organisations and don't necessarily use the same definitions and questions as the wider studies which, until very recently, didn't ask for information on trans-status.

But I do remember seeing some American (I believe) survey which found that trans men have higher victimisation rates from sexual and partner violence than trans women. Sadly, I didn't bookmark the reference and only looked at the summary somewhere online, so it may all be rubbish.

But it IS worth asking about trans men: Which group would they go to, and are there any limitations on their choice of a support group?

They will have no excuse when they look around for a female only space ;and god for in they or their loved ones ever need one) and can’t find one. They can’t say ‘we didn’t know’.

Absolutely this. This exposes the lie in the position of Stonewall et al. Who try to pretend that they have nothing against single sex spaces, they just want there to be TW inclusive too, and there is room for everyone. WHilst all the while working against single sex spaces. They are destroying single sex spaces. Their position, their ideology, their 'consultancy' is destroying it. They might 'allow' it now to stay on the statute books., like Keir Starmer, but in reality they are destroying it. There would have to be active position to map and monitor and commission single sex spaces top keep and this is what they are not doing.

Did @Discovereads LOL at Shakira upthread?

How very dare you?

Crossover in build between men and women? Of course there is. But you will have to believe me when I tell you - as a sports biomechanist and physiologist by education and trade - that there are certain things that do not overlap, are resolutely sexed. The number of women with a Q angle in the male range is so slimas to be vanishingly rare, and they STILL walk differently.

Hips do not lie!

Who has said this?

Don't spoil her fun, she's role-playing being all centristy and bridge-buildy.

saying all female survivors are triggered by males in womens groups represents an extremist opinion that is not fact based

Who has said this?

And as for @Hedgehog12 and the "rapists gonna rape" shite - could someone pass me the KoolAid, I need a long lie down!

Because some TRAs are extremists.

Stonewall
Lottery Funding
Other large national funding organisations
Local Authorities
Local charities
Individuals

These are the organisations and individuals we, a small, local rape crisis centre, have been defunded by because we do not accept men in our services. As I have said before, in direct reply to you, here and other threads, @Discovereads we lost 40% of our funding about 5 years ago specifically and only because we are a single sex, female organisation. There is no maybe about this, it is the specific reason given us.

Why would the Lottery Fund not support single sex spaces? It isn't because "some TRAs are extremist" it is because many many organisations have been captured by Stonewall and have been working "ahead of the law", as Stonewall counsels, for years.

It is NOT an extremist position, It is, according to all of those who believe the crap being put out by Stonewall, etc, fair, inclusive and right and (according to Stonewall at least) written into law. Transwomen are women and cannot be refused entry to single sex female anything. And no, nothing is ever proportional to a legitimate aim, by their standards - which is why we have been defunded and whay Sarah couldn't enter a single sex session.

@silvershirt 💐

saying all female survivors are triggered by males in womens groups represents an extremist opinion that is not fact based. And making such extremist arguments doesn’t help you get what you want, which is female only womens groups…it just further polarises the debate and gets you called transphobic by equally extremist TRAs. We all need to move towards the middle, not further away from each other.

I disagree. Women have kept ‘moving towards the middle’ and constantly find the line is redrawn so that they have to give more.
I don’t owe anything to males who want to intrude into women’s spaces.

It’s all been said here already, and would convince any decent human being that women need a single-sex space. But I will just add my voice to so many others, and say that I would have been traumatised by finding a male person in a rape survivors’ group.

It would not only have brought back the fear and shock of the original attack. It would also have created a whole new nightmare of going to a supposedly safe place and finding it wasn’t safe. Of being offered help, and then discovering I was there to provide an audience for some organiser’s demonstration of wokeness.

Worth repeating. Sickening attitude.

I'm surprised there are no reliable statistics (apart from reported rapes by women which are somewhat misleading since we do know large numbers of women do not report). Do we have the same for men, TM and TW?

I am surprised there aren't two trans groups in the mix. Presumably TM may have different experiences from TW?

There seem to be some misunderstandings about the necessary qualities, experience, and skillset of anybody who'd aspire to be a bridge between perspectives and communities.

There has been some helpful research in this area. This article is an overview of it in one contentious area and wider lessons might be drawn from that experience. Interestingly, the research is grounded in why cons/fraud are so successful.

Having some degree of status within the group that you seek to influence and being seen to be trustworthy seem to be very important for anyone who aspires to influence perspectives. To this end, it would plausibly help to have a realistic view of yourself and how others perceive you.

Goffman observed that all “marks” eventually come to understand that they have been defrauded. But strangely, they almost never complain or report the crime to the authorities. Why? Because, Goffman argues, admitting that you have been conned is so deeply shameful that “marks” experience it as a kind of social death – the painful end of one of the many social roles we all play.
…
Within those groups, we can pinpoint influential members who may be turning their backs on Covid denialism, and encourage them in their journey. We can message them offering support, particularly if our reference groups overlap – whether that means sharing the same home town, or practising the same faith. The more shared social space, the better. We might offer to back them up if they get trolled for expressing misgivings about Covid denialism. Or we could let them know that we would admire them for telling the truth.

Those people may not have a television audience of millions, but they nonetheless have the potential to act as “coolers” for those in their reference groups – both online and off. The higher their status within the groups, the more influence they will have in reconciling their fellow travellers to the reality of the pandemic, perhaps enabling them to rejoin society, or at least preventing them from endangering the rest of us.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/09/convince-anti-vaxxers

To quote Mick Lynch, Richard, you do come up with the most remarkable twaddle.

To repeat.
Males have male only survivor groups.
TW have TW only survivor groups.
Some women would like female only survivor groups.

Why and who would argue?