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JKR opens a new support and advocacy service for women in Edinburgh

423 replies

ArabellaScott · 12/12/2022 09:18

Amazing.

Suzanne Moore reports on the opening of 'Beira's Place':

'Beira’s Place is not a shelter or a drop-in. Rather, women will come, their needs will be assessed and then the appropriate therapy and help will be found for them. For free.

Sex-based crime in Scotland has been rising since 1974. Jo Rowling talks of answering unmet needs “As a survivor of sexual assault myself, I know how important it is that survivors have the option of women-centred and women-delivered care at such a vulnerable time.”

There are clearly so many unmet needs – waiting lists are huge for rape crisis centres all over the UK. Lack of funding is a key issue.

What Rowling has done here is astonishing. She has not only bought the building but is funding the entire service. This is not a charity. It does not depend on the whims of whoever is in power. While Rowling is covering the core costs, if people want to support it, they possibly could do so in future by donating towards extras such as service users’ travel or childcare expenses.'

....

'These women are fighting against male violence, and they really know what they are dealing with. Kerr and Domminney have between them more than three decades’ experience of running Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis. And Rowling has handpicked her dream team of board directors to support them: Rhona Hotchkiss, a former nurse, prison governor and advisor to the Scottish Government; Johann Lamont, Labour and Cooperative MSP, and a lifelong campaigner for the rights for women; Dr Margaret McCartney, a GP, academic and broadcaster; and Susan Smith, co-director of For Women Scotland, the largest grassroots women’s organisation in the country.'

suzannemoore.substack.com/p/an-exclusive-interview-with-jk-rowling?publication_id=22356

JKR gives the women of Edinburgh a wonderful early Christmas present. Thank you, JK. 🌟

OP posts:
BoreOfWhabylon · 12/12/2022 15:32

Coming up on LBC now...

TheBiologyStupid · 12/12/2022 15:29

A great piece by Susan Dalgety in The Scotsman (apologies if it has already been posted here): archive.ph/XH1b4

ShowerOfShite · 12/12/2022 15:17

Amazing, amazing woman ❤️

PerkingFaintly · 12/12/2022 15:12

Sophoclesthefox · 12/12/2022 14:27

The more I think about it, the more brilliant I think it is.

Firstly, it’s going to provide a much needed service for women and girls, guaranteed male free. It’s going to do that whatever happens, and free from political interference. If this were all it achieved, it would be laudable, credible and enough.

Secondly, she has put her money where her mouth is and cemented and underlined what she has said she has being doing all along- standing up for the rights of women and girls where she perceived there to have been a need. You cannot now say that her motives are other than what she says they are, because she has sunk her money and her time into this, put her name to it, and made it happen. If she were merely motivated by spite or bigotry, this wouldn’t be what she would do. This is the stuff her legacy will be built from, it really is.

Thridly, by creating the service, she’s underlined the urgent need for such a service, which is inevitably going to lead to people saying “but doesn’t this exist already?”, which indeed it damn well should, and used to, but is far from guaranteed anywhere in the UK, having been substantially eroded by the drive to “open up” womens services to people who aren’t women. This realisation may well embolden other womens services to return to core purpose. Let’s face it, we’re unlikely ever to reach oversupply of support combatting VAWG Sad

Fourthly, she’s inviting a legal challenge from bad faith actors. Let them try!

Just phenomenal. I admire her more than words can say.

This.

RoyalCorgi · 12/12/2022 14:57

MardyHa · 12/12/2022 14:54

A beacon in the darkness.

"So shines a good deed in a naughty world," as Shakespeare said.

MardyHa · 12/12/2022 14:54

A beacon in the darkness.

Sophoclesthefox · 12/12/2022 14:48

Willoughby said it them self. Perfectly acceptable mixed sex toilet at the airport, but they walked miles out of their way to use the women's, for validation. Then boasted about it on Twitter.

Gawd, really? Pathetic. There’s the issue in a nutshell though.

SerenityLoveLamb · 12/12/2022 14:45

Cahis · 12/12/2022 14:02

Here's the Suzanne Moore segment from Woman's Hour

Thank you for sharing this. I've just listened.

Absolutely appalled by that statement from Scottish rape charities. So pointed, so unnecessary, so disingenuous and almost chilling. Made me feel horrible while listening to it.

WarriorN · 12/12/2022 14:41

(Ref: Groundbreaking news: hold onto your hsts www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4696294-groundbreaking-news-hold-onto-your-hsts)

WarriorN · 12/12/2022 14:41

Quite datun.

When's that narcissism trans test out?

WarriorN · 12/12/2022 14:40

Yes cross post!

But it's tantrum behaviour.

Datun · 12/12/2022 14:40

WarriorN · 12/12/2022 14:29

Absolutely Soph!

I can envisage other centres linked to it popping up here and there in the future.

Trans rights activists need to put their own money where their mouth is.

They don't want these centres. They want the validation of using women's centres.

Willoughby said it them self. Perfectly acceptable mixed sex toilet at the airport, but they walked miles out of their way to use the women's, for validation. Then boasted about it on Twitter.

And they wonder why she's done it 🙄

Original poster
ArabellaScott · 12/12/2022 14:40

Oh, cross post!

OP posts:
WarriorN · 12/12/2022 14:39

Actually, that's being quite mean to toddlers.

Original poster
ArabellaScott · 12/12/2022 14:39

I think that's unfair on toddlers, tbh.

OP posts:
WarriorN · 12/12/2022 14:39

I find that very interesting. The order of play is always- take something over, and if you can’t do that, destroy it. It’s never “build it yourself”.

Bloody toddlers.

Janie143 · 12/12/2022 14:37

In the future, when reality returns, there will be JKR statues celebrating the great author and advocate for women

Sophoclesthefox · 12/12/2022 14:36

WarriorN · 12/12/2022 14:29

Absolutely Soph!

I can envisage other centres linked to it popping up here and there in the future.

Trans rights activists need to put their own money where their mouth is.

They do need to do that.

They don’t, though.

I find that very interesting. The order of play is always- take something over, and if you can’t do that, destroy it. It’s never “build it yourself”.

Datun · 12/12/2022 14:33

nauticant · 12/12/2022 13:47

Amusing myself by scrolling through twitter.com/search?q=beirasplace&src=typed_query&f=live I'm getting a sense of where this might go. The trans activists are saying "this is to exclude transwomen" and women are replying "of course, it's for women", which in the past was an invitation to get trans activists shouting "bigotry because transwomen are women". Except, the specific context here, ie the Equality Act Schedule 3 exceptions for single sex services, is clearly indicating that, no, transwomen aren't women.

The more the trans activists complain, the more they'll get debate going over the fact that transwomen can be excluded from women's single sex services because they're not women.

Yes, quite apart from it standing alone as a place for women, it's also going to demonstrate to all the other previously women only spaces, exactly how you can exclude man, however they identify.

There will be a lot of public information about 'a proportionate means to a legitimate aim', and all the single sex exemptions in the equality act. It's just going to highlight every single other women's space that they can, indeed, be women only.

One of the responses to that Twitter thread, 'why are you all such creeps?', is another bit of sunlight that is going to be bouncing around, now.

WarriorN · 12/12/2022 14:29

Absolutely Soph!

I can envisage other centres linked to it popping up here and there in the future.

Trans rights activists need to put their own money where their mouth is.

SirChenjins · 12/12/2022 14:27

Great post @Sophoclesthefox 👏

Sophoclesthefox · 12/12/2022 14:27

The more I think about it, the more brilliant I think it is.

Firstly, it’s going to provide a much needed service for women and girls, guaranteed male free. It’s going to do that whatever happens, and free from political interference. If this were all it achieved, it would be laudable, credible and enough.

Secondly, she has put her money where her mouth is and cemented and underlined what she has said she has being doing all along- standing up for the rights of women and girls where she perceived there to have been a need. You cannot now say that her motives are other than what she says they are, because she has sunk her money and her time into this, put her name to it, and made it happen. If she were merely motivated by spite or bigotry, this wouldn’t be what she would do. This is the stuff her legacy will be built from, it really is.

Thridly, by creating the service, she’s underlined the urgent need for such a service, which is inevitably going to lead to people saying “but doesn’t this exist already?”, which indeed it damn well should, and used to, but is far from guaranteed anywhere in the UK, having been substantially eroded by the drive to “open up” womens services to people who aren’t women. This realisation may well embolden other womens services to return to core purpose. Let’s face it, we’re unlikely ever to reach oversupply of support combatting VAWG Sad

Fourthly, she’s inviting a legal challenge from bad faith actors. Let them try!

Just phenomenal. I admire her more than words can say.

LaughingPriest · 12/12/2022 14:24

This is freaking amazing.

Depressing in a way though - just think of how all the money rape crisis centres in general could be used if only men could just stop with the raping.

Hoppinggreen · 12/12/2022 14:17

ArabellaScott · 12/12/2022 13:05

India is now asking if butch women who have been raped will be asked to 'drop their pants'.

India never fails to show up the crass sexism in gender ideology.

'The whole point of JK Rowling’s new centre is banning women who happen to be trans.
But what happens to butch women who could be men? Who the wardens suspect MIGHT be trans? Will they be asked to drop their pants? Chromosome tests?'

twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1602282197318504448?cxt=HHwWgMDQkerKubwsAAAA

It may be worth noting that nothing in the literature for Beira's Place that I've seen says anything - at all - about 'transwomen'.

Yes because the only way to tell of someone is a man is to check for a penis.
We KNOW if someone is a man or woman - even when everyone was wearing a face mask we still bloody knew. It’s not difficult, the penis is the last thing we would need to check

Sophoclesthefox · 12/12/2022 14:15

It’s just brilliant. She is such a class act.

Let people tantrum about it. She’s outplayed all the naysayers, and the more they froth on about it, the more they underline the strength and honesty of her position. Imagine being so lost to reason that you think she’s doing it to “own” trans people. Embarrassing.

She’s doing it because she cares about women and girls, she cares about supporting us through the aftermath of male violence, she has the means and she has the will.

I wish her and the board every success with it, and thank them all on behalf of the women of Scotland. Brava x

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