UK’s first trans and non-binary domestic violence refuge opens

Another voice fully in support. And it sure as hell beats telling women to 'reframe your trauma'.

Women and trans women are two separate groups. Our biology is different; the prejudice we may experience from society is different; our socialization as 'gendered' beings is different; the underlying causes of the violence, assault, domestic and sexual abuse perpetrated against us is different. Surely anyone in the unenviable situation of needing such support has one priority: to receive the best help available that is most closely fitted to their specific needs.

Any acknowledgement of these facts, so that everyone can receive the service best geared toward their healing and recovery from a terrible, invasive, awful crime, has to be of benefit to all.

Interesting which questions they swerve such as mine about the avalanche of threats and abuse when Biera's Place was opened and where the equivalent about this organisation is on this thread by posters here.

They just can't stop themselves, it is ingrained.

Even in a really positive, celebratory thread, activists have to turn up and do their misogynistic thing.

No, not even remotely.

Yes more than remotely.

If there is a single sex space for disabled women, then anyone who is not disabled, Muslim or otherwise, should not be present.

A single sex space so no-one of the opposite sex should be present.

If you are saying that people will self-exclude from a generic single-sex space, if there is a member with a protected characteristic present, that doesn't mean you ban people with that protected characteristic from that space. You should not ban religious people from a space because some atheists object, for example.

More bullshit. Single sex spaces are based on sex, the end.

That was a very clear bit of woman hatred there from Wadhwa. We should post this far and wide whenever we need a reminder of why no male person should be taking a role designated as being for a female person.

In other words, that man expected to make submitting to being brainwashed by him in his personal beliefs the price of help with a rape.

Coercive control. Using power imbalance to abuse and retraumatise.

That is the basic premise of trans activism. Heads, men win. Tails, women lose.

This is great news.

But. I assume they will be excluding biological women who don’t identify as non-binary and trans from their facilities.

Suddenly it’s OK to exclude people - but only when they’re doing it.

If you are saying that people will self-exclude from a generic single-sex space, if there is a member with a protected characteristic present, that doesn't mean you ban people with that protected characteristic from that space.

Oh let's run that through the universal bullshit translator shall we?

"If traumatised women will self exclude from a womens space that males are in, that doesn't mean you should ban males from it. You should embrace that those women are silly bitches and don't deserve to have accessible services."

No. You get the men out. The first job of a women's space is to include all actual women. Not men at the expense of women. And this is absolutely deaf to the principles of inclusion and even basic understanding of why those women have self excluded. It just plain doesn't care. Because caring would inconvenience men.

You cannot witter on with all the special pleading about understanding and tolerating the special needs of special men when you plan to give no reciprocity of any kind to women.

I mean I know dadjoke is TRA to the max but fucking hell the offensiveness of saying Muslim women are like TW ie like men rather than women - what the actual fuck?

Well sadly for you the single sex exemptions in the EA exist and single sex services are lawful.

Piss off with your 'a member with a protected characteristic' we all know what you mean. Abused women do not exist to validate anyone's ladyfeelz.

I get what you're saying, but if we consider trans ideology as a quasi-religious belief it's not really different from having a Catholic service, or a Hindu one. If those communities want to set up a DV service to specifically meet the needs of the adherents of that belief system, I've no problem with that.

If you're asking me to fund it, or taking funds away from single sex non-religious services that's another matter, but if a group of believers want to make their own service, they can do so.

No, not even remotely.

If there is a single sex space for disabled women, then anyone who is not disabled, Muslim or otherwise, should not be present.

If you are saying that people will self-exclude from a generic single-sex space, if there is a member with a protected characteristic present, that doesn't mean you ban people with that protected characteristic from that space. You should not ban religious people from a space because some atheists object, for example.

DadJoke does not for one minute believe TW are women, he does not treat them as women - no mansplaining, patronising, lecturing, demanding, dismissing, dehumanising, scolding for them oh no siree.

As for the idiocy of 'open your eyes' -

we know what you think and what you want, is isn't that we haven't clocked your misogynist philosophy. It's that we don't agree. Any more than you agree women are real humans with equality of rights to men with TQ+ identities.

We haven't managed to 'open your eyes' to that one yet, have we?

Yeah for 'attacking' men who wish to use women's spaces, read: saying 'no' to them. For bloody good reason. Which have been explained ceaselessly. But you just witter on and on about how women should abandon their own needs and throw themselves down to pretend that some men are women and embrace the harms therein. And you do not care in the slightest about those women, or their needs, or their voices, or those harms. All you care about is forcing women to submit, and it gets uglier with every post.

No. Get to fuck with that.

I get it, but putting pragmatism over principle is just inviting unintended consequences.

Great news.

I don't see this as something to celebrate, I think it's problematic.

Setting up a whole service for "trans and non-binary people" validates gender identities as real, rather than a religious/spiritual concept that one can opt to believe in, or an unhelpful umbrella term to describe young people with mental health issues and men with paraphilias. It's another way of obscuring the real issues with transgenderism. It also helps create the idea of a third group of people that desperately need special services, when actually there are only two groups - men and women (as there are only two sexes and humans can't change sex) - and that is reflected in the groups of majority perpetrators and victims of domestic violence. I worry that validation through exclusive services for the TQ will further indoctrinate society and especially young people into a religious idea that actively harms people.

I can see how it now seems easier to say women's refuges should be single sex because there are trans-specific services, so everyone is catered for. But personally I don't think keeping women-only spaces needs any justification. The availability of services for men, or the demands of patriarchal religions, whether old or new, doesn't affect whether we women deserve our safety and dignity.

@Lavender14

You say the current system provides inadequate care to trans and non binary..... does this mean you feel the current system provided adequate care to natal women? Because when I needed to go to refuge I couldn't access it and I know of one woman in my freedom program who lost her child (for many reasons) but the one that brought the worst criticism of her was that she slept in her car for a few days with her child when she also couldn't get into a shelter and was deemed not ok to keep her child

So in your opinion it's better to go ahead with the current system that provides inadequate care to trans and non binary people (who do exist despite your opinion on non binary not being real), that often results in trans and non binary people feeling they are unable to access dv support services altogether?

At least by your post trans or non binary men will have the choice to use whatever service they feel most comfortable using. More choice for people experiencing domestic violence is never a bad thing and if a trans man feels safer in a women's refuge then they still meet the remit.

And having worked with dv survivors for years, I'd say any genuine survivor will be glad of any decent support offered to them. Especially support that affirms their gender identity and is fully informed of the nuances that go along with that.

I think this is a really positive step, the next one is this spreading across the UK so that its more accessible for people to access help local to them.

YOU ARE INDIRECTLY MAKING THAT ARGUMENT!!!!! By arguing male women should not be excluded from women's spaces any more than Muslim women you are arguing for a course of action that would result in the exclusion Muslim women.

Yeah but it's okay if they self exclude according to DadJoke 'cos they are transphobic 'cos they won't set aside their religion to dance attendance on, submit to and validate TW.