Surely Mridul Wadhwa has to go now? Report into ERCC out.

It's a position that some people are trapped into by logic.

We're not in a meat Lego matrix. We can still experience the unerring sense that it doesn't matter how much Lego there is, a GRC does not a woman make and particularly not in these circumstances.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4239164-Staying-Human-in-the-Meat-Lego-Matrix

Anastomosisrex
Women should not have to take grudging crumbs of unwillingly provided service from an organisation who is addled in the belief that a woman wanting woman-centred care and women only service providers and spaces is a bigot who should be punished.

Absolutely this👏

I agree.

Wonen only should be the default every time.

It's very worrying at the end of the Times article that some people seem to accept that having a gender recoginition certificate makes a man eligible for a women's job.

Would you use the service even now,

A very good point, and with links to Sarah's case.

Women should not have to take grudging crumbs of unwillingly provided service from an organisation who is addled in the belief that a woman wanting woman-centred care and women only service providers and spaces is a bigot who should be punished.

It's become extremely clear that services focused around providing for gender identity and services focused around providing for women cannot be one and the same, but need in fact to be two entirely separate things by groups with just that focus. You cannot provide a service inclusive to and focused on biological women when you think the very existence of such a term is evil and sinful. Refuges aren't bloody magdelen laundries.

No one wants to stop men having all the services they need, but women who do not consent to this need their own resources unaffected by those men and their supporters and politics and prejudices. Particularly when they are at their most vulnerable. I don't seriously believe its 2024 and that needs to be said.

My only gripe with the summary in that excellent Scotsman piece is that as I understand it, there were no guaranteed women-only spaces, whether requested or not.

Women-only groups should be the norm for this environment. That is a fundamental part of the healing process.
Additionally, almost all women - and the majority of men - want female counsellors/therapists.

Even if funding is tied to opening up the service to male users, any governing authority which insists on mixed sex provision is inducing unlawful discrimination.

The kindest, most empathetic and professional man in the world, even if an abuse or SA survivor himself, would not have been appropriate for this job.

It is quite something that Times article. I am glad it comes across the same way to others as it did to me. I got the same ‘vibe’ from Paula Vennells although very different circumstances. Horrid.

I'm often reminded of a woman who worked in a rape crisis centre who spoke on here.

She said floors are carpeted so footfall isn't heard. No one slams doors. You talk in low voices. Even laughing out loud is discouraged.

Because loud voices, slamming doors, heavy footsteps, can be extremely triggering.

And the location secrecy. She said it's more like a witness protection programme than anything else.

Many women simply wouldn't, couldn't go anywhere near a centre if they employed men.

Much less run it.

Others in Holyrood have had second thoughts about gender ideology but they remain silent, either through fear of a backlash from angry and threatening activists or, as one MSP put it, because to admit they got this matter wrong would be to admit their stupidity and their cowardice.

Well that's interesting. There's a silent shift that's gone on. Even though they are too cowardly to say it (yet), something fundamental has changed. A newspaper is reporting off the record comments that wouldn't be being made even twelve months ago.

Meanwhile trust is ERCC will have gone for many many women. Would you use the service even now, with such a public display of unprofessional conduct and refusal to acknowledge that a man in charge absolutely was the core of the problem. He had a vested personal interest in making the service for men and forcing the compliance of women. A woman in charge, even if they are into gender woo or even a transman, doesn't have the same level of a conflict of personal interest.

A good article on the cowardice of MSPs -

www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/scots-politicians-would-like-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-scandal-to-simply-vanish-4791974

I would think any supervisor with a grip on reality and the capacity to say 'this isn't right' was witch hunted and chased away a long time ago.

absolutely. Brindley cannot see how wrong this is.

I agree. Had MW said from the start: it is essential that all women who come to us feel completely at ease with their support worker. They need to feel in control and safe, so we must ensure we have a range of workers so that if they need a biological woman or a woman of their own race, religion or sexual preference, they have that need met with respect and they are reassured it is a right we feel they deserve.

If MW could grasp this, I wouldn't give a damn about their self ID. It's the blatantly male behaviour I have issue with: entitled, bullying, ego-driven, me-first, ladies-be-kind posturing that is so staggeringly obvious and inappropriate anywhere, let alone at a rape crisis centre of all places. It is 1970s MCP misogyny in its new lease of TA life. I grew up with it and I can smell it a mile off. It is no different in its fundamental mindset now than it was then and I fucking despise it with all my heart.

No, I agree.

I'm just wondering, in her head, what she expects to happen next.

I assume she got their consent. She'd have to have done in order to secure their cooperation.

Brindley said: “I didn’t see growing calls. Are you going to speak to some rape survivors, I think that would be an important voice if you are talking about me resigning from Rape Crisis Scotland, to include them?”

Within half an hour, the Sunday Mail had received multiple emails from survivors backing Brindley.

I'm guessing she's just an unable to grasp the lack of morality in asking multiple vulnerable women to talk to the press about their experience in a rape crisis centre just to back up her opinion.

What does she expect to happen next? A whole bunch of other rape survivors contradicting the first lot?

Ugh.

I assumed she'd contacted the survivors and asked them to contact the reporter! I'm still going to assume she did that, but that she gave out their 'phone numbers too! Grim.

Sadly true.

Brindley used her own daughter in the Times interview so why not survivors as well? No boundaries.

When you're in a hole the answer is usually to stop digging. Brindley seems to be making sure no-one will ever offer her another job in the sector. Maybe she's planning a move into politics.

The first article was nauseating but the second one is excellent. Julie Bindel's column is fantastic.
However, the fact that Brindley offered the reporter the telephone numbers of rape survivors who supported her is a revelation and enough on its own to make her position untenable.

Edited for typo.

She says that she does not expect to be in her post by this time next year.

Yeah. I'm going to predict that this is wildly over optimistic.

Fucking he'll

It's extraordinary that a woman who works with traumatised women consistently puts her own needs ahead of theirs without even thinking. And can't see it.

She offered the phone numbers of rape survivors to the reporter 😡