To have got into a debate with a man about anyone ‘self identifying as a woman’ being allowed to volunteer or reside in many women’s refuges

[unexplaining]

I’m currently in Vancouver and was looking for somewhere to volunteer over Christmas. A man at the desk of a tourist attraction I was visiting kindly offered to help me find somewhere when I mentioned this to him in passing as it was quiet and he had a computer. I’d say he, like me, was in his 30s.

We got onto a women’s refuge page and the first thing it said on the volunteer page was that ‘anyone self identifying as female’ was welcome to volunteer. I immediately said, almost automatically, that’s not okay with me in a women’s shelter, and explained why (as I do below, regarding women’s safe spaces at their most vulnerable, and that almost all of them are fleeing males.)

He then told me how he wasn’t sure about how it was in England, but Vancouver was a tolerant place, and did I have any transgender friends, as he did. He encouraged me to meet and talk to transgender people, and, unprompted, told me of an LGBT street in town where I could do so. He said it was proven that transgender people, when scanned, had ‘women’s brains’ and that the idea that washrooms (as loos are called here) were vulnerable to those looking to prey on women was completely disproven nonsense.

To me this has nothing to do with tolerance and everything about women’s safe spaces. 99.9% of shelter residents are surely fleeing from men?

I pointed out that anyone can self identify as female according to the site’s very loose definition - he was having none of it and according to him, no eg MRA people exploit this and there have been zero incidences of violence or threat to women by transgender people in women’s spaces. Apparently this included England and the United States, as well as Canada.

When I got home I looked through the shelters and for many of them, the doors are open not just to volunteers but residents at many of the shelters:

www.thebloomgroup.org/our-work/women-children/
“52 women-only beds; must be 19 years and older and self-identify as a woman”

dewc.ca
Founded in 1978, DEWC is one of the few safe spaces within the Downtown Eastside exclusively for self-identified women and their children.

Volunteer application form for this shelter:
atira.bc.ca/volunteer-application
Applicant
I identify my gender as:

I identify my pronouns as:
she/her/hers
he/his/him
they/them/theirs

www.govolunteer.ca/centres/vancouver/wish-drop-volunteer
wish-vancouver.net/volunteer-opportunities/
POSITION DESCRIPTION:
Our self-identified female volunteers, 19 and over, perform a variety of tasks

Obviously trans people need refuge if they are subject to domestic abuse but AIBU to be concerned this impinges on women in their most vulnerable spaces?

He remained pleasant but insistent and more than a little patronising, ‘encouraging’ me to think about tolerance etc. I have no more thoughts about trans people than I do anyone else in any other part of life, but when the issue intrudes on women’s spaces I care. (This includes women’s sport though I didn’t mention that). I think he thinks I’m some kind of mad bigot and would probably use the word ‘transphobic’ about me.

I will likely bump into him again and don’t know what to say.
Also please put me right if IBU.

I work for a refuge and from time to time trans women use our services. Like all of our clients we treat them with kindness and respect. They are amongst some of the most vulnerable and horrifically abused clients we have. We have stand alone safe houses which we use in these cases and put measures in to protect our staff in the same way as we would safe guard when key working a client who has a teenaged son with them.

That sounds like a sensible approach.

This self ID policy has nothing to do with tolerance and inclusion and everything to do with exploitation and validation.
A women’s refuge should be what it says on the tin. Or it’s not a refuge and excludes those who need it most.

@Ereshkigal i don't get why people are shouting and screaming to demand access to spaces that actually they have always had access to. Transwomen have always shared women's spaces, it's not like we've been barricading the doors, where i have worked we have offered shelter and support to transwomen when they have needed it. I've shared bathrooms with transwomen. It's not new, why the current drama?

What about the transwoman who spent years battling to be allowed to work in one? Taking away time and money from a charity set up to help vulnerable children and women?

Kimberly Nixon vs Vancouver Rape Relief.

VRR eventually won their battle for female only space but it took over a decade and cost them thousands.

Feminist Current article.

I believe there are ongoing attempts by TRAs to get the shelter defunded or shut down.

spoke about the difficulties this situation creates for front line workers in the UK at a recent WPUK meeting.

Fair Play For Women film and report: Women need male-free spaces to recover from male violence:

We’re proud to launch our first film, ReBirth, accompanied by a groundbreaking new report featuring first-hand interviews with managers and users of female-only services

Transwomen have always shared women's spaces, it's not like we've been barricading the doors, where i have worked we have offered shelter and support to transwomen when they have needed it. I've shared bathrooms with transwomen. It's not new, why the current drama?

How do you tell a "real" tw from a predator who just says he is one?

How do you tell a terrified, traumatised woman that she has to put up and shut up with the male body in the shelter she has fled to? What if she objects to that male body?

Also, "They are amongst some of the most vulnerable and horrifically abused clients we have". This 'prioritisation' is sickening.

• shall we list some of the cases of just the women who have been violently murdered by their male partners and see how the stats stack up? (we don't even have to count the "only" abused ones ...)

Christopher Hambrook was jailed indefinitely in 2014.

The judge noted the Montreal man, 37, attacked four vulnerable females between the ages of five and 53 in Montreal and Toronto over the past 12 years.

Hambrook served four years in prison for sexually abusing a five-year-old girl and while on bail for that crime, raping a 27-year-old intellectually-challenged woman in Montreal.

Hambrook pleaded guilty in February 2013 to two counts of sexual assault and one count of criminal harassment involving two women — a deaf and homeless Quebec woman and a Toronto survivor of domestic violence — while he was living at a Dundas St. W. shelter and the Fred Victor women’s shelter in January and February 2012.

It's not about helping vulnerable transwomen who are suffering at the hands of men. Why wouldn't you help them?

It's about the law that says these people are women. That's the difference.

You could easily have a policy that says you welcome women and transwomen, because the infrastructure of your building or service can accommodate it.

But if you can't accommodate it, for whatever reason, you should be allowed to offer a single sex provision.

And therein lies the problem. If someone is legally a woman, they have every right to demand access to a single sex provision, on that basis.

The equality law in this country says you can still exclude them, however. But we are sliding into a position where women's organisations are not invoking that exclusion, for fear of having their funding withdrawn. All being driven by transactivism.

Kimberly Nixon was in a unique position to create a precedent in Canada. But it took 12 years for the authorities to decide that precedent would be dangerous. Twelve fucking years to decide that this person was actively hammering vulnerable women. Which cost the refuge thousands and thousands of dollars. Kimberly Nixon had already received counselling from a woman's refuge, but wanted to become a counsellor. Kimberly Nixon wanted to be able to listen to women talking about their rape. Kimberly Nixon insisted on that right for 12 years.

This isn't about helping vulnerable people, whether they are trans or not. This is about a law that actively harms women.

The man you speak of, OP, should be well aware of this case. It was huge in Vancouver.

The Vancouver laws are being exploited, horrifically.

His argument, yet again, seems to be shut up women and be nice/roll over because men are demanding it.

So you are in Vancouver and had to ask a stranger for assistance, because he had a computer, yet you have a device capable of posting on AIBU.
I call bullshit.

This case is ongoing -
Forced to share a room with transgender woman in Toronto shelter, sex abuse victim files human rights complaint

The legal support centre .

If I’m your experience OP transwomen are the most horrifically abused, then there should be specific third space options, that is a refuge just for transwomen and their needs.
My view is that Many of the women who manage to reach a refuge in the first place is there by dint of not being actually killed first. A view supported by the vast numbers of women who are killed every year.

Another ongoing case, this time in Alaska - a Christian run emergency shelter for homeless women escaping abuse is facing an equal rights lawsuit for their female only policy.

The Hope Center is run by Christians, with over 30 church partners. It also runs a soup kitchen, a culinary school to train people for jobs, and offers showers and bathrooms for both men and women.

But at night, the sleeping mats are rolled out where the food was served hours earlier, and desperate women, some who are escaping human trafficking, find safe shelter in one big room, crammed next to each other on the floor.

The women sleep beneath a large wooden cross, while the staff does their laundry for them overnight. In the morning, they have breakfast before leaving the shelter, and the staff turns its attention to providing lunches, showers, and bathrooms for all homeless people in need.

(See picture)

No one is saying that transwomen are inherently predatory, but a man with predatory and misogynistic traits can see that identifying as a woman allows him to access vulnerable women

A misogynistic predator will be instinctively drawn towards identifying as a woman for this reason

Much as the Catholic priesthood is attractive to paedophiles because of the opportunities it allows them

We have had to develop laws across the globe, and specifically, in this country, in order to keep women safe. Those laws are now being taken away. Deliberately.

For every vulnerable transwoman held up as a reason, you will have 10 men behind them rubbing their hands.

Apologies- my last post was in response to Amammi not the OP

Another ongoing case in California - nine women are suing a homeless shelter for allowing a transgender resident to sexually harass them.

Women staying at the shelter must shower each day, the lawsuit says. Although they shower separately in individual stalls, the women must dress and undress in a common area and place their possessions in crates before and after each shower.

It was during these moments, the lawsuit says, when the transgender woman began making lewd comments to the women, specifically saying things about their breasts and other body features as the group was nude. Some of the women also caught her looking at them through cracks in the shower stalls and while they used the restroom.

The lawsuit claims the alleged harasser showed some of the women nude pictures and videos, including media that showed the transgender woman masturbating.

Kapetan said his clients told Poverello House staff about the harassment, but were told they had to be more accepting of the transgender community.

The law in Canada already allows for self ID and is enforced strongly.

It's how they are looking to change the law here.

Would encourage poeple to read the links about the years of fighting and spending the rape crisis centre has had to do,
And also about teh weirdy waxing person sueing all and sundry.

Then of course there are the links that show that "it never happens" is not true. Thing is even one predatory penis-person can cause a lot of damage in a womens space. Karen White managed to sexually assauly 4 women in a matter of days I think, and there was a stat (can't remember exactly or where) that if sex assaults on the female estate otherwise remained at similar level they will singlehandedly have pushed them right up.

The effects of putting men in womens spaces are diproportionate. Men are bigger, stronger, and well more inclined to be weirdy perverts or outrigth dangerous. Across the population, than women.

I also think the OPs story sounds peculiar though!

were told they had to be more accepting of the transgender community

in this instance members of the transgender community have sexually assaulted women, so the Poverello House staff are saying that women have to accept sexual harassment from transwomen

I find it a bit .... don't know. Unsettling? That a woman who works in a womans shelter sees transwomen as more vulnerable than women.

That story in the paper the other day where the woman was murdered horrifically and he got 3 years... The pregnant woman shot through the stomach with a crossbow a week or so ago.... A little girl raped and murdered and a 16yo was arrested the other day... Every day in the press there is story after story of women and girls being beaten and murdered by men they know. Every single day, violent gruesome extraordinarily violent deaths, often involving torture. I would say that the second two cases I mentioned involved torture.

And yet > oh well women get abused but it's not that bad...

I am sure that there are terribly abused transwomen, but that fact does NOT mean they should be accepted on a self ID basis and prioritised over women because apaprently they have it worse.

Women's shelters were opened by WOMEN they have to bid for funding the same as everyone else/ raise money through charity. Transwomen are more than welcome to open shelters as are men (I saw a man complaining about lack of provision for men and I thought, what are you going to do about it then?). WOMEN built the shelters for women, we knew no-one would help us and we are good at organising and stuff. There is NOTHING stopping other groups from doing similar.

There is also a ? around whether the requirements are the same for women (who often have children with them) and trnasgender women and men who are in abusive relstionships. What these groups need to do is get the ball rolling on funding + do some research as to what will help these groups most. Rather than just openign the doors of teh established womens shelters.

2017, Kelowna, Canada - two women were evicted from a women's shelter after raising concerns about having to share a room with a trans resident who still had a penis.

l i don't get why people are shouting and screaming to demand access to spaces that actually they have always had access to.

Perhaps your understanding of what a "transwoman" is is a tad naive and old fashioned?

We're not just talking about transsexual males here.