To think that a Rape Crisis centre should not have a transwoman CEO?

[ArabellaScott]

Mridhul Wadhwa has just been appointed CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis. The job was advertised as for women only. Mridhul is a transwoman (born male) without a Gender Recognition Certificate.

AIBU to think that women survivors of rape and sexual violence should be able to have a female only space?

theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2021/05/new-boss-for-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre/

If the job specifies for a female then pretending to be female is simply lying.
Same as if a job asks for a degree and you lie about that.
Totally dishonest .

In positions where the primary purpose is supporting vulnerable people and/or children, any deception should be regarded as indicator that the person is entirely unsuitable for the role.

My concern is that those in trustee positions in women's services are revealing themselves to be unaware of abuse/coercive control dynamics and/or incapable of asserting boundaries.

The fact that MW can walk into this job happily, knowing so many consider it wrong, is chilling. Such a sense of entitlement.

I find it so strange that of all the fields they could work in they choose rape crisis for women. And the top job no less. Knowing full well the position has specified a woman. It's such blatant disrespect for women who will want one place at that time in their lives that is solely there to look after them.

Excellent analogy Graffitiqueen.

Imagine a job for a charity for people with disabilities advertising for a ceo who has a disability. Someone turns up to interviews in a wheelchair, gets the job and stands up saying I'm not actually disabled. Oh and see those rights you're entitled to by law. I don't think you should have those and I'll actively work to remove them

Exactly, and repeat for any of the protected characteristics.

Imagine there was a centre set up to support trans people and their specific issues, and the CEO job was advertised only to those who had undergone gender reassignment (which is a protected characteristic under the Equalities Act). And they handed the top job to someone who wasn't gender reassigned, who lied about it, and who actively campaigned to reduce protection for transpeople. How would that go down?

Why is that only the protected characteristic of sex can be ignored? And oddly enough, almost always where it is used for the protection of women? Funny that.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

I wonder. Would the people here in support of MW dismiss a transwoman's concerns if she wanted to go to a service that was trans only and to have a transwoman as her rape counsellor?

Because if the answer is no, why are you doing it to women?

Of course they would

Wouldn't!

I find it so strange that of all the fields they could work in they choose rape crisis for women. And the top job no less. Knowing full well the position has specified a woman. It's such blatant disrespect for women who will want one place at that time in their lives that is solely there to look after them.

I find it chilling and watching Wadhwa in interview 2019 deeply disturbing:

(extract)
Q Is there a personal reason for getting into this line of work?

MW Staying on has been personal because it was pretty clear to me
that I was the only trans woman, in the women's aid movement.
And I wasn't even sure that if I had been hired, if they had known that I was trans.
When I came out individually to various colleagues, there was this disbelief: 'Oh, you can't be trans'.
What does a trans person look like? What does a cis woman look like? How do we know?
Over a period of time it became more and more important within my work in this movement to be a trans woman.
My activism wasn't around trans activism because what mattered to me more was my status as an immigrant woman and the women I worked with who came from immigrant backgrounds.
It means I've had the opportunity to deliver trainings across this country and so invariably it would come out in all of my trainings, not just for people to change their perception of what an immigrant woman looks like or who she is, but also what a trans person looks like.
So I think staying in it has become a personal thing."

I got two gifts. One was that I grew up in a household where my parents, not in any every day way ever told me not to be who I was, as an effeminate child.
But also I grew up to a spiritual outlook that don't have a concept of guilt in the same way.
I think that has been the biggest gift. I don't know what it feels like to be guilty or ashamed for who you are.
I have been lucky somehow to find myself in places where I was able to influence"

MW would not have been hired for this role if it was known he was male (and without GRC), being trans is not relevent in this situation.
What needs to be considered is how important documents eg passports and DBS certificates collude with the hiding of sex if an applicant is determined to deceive.

MW actually says in that video “only women work at the centre”

It would be laughable if it wasn’t such a serious matter.

Men’s wants over women’s needs

I think this nearly sums it all up really. It’s patriarchy. They will get what they want and you will acquiesce. And look how easily it is done!

A male person who identifies with women works not have applied for the job.

Kellie Jay Keen
'Broken boundaries and bodies, From Mridul Wadhwa to Elliot Page'

(extract)
"How bad does it need to get before we all just stand up and just say
it's enough? And I don't mean quietly standing up online I mean actually going out, standing in front of these places and and just saying, "no we're not having it these are our boundaries you don't get to break them"

@moofolk

A male person who identifies with women works not have applied for the job.

Excellent point, well made

Kellie’s video is more or less exactly how I feel at the moment looking at how women’s organisations set up by women for women have been infiltrated and colonised over the last few years. Funny ( enraging) how equal opportunities works best in the interests of men.

No guilt or shame and obviously EXACTLY like growing up in Syria.
I don’t even know where to start.

The interview is all about Mridul Wadhwa. I understand that that's the focus of the interview, but a female CEO in that position would surely not talk so much about her need to be accepted, her need to have a place at the table. She would talk about the urgent need for the services, domestic abuse, coercive funding etc.... this is all ME ME ME. I'm here, look at ME. The rape survivors barely rate a mention. I get that transpeople want greater acceptance and I respect that, but why go about it in such a bizarre almost colonising way? Why not set up your own service and promote that rather than infiltrate those that are the hard work of others?

*coercive control, funding

@SakuraEdenSwan1

Yabu, I have not bothered to name change as I have nothing to be ashamed about, but I have personal experience using a Rape centre and I could not give a shit who the CEO is, the staff who helped me were amazing and I am who I am today because of the help I got through them.

And that is ok for you, but it's not for others.

Of course your personal experience is important, but it is not more important than any other woman's and doesn't override the need for single sex organisations.

(Not bothering to name change right now either but..) the last few months I have been building myself up to contacting women's aid to find out about access to women's shelters. But since reading up on this issue I'm now having second thoughts as I don't want to leave myself more vulnerable, I will not cope with mixed sex facilities and I have nowhere else to go so until I am sure single sex means single sex and it is firmly cemented in policy and unlikey to change, I would rather just stay where I am with my child.

Sex discrimination is wrong

Except that this vacancy was advertised for women only. Others who ‘they think that I might not be a woman’ would have been put off applying by taking women only more literally. The field of applicants excluded roughly half the population, so no way can it be claimed that this was the best person for the job.

Blithering .

@R0wantrees

I find it so strange that of all the fields they could work in they choose rape crisis for women. And the top job no less. Knowing full well the position has specified a woman. It's such blatant disrespect for women who will want one place at that time in their lives that is solely there to look after them.

I find it chilling and watching Wadhwa in interview 2019 deeply disturbing:

(extract)
Q Is there a personal reason for getting into this line of work?

MW Staying on has been personal because it was pretty clear to me
that I was the only trans woman, in the women's aid movement.
And I wasn't even sure that if I had been hired, if they had known that I was trans.
When I came out individually to various colleagues, there was this disbelief: 'Oh, you can't be trans'.
What does a trans person look like? What does a cis woman look like? How do we know?
Over a period of time it became more and more important within my work in this movement to be a trans woman.
My activism wasn't around trans activism because what mattered to me more was my status as an immigrant woman and the women I worked with who came from immigrant backgrounds.
It means I've had the opportunity to deliver trainings across this country and so invariably it would come out in all of my trainings, not just for people to change their perception of what an immigrant woman looks like or who she is, but also what a trans person looks like.
So I think staying in it has become a personal thing."

I got two gifts. One was that I grew up in a household where my parents, not in any every day way ever told me not to be who I was, as an effeminate child.
But also I grew up to a spiritual outlook that don't have a concept of guilt in the same way.
I think that has been the biggest gift. I don't know what it feels like to be guilty or ashamed for who you are.
I have been lucky somehow to find myself in places where I was able to influence"

MW would not have been hired for this role if it was known he was male (and without GRC), being trans is not relevent in this situation.
What needs to be considered is how important documents eg passports and DBS certificates collude with the hiding of sex if an applicant is determined to deceive.

This bears repeating on every new page.

Over a period of time it became more and more important within my work in this movement to be a trans woman.

So, not anything about caring for traumatised women and centering them in their time of need.

No. Politicising their own agenda at a time when traumatised women need care.

But also I grew up to a spiritual outlook that don't have a concept of guilt in the same way.

And not feeling guilty about it.

Not RTFT yet but just wanted to mention that this person quit the SNP because they voted to allow women to choose the sex of their examiner after a rape.

So now we have someone who actively wants to remove the rights of women to not be touched intimately by a male after being raped in charge of a rape crisis centre.

How anyone thought this person was in any way suitable I don’t know, the way things are going is really depressing. Women really don’t seem to matter at all.

@minniemomo

The best person for the job is the right person to hire. Sex discrimination is wrong (and yes I have had a male midwife)

Men and trans women can be raped too anyway.

It is not sex discrimination, females and males both deserve to have their privacy and dignity respected.

@ApplyWithin

Men’s wants over women’s needs

I think this nearly sums it all up really. It’s patriarchy. They will get what they want and you will acquiesce. And look how easily it is done!

Which just goes to prove that no matter how much TW want to portray themselves as being the most oppressed people in history, they are not, they are a member of the oppressive male class.

@5zeds

No guilt or shame and obviously EXACTLY like growing up in Syria. I don’t even know where to start.

transcript of Fox Fisher interview linked previously (extract)

"Q So tell me what it was like growing up for you and who was the first trans person you met?

MW So I grew up in India. To me now, I would say it was like living in a war zone. And it really came home to me, I really understood it when people started speaking about the civil war in Syria and the use of snipers.
That's the analogy I use. A sniper would hit me every day, multiple times.
From name calling to sexual violence, all of that happened, all the time."

August 2020 SarahStuartXX Twitter thread reporting MW's contributions to an event organised by Hidayah, a charity aimed at helping LGBTQI+ Muslim, but ostensibly open to all, is worth reading:

twitter.com/sarahstuartxx/status/1297441056003444738

Thank you @YetAnotherSpartacus ❤️