AIBU to be asked to reframe my trauma by the trans CEO of Scottish Rape Crisis?

[herewegogc]

The CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis has said "Sexual violence happens to bigoted people too. But if you bring beliefs that are discriminatory, expect to be challenged on your prejudice. Reframe your trauma"

Apparently, survivors are to be "educated" in this service.

forwomen.scot/10/08/2021/the-real-crisis-at-rape-crisis-scotland/

Tonight is a really tough one. Women who have been raped or sexually assaulted need females to listen to them. Rape Crisis was that service and used to offer trauma based therapy.

I don't need educating - I know that detailing my experience to a man, or a transwomen is NEVER something I will do.

This is too much.

@Wroxie I support transwomen, I think they need support for sexual violence too. I just think it needs to be at a separate centre, for safeguarding reasons and to make sure women seeking help at a traumatic time feel comfortable to come forward.

@Ifyourefeelingsinister

Wroxie, how about you show a bit of empathy for women who have been raped? Your idea that a rape victim is victimising a trans woman by not engaging with them is utterly abhorrent.

This.

This thread is not the place for your victim-blaming virtue-signalling, Wroxie. Women are talking on here about trauma.

I have a few female friends who are doctors. All of them have at some point in their careers experienced a man saying they don't want a woman treating them. It's not usually due to it being a sensitive situations - this has happened to my dermatologist friend for example, when a man refused to have her treat the mole on his face. It was pure sexism. In situations where it was an emergency or no one else was available they tried to explain that there was a danger/the person would have to wait but in situations where there was no urgency they just accepted the person's bigoted views and got someone else for them/referred them to someone else. In spite of those men having no legitimate reason to refuse their care they still wouldn't want them to be uncomfortable/unhappy. They would certainly never start telling the man to check his privilege or to change his views - it would be totally unprofessional to do that no matter how demeaning it is to be seen as second class. They are there to treat the patient and they have to respect the patient's wishes, even if those wishes are upsetting.

Apart from all the great arguments made in this thread, at the heart of it all, this person is unprofessional, unable to empathise with the people who need the service, unable to put aside their own needs and feelings to help others. They should not be in that job. They are unsuitable.

@Ifyourefeelingsinister I have actively shown empathy to lots of women who have been raped and will continue to do so. I got a white colleague to help a racist victim in crisis and I would try to find someone who wasn't transgender to help a transphobic victim in crisis in a similar situation. I just want to be clear that I don't think their transphobia is acceptable or to be accepted, any more than soeone asking for a white counsellor because their attacker was black would be acceptable. When they are in crisis isn't the time to deal with it and sometimes centering the victim means that you just get on with it- but at the same time I'm not going to pretend that the transphobia is any more acceptable than the racism.

Misogyny and the sidelining of women's feelings is all the rage though.

Luckily most decent and reasonable people won't agree with you and I'm writing this mainly for the people reading this who might think that every woman in the UK hates trans people - no, it's a very specific and noisy minority that gather here to shout into their echo chamber.

Your intention here is very clearly to shame women who are discussing this. If we were to use your logic, you hate women. It is very clear.

Engage with the subject and please stop engaging in ad hom attacks. It, and the use of hyperbole, does not support your argument at all.

The subject is, this person is in a position of shaping policy for female rape victims. They have been given influence. They have in the past shown where their priorities lay. And it is NOT with female rape victims.

If an independent organisation such as this is going to declare people being bigots for needing a female only treatment provider the priority is most certainly not on females or the patients. But if you actually read the history of this CEO and looked at the source material for yourself, you would have identified this.

Your reaction that this forum is a an echo chamber is laughable. This is a thread in AIBU. There are so many posters on this thread that are engaging with this topic for the first time.

Your assertion that we represent a 'noisy minority' is also laughably false. The current government surveys (in multiple countries) show that while people wish that trans people are protected from discrimination, as soon as it comes to the conflicts with women's and children's needs, the majority support believe that SEX matters.

Perhaps you have missed all that data in your reluctance to believe.

I think that there is a symptom of your own echo chamber in action.

Why is it transphobic to say that you don’t want a trans woman as a councillor because their physical presence is triggering and upsetting for you, due to your experience as a rape victim?

@beastlyslumber you can take that little attitude and put it somewhere private, sis. If we want to have trauma olympics I think I'd be in with a chance for the gold. Disagreeing with you doesn't mean I'm fucking victimising you, or anyone else.

@Wroxie why does not wanting to be seen by someone with a penis equate to transphobic?

I actually volunteered on a rape crisis hotline (I am a cis woman, if it matters, and yes I'll call myself what I like, thanks) and I would be 100% happy to speak to a trans woman in any therapeutic or crisis context.

You don't get to decide that for other women who do not want to be supported by males identifying as women, in a rape crises context. That is not ok. That is abuse.

It wouldn't even cross my mind to think otherwise. And yes, I have been sexually assaulted by a man - a white man, in fact, and I would also happily deal with a white person in a therapeutic setting.

A white person? A white man?

As a rape crisis hotline volunteer I actually dealt with a victim who used racist language to describe the man who raped her. I told her I understood she was upset but that I needed her to please not use that word and then she went on a tangent about how 'not all blacks are n-words but this guy was' (it's a thing that particularly racist Americans love to say).

What she said is not ok. But this has nothing to do with males infiltrating women's spaces.

I found myself, as a Black woman, feeling upset and less able to help this particular woman, so I re-iterated that her language was unacceptable and that I would be passing her call to another colleague.

And that would be an understandable thing to do. Obviously. Women don't get to be passed to another colleague though do they in this scenario of a male identifying as a woman. Why is that do you think?

That other (white) colleague also asked her to use "black" instead of "n*er" and I think she agreed, though it was a while ago.

Good.

If she hadn't agreed and had continued using that word, my colleague would have probably still tried to help her, but she certainly wasn't obligated to do it.

Funny in my line of work I am still required to work with people regardless of their behaviour. Similar to your work, but clearly in a tighter legal framework. With more critical thought applied to how we work with people meaningfully.

If I were a trans woman, I wouldn't want to work with someone who had a phobia or hatred of me, just as a Black woman, I wouldn't want to work with someone who was blatantly racist towards me. It's not going to be a useful therapeutic relationship for either party.
But that doesn't mean that the victim gets a pass on her phobia or hatred.

Recognising that it's not possible to change sex is not hatred. It's fact. A legally protected characteristic. Forcing women to be supported by males after rape trauma is barbaric behaviour. Any counsellor who thinks this is acceptable is in the wrong Job.

If she politely said "I prefer to speak to someone who isn't transgender" and she was in active crisis, probably would be best to skip over that - but if it kept coming up or she used slurs or if the only person available wasn't a cis woman, well, same thing that would have happened if there were no white colleagues available to help my racist counsellee - you either get over yourself real quick-like and take the help on offer without saying nasty shit to the people trying to help you, or you go somewhere else for help. Being a victim doesn't give you the right to victimise someone else.

Rape victims need to get over themselves real quick like. Really? You are absolutely in the wrong job.

Yes please do go ahead and pile on, I know you all disagree with me and some of you will probably think I'm some kind of monster.

I think that you clearly don't understand or refuse to understand the position of vulnerable women, despite the job you do. It doesn't make you a monster. But it does mean that the job you do isn't the right one for you.

Luckily most decent and reasonable people won't agree with you

In your mind, decent and reasonable people are actually the people who thinks it's ok to accuse women of bigotry because they don't want counseling from men after they have been raped. It seems to me you don't understand the meaning of decency or reasonable if you believe that traumatised women being framed as bigots to be reasonable and decent.

and I'm writing this mainly for the people reading this who might think that every woman in the UK hates trans people - no, it's a very specific and noisy minority that gather here to shout into their echo chamber. Their noise is massively disproportionate to their actual size, thankfully

And I'm writing this for the majority of women who have experienced sexual violence so that they know that it's not ok to be gaslit by males and their allies into accepting males into the spaces where they are vulnerable.

@happydays2345

As someone who has been sexually assaulted I need a decent human to listen to me. I personally don't care how they identify.

This is my experience too. I had an extremely sympathetic hearing from a male police officer after I'd been raped. He was totally supportive, and was very efficient in getting things moving after that. But some women will feel differently and I do not at all want to take sway from your argument and the person in your OP seems to be tone deaf to women's trauma.

It is a simple truth that the vast majority of anti-trans social media noise does come from a surprisingly small and obsessive group of people. They make noise out of all proportion to their size. Maybe it's something the decent people of the world should learn from.

The prejudice simply drips from your posts.

And again, you are completely misinformed in your assertion that the majority of people, 'decent' or not, agree with your views.

[quote Wroxie]@beastlyslumber you can take that little attitude and put it somewhere private, sis. If we want to have trauma olympics I think I'd be in with a chance for the gold. Disagreeing with you doesn't mean I'm fucking victimising you, or anyone else.[/quote]
You came on here to shame rape victims.

You came on here to shame rape victims.

You came on here to shame rape victims.

Now you claim you're winning the "trauma olympics"? But you're the only one playing.

Why am I not surprised that someone who delights in defining themselves as c*s would say it is transphobic for a female who has been raped to need female support?

Please explain exactly why asking for a female, and not accepting a male, therapist is transphobic?

@Wroxie

I actually volunteered on a rape crisis hotline (I am a cis woman, if it matters, and yes I'll call myself what I like, thanks) and I would be 100% happy to speak to a trans woman in any therapeutic or crisis context. It wouldn't even cross my mind to think otherwise. And yes, I have been sexually assaulted by a man - a white man, in fact, and I would also happily deal with a white person in a therapeutic setting.

As a rape crisis hotline volunteer I actually dealt with a victim who used racist language to describe the man who raped her. I told her I understood she was upset but that I needed her to please not use that word and then she went on a tangent about how 'not all blacks are n-words but this guy was' (it's a thing that particularly racist Americans love to say).

I found myself, as a Black woman, feeling upset and less able to help this particular woman, so I re-iterated that her language was unacceptable and that I would be passing her call to another colleague. That other (white) colleague also asked her to use "black" instead of "n*er" and I think she agreed, though it was a while ago. If she hadn't agreed and had continued using that word, my colleague would have probably still tried to help her, but she certainly wasn't obligated to do it.

If I were a trans woman, I wouldn't want to work with someone who had a phobia or hatred of me, just as a Black woman, I wouldn't want to work with someone who was blatantly racist towards me. It's not going to be a useful therapeutic relationship for either party. But that doesn't mean that the victim gets a pass on her phobia or hatred. If she politely said "I prefer to speak to someone who isn't transgender" and she was in active crisis, probably would be best to skip over that - but if it kept coming up or she used slurs or if the only person available wasn't a cis woman, well, same thing that would have happened if there were no white colleagues available to help my racist counsellee - you either get over yourself real quick-like and take the help on offer without saying nasty shit to the people trying to help you, or you go somewhere else for help. Being a victim doesn't give you the right to victimise someone else.

Yes please do go ahead and pile on, I know you all disagree with me and some of you will probably think I'm some kind of monster. Luckily most decent and reasonable people won't agree with you and I'm writing this mainly for the people reading this who might think that every woman in the UK hates trans people - no, it's a very specific and noisy minority that gather here to shout into their echo chamber. Their noise is massively disproportionate to their actual size, thankfully.

You are pissing in the wind with your self righteousness, self aggrandisement and all round, er, bollocks.

Firstly, most obviously, nobody on here hates trans people. It's not hatred to recognise that traumatised women may well not want a male bodies counsellor, and that their need to feel safe and cared for overrides the wish of a trans woman to have her feminine identity validated absolutely everywhere as no different to those with a female body. It is not oppressive to transwomen for a raped woman to request a female counsellor, any more than it is for men. It's utterly arse about face to suggest otherwise. You would not be bothered by it, that's great (actually no it's not, it's an entirely neutral preference with no moral value), but a rape crisis centre is not a competition for cultural point scoring. It's a place where harmed women go to heal and if you don't prioritise that over a staff member's requirement for everyone to validate their sense of self, then I'm damn glad you no longer work there. Which you totally did, of course.

Moreover, most women don't agree with you. Oh, they're much too scared to say so; your lot have seen to that with your endless cries of "bigot" and "terf" (and why do you want to vilify feminism that way in your agenda? And why do you keep levelling it at people who quite patently are not radical feminists?) and the endless sexualised and misogynistic threats and insults that are now the daily lot of people like J K Rowling. But they think it. Almost no women truly believe that a trans woman is actually no significantly different from a natal one, and if they say they do, they're usually thinking of post operative trans women, which is almost none of them.

Interestingly, when you lot want to insult women as you did in this shitpile of a post, you find yourselves able to make the distinction easily and clearly enough. Gosh!

@Wroxie

I actually volunteered on a rape crisis hotline (I am a cis woman, if it matters, and yes I'll call myself what I like, thanks) and I would be 100% happy to speak to a trans woman in any therapeutic or crisis context. It wouldn't even cross my mind to think otherwise. And yes, I have been sexually assaulted by a man - a white man, in fact, and I would also happily deal with a white person in a therapeutic setting.

As a rape crisis hotline volunteer I actually dealt with a victim who used racist language to describe the man who raped her. I told her I understood she was upset but that I needed her to please not use that word and then she went on a tangent about how 'not all blacks are n-words but this guy was' (it's a thing that particularly racist Americans love to say).

I found myself, as a Black woman, feeling upset and less able to help this particular woman, so I re-iterated that her language was unacceptable and that I would be passing her call to another colleague. That other (white) colleague also asked her to use "black" instead of "n*er" and I think she agreed, though it was a while ago. If she hadn't agreed and had continued using that word, my colleague would have probably still tried to help her, but she certainly wasn't obligated to do it.

If I were a trans woman, I wouldn't want to work with someone who had a phobia or hatred of me, just as a Black woman, I wouldn't want to work with someone who was blatantly racist towards me. It's not going to be a useful therapeutic relationship for either party. But that doesn't mean that the victim gets a pass on her phobia or hatred. If she politely said "I prefer to speak to someone who isn't transgender" and she was in active crisis, probably would be best to skip over that - but if it kept coming up or she used slurs or if the only person available wasn't a cis woman, well, same thing that would have happened if there were no white colleagues available to help my racist counsellee - you either get over yourself real quick-like and take the help on offer without saying nasty shit to the people trying to help you, or you go somewhere else for help. Being a victim doesn't give you the right to victimise someone else.

Yes please do go ahead and pile on, I know you all disagree with me and some of you will probably think I'm some kind of monster. Luckily most decent and reasonable people won't agree with you and I'm writing this mainly for the people reading this who might think that every woman in the UK hates trans people - no, it's a very specific and noisy minority that gather here to shout into their echo chamber. Their noise is massively disproportionate to their actual size, thankfully.

In your world would I be able to refer to my rapist as a man if they were trans, or would I be passed from pillar to post until someone would accept my bigotry Unreal.

If TW don't want to work with women who won't accept they are men, they can work at a refuge for TW. Women don't need to move over to accommodate the wishes of TW.

@TheKeatingFive

Why is it racist to say that you don't want a Black counsellor because their physical presence is triggering and upsetting to you, due to your experience... etc etc

It's racist because it's racist and it's transphobic because it's transphobic. This hypothetical person is literally scared (phobic) of someone trans, or Black, in my example. Again, in crisis, might be best to just get past that and deal with it in a longer-term therapeutic setting, if it continued to be an issue and the patient/victim wanted to deal with it. But even if it's best in that specific situation to just say "fine, you can speak to Jane, she's not trans or Black" or whatever doesn't mean that we need to pretend that the impulse doesn't stem from racism or transphobia.

[quote Wroxie]@Ifyourefeelingsinister I have actively shown empathy to lots of women who have been raped and will continue to do so. I got a white colleague to help a racist victim in crisis and I would try to find someone who wasn't transgender to help a transphobic victim in crisis in a similar situation. I just want to be clear that I don't think their transphobia is acceptable or to be accepted, any more than soeone asking for a white counsellor because their attacker was black would be acceptable. When they are in crisis isn't the time to deal with it and sometimes centering the victim means that you just get on with it- but at the same time I'm not going to pretend that the transphobia is any more acceptable than the racism.[/quote]
It’s not transphobia for a rape victim to not want a trans woman to counsel them! People born male are nearly always much more powerfully built than a woman, even regardless of their height or breadth (despite this being much more likely as well). How can people not understand that this would be frightening or intimidating to a female victim?!

What on Earth is going on that men are dictating how women can feel about their trauma. Any person, male, female, trans can surely understand that the victim’s needs must come first and validation of men’s feelings is not what’s important here.

@Wroxie

I actually volunteered on a rape crisis hotline (I am a cis woman, if it matters, and yes I'll call myself what I like, thanks) and I would be 100% happy to speak to a trans woman in any therapeutic or crisis context. It wouldn't even cross my mind to think otherwise. And yes, I have been sexually assaulted by a man - a white man, in fact, and I would also happily deal with a white person in a therapeutic setting.

As a rape crisis hotline volunteer I actually dealt with a victim who used racist language to describe the man who raped her. I told her I understood she was upset but that I needed her to please not use that word and then she went on a tangent about how 'not all blacks are n-words but this guy was' (it's a thing that particularly racist Americans love to say).

I found myself, as a Black woman, feeling upset and less able to help this particular woman, so I re-iterated that her language was unacceptable and that I would be passing her call to another colleague. That other (white) colleague also asked her to use "black" instead of "n*er" and I think she agreed, though it was a while ago. If she hadn't agreed and had continued using that word, my colleague would have probably still tried to help her, but she certainly wasn't obligated to do it.

If I were a trans woman, I wouldn't want to work with someone who had a phobia or hatred of me, just as a Black woman, I wouldn't want to work with someone who was blatantly racist towards me. It's not going to be a useful therapeutic relationship for either party. But that doesn't mean that the victim gets a pass on her phobia or hatred. If she politely said "I prefer to speak to someone who isn't transgender" and she was in active crisis, probably would be best to skip over that - but if it kept coming up or she used slurs or if the only person available wasn't a cis woman, well, same thing that would have happened if there were no white colleagues available to help my racist counsellee - you either get over yourself real quick-like and take the help on offer without saying nasty shit to the people trying to help you, or you go somewhere else for help. Being a victim doesn't give you the right to victimise someone else.

Yes please do go ahead and pile on, I know you all disagree with me and some of you will probably think I'm some kind of monster. Luckily most decent and reasonable people won't agree with you and I'm writing this mainly for the people reading this who might think that every woman in the UK hates trans people - no, it's a very specific and noisy minority that gather here to shout into their echo chamber. Their noise is massively disproportionate to their actual size, thankfully.

I don't think you have any data to suggest that most decent and reasonable people won't agree with. Nor do you have any basis to say that people who believe that trans women are trans women not female women are trand haters and it is massively bigoted of you to throw such a huge accusation around. I don't think it's appropriate to compare racist language with a request, by a rape victim, to talk with a biological female. Requesting a biological woman is not saying nasty shit and if you think it is i think you need to explain you rationale. Especially given that what you are saying here is actually many other people's definition of nasty shut. No problem if you want to talk to a man. But please don't force such requirements on others.

BTW no problem with you calling g yourself cos. It's mis gendering to call anyone who does not identify with the binary ideology which that is built on unless they have said that's what they are.

It's so sad and depressing how many women will always centre men no matter what. Men who identify as women are not more vulnerable than women who have been raped FFS.

The internalised misogyny is astounding. They cannot possibly understand that women do not want to be around any man, regardless of how he feels.

It is a disgusting re-victimising of these women to expect them to just put up with men who claim to be women in a rape crisis centre. And be told that they are the ones with the problem if they object!

How has it come to this?

Why is it racist to say that you don't want a Black counsellor because their physical presence is triggering and upsetting to you, due to your experience... etc etc

Pure whataboutery. Answer the question, ta.

It's racist because it's racist and it's transphobic because it's transphobic.

That’s … not an answer.

This hypothetical person is literally scared (phobic) of someone trans

No, they aren’t. They don’t want to discuss their rape experience with them because their physical presence is a trigger for what they’ve gone through.

0/10. Take on board the learnings and try again.

@wroxie what's your evidence that all assault victims who'd not want to talk with a transwoman is scared of them? Can you ot imagine other reasons why a women loan might want to make this choice?

Should a victim be allowed to reject support from anyone who makes them feel worse even if there may be a newly formed or old prejudice rather than a reasonable objective thought process that is behind that feeling ?

Yes

the immediate aftermath of a highly traumatic experience is not the time to correct someone's thinking

It is not fucking transphobic for a female to want/need female support.

You could not be more offensive and belittling to female survivors of rape and sexual assault if you tried. I would not have survived if someone with your attitude tried to “deal” with me…