AIBU to think there is nowhere women can feel truly safe

[30whatacrock]

Reported in the news today is a woman who was sexually assaulted as a child and raped as an adult by males. She has been accessing group support to help her deal with her trauma.

In walks a male in male clothing who identified as being female. This person didn’t say anything or join in with any discussion but just sat there. The woman, who was upset at this, explained to the organiser how uncomfortable she felt having a male there, only to be told that he had every right and that they don’t police gender.

This is despite the group also running sessions for trans and non binary people. It just makes me wonder if there is any area that women can go, which is for females only, whether it be changing rooms, toilets, or counselling sessions.

@Helleofabore it's certainly destroyed my trust in the credibility of both Stonewall and the Scottish Government. It's going to take decades to get back to a point where women's rights are respected (if they ever were at all). The very definition of the word woman has been changed by the SG. Sex is not considered important enough to be protected as a characteristic under the Hate Crime Bill.

But yes, I agree with you that we need to make sure that SW don't twist away from public statements.

I don’t even know why a genuine transwoman would want to go to a womens rape survivor group. If you had been assaulted as a transwoman that is going to be a different experience to that of a woman.

Any transwoman showing up at these services are definitely using women as props or for validation. If i were to raped I wouldn’t want to go to a male rape survivors group, it wouldn’t work for me, our experiences would be too different.

Why is it that women often seem the most passionate about fighting for their own oppression?

Even on this this thread you can see the confusion wrought by the mangling of language

A trans woman is a man
A trans man is a woman

That confusion is completely deliberate so that people think women are trying to keep out gender non conforming women rather than men

Why is it that women often seem the most passionate about fighting for their own oppression?

Because our lifelong training, the behaviour for which we are rewarded and appreciated, is about being inclusive, supportive, nice, kind, selfless and making everyone else feel comfortable.

Also because most people erroneously imagine that other people think the same way they do. Kind, inclusive decent people who are always considerate of others' feelings, imagine everyone else is the same.

They open the door wide to entryist oppressors.

Jesus this is barbaric

There's tough competition out there for the biggest "fuck you" to women. Another person with a male body and an erect penis posted photos of themselves on line bragging about wondering around a women's domestic violence refuge naked. I'm sure the women there would have been absolutely fine with that if someone just explained to them it was a female penis.

@FOJN

Jesus this is barbaric

There's tough competition out there for the biggest "fuck you" to women. Another person with a male body and an erect penis posted photos of themselves on line bragging about wondering around a women's domestic violence refuge naked. I'm sure the women there would have been absolutely fine with that if someone just explained to them it was a female penis.

Can't believe this is still going on in this day and age

We need to insist of trans identified male/female again.

I know the acronyms were banned in FWR. There was a heated discussion about it,.women pointing out that it deliberately muddies the waters. But Those Who Monitor got their own way.

And then started a bun fight over trans women vs. transwomen. Which they lost, mainly because it's so hard to Monitor that little bit oh so important space.

@WhenSepEnds we're living in a time when women on 'single sex' hospital wards are being told that it is single sex, even when it's not and a rape survivor who requested a female examiner to carry out her mammogram had her letter passed around a Hospital Trust as an example of 'transphobia'. The Scottish Government had a heated debate over whether rape survivors should be allowed to request a female examiner with quite a few elected representatives saying no, they shouldn't.

There's so, so many more examples.

This thread is no doubt being monitored and MNHQ will be inundated with reports, at some point it will probably be moved to the naughty step where, without the poll, our monitors can claim a pro woman stance on a predominantly female website is a minority view.

Repeat after me; you are not being censored.

Yes. I suspect it will be bounced back and forth a few times. Or just removed for not being in the spirit, or summink summink

This thread is no doubt being monitored and MNHQ will be inundated with reports, at some point it will probably be moved to the naughty step where, without the poll, our monitors can claim a pro woman stance on a predominantly female website is a minority view.

Sadly this is probably going to be true.

@ArabellaScott

If 96% of votes here understand that a woman can want a single sex space for a rape survivor group then how on earth did we get here?

Of those who don't support a woman's right to a single sex space in this instance, can you explain why?

The answer to your first question is corruption. There can be no other explanation.

Plus stupidity, conformity and fear.

@TarasCrazyTiara

Was this actually a woman’s group or a group for survivors of sexual abuse which didn’t specify sex?

Also was it a natural man or a woman who was trans into a man?

There are three groups. One for men, one for women, and one for trans people. This male (looks like a man, dresses like a man, sounds like a man, yet says "I identify as a woman" and didn't actually indicate whether they actually were a survivor of sexual abuse) joined the women's group.

We have also had posters on the feminism threads in the past who told us of them being in a refuge dorm (or linked a woman recounting their experience) having to share a room with a transitioned male who was masturbating in the room with her there.

These are women who don’t want attention so will not report to authorities, they fear being evicted from emergency accommodation so won’t even say anything to those in charge.

Effectively, they are voiceless. And being abused again by people determined that they are on the right side of history.

So basically, the feelings of women are dictated entirely by the male in their presence.

So if a male walks into a therapy group for abused women and identifies as a man, he can be challenged and the women in that group are allowed to feel anxious and uncomfortable and ask him to leave.

If a male walks into a therapy group for abused women and identifies as a woman, then he cannot be challenged or asked to leave, and women are not allowed to feel anxious or uncomfortable, and what's more if they do, they are bigoted.

So what women are and aren't allowed to feel, and what action they are and aren't allowed to take, depends entirely on how the male in their presence feels on the inside. The male in their presence has total control of the women's feelings.

I struggle to come up with anything more misogynistic to be honest.

I really hope this thread stays in AIBU. I am absolutely sick of this shit.

@MoiraNotRuby

That poor woman, going through so much, finding the strength to get support, and then not being safe. Why can't men just leave us the fuck alone?

Exactly. Sick of this shit.

@Waitwhat23

And before this disappears completely from AIBU, for anyone new to this discussion, the service (and some comments on the article) suggest that Sarah should set up her own service.

Services like domestic violence refuges and rape crisis centres were fought for, set up by and fundraised for by women. They are why these services exist. To suggest that women, who now cannot use the services set up for them because they are now mixed sex, is just really awful.

Thank you for mentioning that bit, it made me seethe too.

When Posie Parker talked about crowd funding to set up a female only refuge, guess which lobby rushed to say it would be failing women by being staffed by unqualified staff?

Regardless of the fact that expert staff and trained support is now only available to females in the position of being able to make their trauma revolve around male centric services and subordinate their own needs to male service user needs. And that this excludes some females from help or anywhere to go altogether.

Any female who did try to set up a group or service for females only to permit those excluded females some form of help or support would be immediately targeted, harassed, any building they tried to use would be heavily piled on to refuse access on grounds of not including and serving males, this political movement would do its best to prevent those females being ever able to set up and provide a service.

This political movement would much rather see females without services or help than permit something to exist that is not male centric and compliant to their demands (even though many, many options exist for those male people and all the official services are vigorously prioritising them).

It's absolute dog in the manger stuff. Male supremacist politics.

But many other refuges are becoming much more inclusive... it is invidious. It will challenge many women's services for years to come.

I agree with everything you say, but it is important to pick out that word 'inclusive'. It is being used as a fig leaf, a veneer of respectability, and it is working against females.

'Inclusive' would strive to meet the needs of all service users, and to make a service accessible to all nine characteristics in the Equality Act.

This is actively exclusionary practice to many females. It is not inclusive at all. Male centric would be a more accurate term.

Well, at 308 votes there are 95% in agreement that OP INBU.

Just in case the poll vanishes.

This is actively exclusionary practice to many females. It is not inclusive at all. Male centric would be a more accurate term.

100%

Time and again we see people virtue-signalling about how 'inclusive' they are when what's actually happening is that they are excluding a large number of women who need services just to validate the feelings of a minority of male people.

If a single man who identifies as a woman chooses to go to a rape counselling group then loads of women will feel too frightened to attend. Why are the preferences of one transwoman deemed more important than the mental health of a huge number of women?

It's just the same with 'inclusive' language. If women are called 'cervix-havers' to make a tiny minority of men feel better, then instantly a huge number of women are excluded from vital services. Apparently 45% of women don't know they have a cervix.

We should be going out of our way to help women to have life-saving smear tests, not making things even more difficult because someone wants to show off how 'woke' they are. Loads of women in the UK speak English as a second language or have learning difficulties. Why aren't their needs being considered?

There are 9 different protected characteristics. It's time we paid attention to all of them and stopped putting 'gender reassignment' front and centre.

The needs of fewer than 1% of the population are not more important than the needs of everyone else.

What is required is tolerance from that less than 1% of the population to permit other people's needs to be met too , alongside theirs.

The dog in the manger parable is 1st century. It's not progressive in any way.