..To be mortified at the treatment of rape victims at the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre?

[TorghunKhan]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clynyky7kj9o

No women only spaces for 16 months. Basically women, RAPED women - were told they could not definitely see a woman to help them with such an awful crime, they might have to see a man in a dress, and if they objected they were to be 're eductaed' by the man in charge - a man who himself applied for, and got!! a job which was supposed to be only filled by a woman.

It's shameful, disgusting, but whats worse is how many people put up with it!! Who thought this was ok?! why did nobody do anything, or say anything FOR YEARS

This has been public knowledge for a long time, and all over Twitter / X for sure. I have been seething for just as long. Women have rape crisis centres because they set them up, because the vast majority of survivors are women rather than men. It’s outrageous to refuse women’s support to traumatised women, and only people utterly devoid of empathy or humanity would think otherwise.

It’s outrageous to refuse women’s support to traumatised women, and only people utterly devoid of empathy or humanity would think otherwise.

I can understand why the CEO went along with it as it obviously benefited him but why did the other staff, who presumably wanted the best for their clients, go along with it?

Fear, I'd imagine

Fear of losing their job
Fear of being scapegoat
Fear of public ridicule / attention

Same reason many of us feel unable to speak publically about our concerns

I genuinely don't believe that poster is a female, or that such a son exists. It's a male MRA/incel getting off on upsetting women.

🎯

I can see that but all of them? All the support workers and therapists went along with retraumatising rape victims, allowed an unqualified man into counselling sessions and turned away survivors.

The one support worker who didn't toe the line was victimised and bullied, unlikely it was just the CEO bullying her.

The whole organisation was toxic and everyone was unprofessional and not acting in the client's best interests. It's appalling.

Most people are cowards, afraid to speak up and worse - all it needs is the sniff of authority and people do what they are told, however bad it is.

Behold, gas chambers and concentration camps.

They post in a very similar style to someone who posts on every thread (with a different username) about violence against women. They always have a story about how a male relative was a victim, or they claim to be a female victim of another female's abuse, and do their best to derail.

Creating a culture of fear is absolutely fundamental to how people like Wadhwa operate.

Probably fear after seeing what happened to the one woman brave enough to speak up.

Absolutely. #bekind only works one way with people like that.

https://unherd.com/newsroom/rape-crisis-centre-ceo-resigns-over-failure-to-protect-single-sex-spaces/

She spoke up a while after the CEO implemented the changes. I didn't hear of them not going along with it up to that point.

Sky news now finally reporting on it.

https://news.sky.com/story/edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-chief-executive-mridul-wadhwa-resigns-after-report-into-failings-13213828

She spoke up a while after the CEO implemented the changes. I didn't hear of them not going along with it up to that point.

She probably thought that it was being kind to offer support to traumatised trans people without realising, like so many of us in the beginning that, that meant women's rights to same sex services would be undermined

Why don't more women fight harder? Speak up sooner? Because women's lives have been destroyed. Yes, the resilient ones like Maya F and Jo P (appropriately) have risen from the ashes to fight again. What we don't see of course are the ones who haven't.

The ones who have lost jobs, their homes, their lives, their financial security, their peace of mind. Whose children have been harmed. We know they exist.

Whistleblowers are treated appallingly in general.

Even when people have won ETs the amounts awarded are a pisstake. You have massive institutions with deep (often taxpayer funded) pockets against women crowdfunding mostly in £5, £10s. Hundreds of thousands in legal costs and then they get awarded something like 20k after a year or more of not working. There are a hell of a lot of people who would be on the streets if they couldn't work for a year.

Justice is a joke, because we have these rulings and nothing changes. Normal people on normal wages with mortgages can't afford to do that. There are stories, if you look, of women who HAVE fought who've almost lost their homes.

Gillian Phillip had to become a lorry driver after being dumped by her agent as an author: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12364265/Author-Gillian-Philip-dumped-agent-support-JK-Rowling-says-women-terrified-speaking-trans-debate-fears-theyll-lose-jobs-targeted-cancel-culture.html

In some cases the TRAs have threatened children by direct action or doxxing or by weaponising the police (See what happened to Caroline Farrow, Marion Millar, Kate Scottow, Posie Parker). There's a threat to making their parents lose their jobs too. Lots of women in this fight have dependent children. The impact on them of being made homeless would be huge. Most women have caring duties and are responsible for others. When we speak out we put those others at risk too, and the TRAs know that and use it, so of course up to now many women shut up. Is it cowardly to protect your family? I'm not sure to be honest. We all do what we can within our own circumstances.

This is why SEEN in the workplace is so important - so there is pushback, but it does need to be safety in numbers as much as possible to overturn this ideology. The vast majority see it for the bonkers, abusive, unscientific bollocks it is.

Specifically I think fear of being called a bigot. Calling women who wants single sex services hateful bigots has been very effective in shutting up any dissent.

And Wadhwa seems to have been pretty quick to accuse those who questioned him or his job role as head of a rape service racists - there are video clips of him saying that those who don't chant the mantra TWAW are also racist and bigoted in other ways. People really fear being called a racist or being called far right.

Add to that a board of trustees who mostly are young, inexperienced, white and well educated, and there's a good chance they'll fall over themselves to show that they're inclusive intersectional right thinking non racist non transphobes. Wadhwa isn't stupid. He was top of the oppression tree, as PP said, being brown and trans. Anyone disagreeing with him, on anything, must be a hateful bigot. That's where we get, when identity trumps reality.

don't forget all the lesbians who gave years of their valuable time during the AIDS crisis to nurse sufferers, raise awareness, march and fundraise.

@GiveMeSpanakopita very true. Seems that gay men have largely forgotten though.

Inspired by this thread I just volunteered my professional services at a local women's refuge. I already donated money but it's never enough.

That's brilliant @MrsTerryPratchett

https://www.vahanomy.com/mridul-wadhwa

Already jumped on another gravy train

Not only have they forgotten, but some of them (looking at you Talcum X) even accuse us of being bigots when we decline to consider a sexual relationship with someone with a penis.

Lesbians stepped up hugely for gay men during the early years of AIDs and campaigned alongside them, donated money, took the flak even though it wasn't technically our problem

Some of us will never forget how gay men turned round and returned the favour.

Thank goodness the trans CEO has now stood down, or been stood down. It was a prime case of putting the demands of wokery above all else.

But in the case of ERC it wasn't even about a female victim potentially encountering a male victim. It was about a female victim potentially having to see a male Counsellor. Men absolutely have the right to decent rape crisis care, the same as women (ideally provided seperately but thats another discussion) they have No right, no right at all to be providing that care to women who want women only care. That is what is being discussed in this thread - a rape crisis centre put the (hypothetical) wishes of a male counsellor over the needs of a female victim. Its not even about the competing rights of 2 victims.

This seems on the money to me. Very tentatively, as this is right out of my area, I assume that the label intersectional must have been intended to try to get people to look at issues in a more nuanced way and understand that some groups of women were facing discrimination and oppression not just because of their sex but also because of their ethnicity, religion, sexuality, socio-economic status or disability, or any combination thereof. This is obvious common sense. I'd be surprised to learn that the early proponents of intersectional feminism intended to create a hierarchy of oppression and yet here we are.

What a logical career progression.

I'd say it's fear too. Fear created by the patriarchy and the handmaidens that support it.

They've made it so that anyone women that objects to unwanted male behaviour or objects to anything that compromises their female only safe spaces will ultimately get hounded and berated and isolated for feeling that way.

Everytime an issue concerning women appears on here, men and their apologists turn up to shit all over it.

They rely on the fear of women so create environments that uphold that