Universal credit & domestic abuse

[QuarksandLeptons]

Good article in the Financial Times

www.ft.com/content/aaaaf2fa-4c63-11e8-8a8e-22951a2d8493

Brief summary:
10% of the households receiving the benefit are couples. The new system puts it all into one account which means that in the event of it going into the account of a controlling & abusive partner, the abusive partners can end up not sharing the money, leaving women and children vulnerable. There are cases documented of women and children going hungry and not having money for nappies or sanitary items.
Worse, women & children end up being forced to stay in dangerous circumstances because they don’t have the money to leave.

How can changes like these be made to the system without thinking through the real life consequences to huge numbers of women & children? Surely, this would have been flagged up if relevant women’s groups had been asked to comment on proposed changes

As someone currently trying negotiate this minefield of SC support for a disabled DD (and my disability) who submitted a complaint 21/03/18 which has not been responded to and a follow up on 26/04/18 I have had to pay a solicitor out of my benefits (because I can’t work) to send a letter to the LA because of legal aid cuts. This kind of compounding effect is what is happening to women in their interactions with services all the time.

If the services are broken to the point they don’t work, the services users are broken by the system not working and even if they can eventually try and advocate for themselves they have all kinds of hidden costs they can’t afford to pay for taking any action then the system is entirely unaccountable and the problem remains entirely hidden.

This is specifically the aim of these policies IMO.

Absolutely agree. They kn

Sorry sometimes phone plays up when charging! They know most people will borrow or sofa surf or turn to crime or women will have to sell their bodies like ashamed

The ones who can do none of those things will fall through the cracks and have no way out and be ignored.

Everything Offred is saying. The intersections of all this stuff creates self-perpetuating system failure - and it's deliberate. And because the casualties are mostly working class women, nobody cares. You can always blame the victim for system failure if the victims are women.

(All of this is another reason I have such contempt for the social constructionism that has taken over the liberal left: it's not just about trans. It's made the liberal left blind to so much more. This thread is what material reality looks like when your life is about more than contemplating how marginalised your blue hair makes you, you horrible, obnoxious idiots.)

I have been homeless in the past.

I have at times considered sex work but I can’t even do that because I have a high needs child with no support who has for the last 2 years been with me 24/7 (she hasn’t been to school for 2 years) to the point where I cannot have care for my own MH or disability and the GP has had to make house calls, I took an overdose (big one of all my pills I had been saving for 2 months) and was unconscious for two days at home last year and no-one even noticed and when I told them a few months later I was told my ‘crisis plan’ is to go to A&E - I can’t even go to A&E in a crisis.

Things are slightly better now because she is now able to go to my XH’s house where she is this weekend, no thanks to all the services who have not done anything at all.

I have at times been in tears begging EDT to take her into care (prior to suicide attempt) which they will not, neither of us want that, but I think people don’t realise that it is very hard to get SC to take children into care, especially when they have disabilities and will have high costs for the LA.

There have been many many times during this period where I looked back at the two years I was homeless, including all the violence I suffered and felt that was a more attractive option than my current situation, same with very painful and slow death from overdose.

And I am a person who absolutely has the benefit of middle class socialisation in my interactions with the system. I know how these systems work, I feel I deserve better, I know how to speak so these people in power will listen and I know I can (in an emergency and not without emotional costs) get money to help me with the hidden costs.

It's made the liberal left blind to so much more.

Not least to how degrading, unfabulous and unempowering "sex work" is when the only reason you are doing it is to keep a roof over you and your children's heads.

And dangerous.

Totally agree with that assessment of the left liberals Lang Cleg...

This is a DIRECT result of Blair’s changes to the Labour Party and the effect this has had on how everyone ‘does’ politics...

Politics is no longer a vehicle for change/progress, it’s completely about polls and focus groups and manipulations and spin now, that is now The. Way. You. Do. It.

for Offred - yes, you deserve better. And a society in which women actually did have equal rights would do better for you.

Absolutely it would. I am deeply enraged on behalf of all women.

Mind you I have been deeply enraged about it since I was a child!

This is just an extension of existing policies leaving people in this position, sadly. Not only the lowest incomes. For example, my DH is unable to work due to health issues. As I earn over a threshold, he receives no ESA. This means he is entirely financially dependent on me. Now I'm not a monster, but if I was he could have 0 independent funds. And if he wanted to leave would have to be willing to declare himself homeless and start over with nothing.

What I would like is a feminist trade union for women TBH.

Smeaton when ppl have said to me that they are voting for Corbyn or May i have said to them..............you do realise its not The X Factor or BGT you are voting for........................and i get a quizzical look...................

Yy milk it’s not a new thing but it is an expansion of old things. Things which are bad.

I think a major thing for women is the combination of a lifelong fight against yourself (socialisation) AND against how the world sees you (structural oppression). When the fight against yourself is made worse by a poor start and the system is severely stacked against you the effect is so much worse.

YY.

I think a major thing for women is the combination of a lifelong fight against yourself (socialisation) AND against how the world sees you (structural oppression). When the fight against yourself is made worse by a poor start and the system is severely stacked against you the effect is so much worse.

Yes.

The blog linked to above made an excellent point - one that had always felt wrong to me but I couldn't put my finger on why.

She pointed out that many (most?) women she had spoken to had been accused of getting money from men in some way. Either living with them, sleeping with them or getting them to pay for things.

I had always felt like this set women apart in some way. It identifies women as being unable to support themselves, that we will always sponge off men (using our sex or bodies to do so), that we are loose with our morals to gain money or a roof over our heads. It's a disgusting rhetoric - one that is built into the system.

The realisation that the social system we rely on hates women to this extent frightens me. It's institutionalised sexism based on the whore ideology and it's seems like a small step to them simply telling women to "go find a man, if you can't survive on your own" or to just give all the money to men to force us to do so.

Thank you Offred
So much in your post about the details & consequences of the current political mind set