excluded from womens services

[childrenandhomeless]

When already having learnt my 'how to appease men' lessons only too well, we arrived in Refuge (a safe safe for women and children) to be confronted with men! Terrified, by men, I reacted, badly, due to PTSD, and was emotionally blackmailed into apologising to the man I had offended so badly.

I was told how we must embrace the men who are suffering all the assaults, they didn't in any way even present as women, had all the characteristics that a male has with their loud deep voices, big physique, and entitled air.

That experience fucked with my head in ways beyond explanation. I had to be nice, be pleasant, accepting, but everything inside me was screaming, and at night I screamed in sleep, and cried out HELP ME! Or I just didn't sleep.

I cannot help how much this fucks me up, I have no way of stopping it. It makes me ill.

I cannot now go near any of the crisis services that support women so awesomely. I have made some calls and been repeatedly asked to take up counselling because of what repeatedly happened to me, but I cannot go near them. They are the experts, another service I'm excluded from because it will further damage my ability to live my life.

I am very frightened to speak about it, and I worry I could be banned for saying how seriously I am affected by this awful situatition of being told over, nearly everywhere I go, and yet having these extreme reactions which all cause further damage.

I have nearly lost my life to this, and therefore my children their mother.

I know I am far from the only one, so my story is not special in any way. I feel alone in this exclusion zone, isolated from the world of services that are supposedly for exactly my experience.

I don't know what I'm trying to say.

I can't open my mouth for fear of more being shut down, told to appease and accept, despite the very real damage it causes, I am trying to have a voice, but told its not allowed.

I have tried to access a female MP, I am not allowed, because I'm not in the area of a female MP.

A refugee with no recourse to womens services, because the women's services have changed womens services to mixed sex services.

Isn't that exclusionary? Yet, I hear the other exclusionary term used against women who fight for those spaces. How shit, and how blaming.

We became refugees, because thats the best way to be safe apparently, to safeguard your children and yourself.

Homeless and isolated by those supposed to help.

Thank you @ScrimshawTheSecond

I came here because it seems to be the place where these issues are posted. My issues are those of access to safe (not mixed sex) services so that I can recover and actually be safe from stalking.

I do appreciate the warning though. Thank you.

yes, I understand your issues are highly pertinent. There's already some really good advice posted and lots of knowledgeable and helpful posters here.

Just noting a bit of caution and that the Relationships board can be a useful resource, too.

I know it doesn't really help you but for the record what happened to you was wrong and awful and there are people on here who are on your side.

I am so sorry to read your story and full of rage on your behalf. I would definitely write to Liz truss as she is committed to preserving single sex spaces. If you are ok for us to do so we can also share your story in some GC feminist groups we are members of to increase awareness of the actual harm this is doing. The relationships board my have more practical advice but there is solidarity here for sure.

I'm not the the same country as you, but had a similar experience with shelters. I chose to leave but not use the shelters, I understand this isn't possible for you. I'm so so sorry you are going through this.

I really hope you find female support and help close by, and can recover in peace.

If there's any support I can give you, please let me know.

The Equality Act 2010 is explicit that services for women CAN be protected solely for women in appropriate situations.

What we're seeing is the result of organisational capture by Stonewall (and others), telling lies to such organisations to make them fearful of the law and of the loss of their funding.

No I don't agree; this started before Stonewall was captured. What we are seeing here is the logical end result of mixed sex services.
They were not set up this way. This didn't happen by accident.

Women need to start over, building women only services. We did it once, we can do it again.

the law supports men finding women with children, the internet also, androids, idevices, SM, even cars with cameras

Did your ex at any time have physical access to your or your children's current phone, tablet, or laptop? Have you changed your iCloud/Google password since you left? I'm thinking of stalkerware.

I am sorry OP, sorry that services that are meant to keep you and your children safe are not doing so.
I have no advice as I’m not familiar with what help is available but see that others have provided some links for you. I wish you all the love and luck in the world.

Thats a really helpful link haXXor

I have learnt a new term (self-excluding), that this is actually a thing, and other women are doing it because they have been excluded by women supposed to provide women's services to women only and children.

I would be happy for my OP to be used if any really feel it has any chance of impact on anything at all.

The ex has used many ways to find us including tech and many other people.

The police, courts and solicitors have also given away information that risks mine and my childrens safeguarding

It all seems unbelievable writing this out and uncomfortable too, I was cringing before coming to check my thread.

childrenandhomeless
.I was cringing before coming to check my thread.
Oh no please don't feel like that,
This is your thread, your story, your voice and everyone here is listening to you. And as a previous poster said, your writing is very powerful.

Your testimony is powerful. You have support here.

You’ve already had some good practical advice for next steps - As you are happy for your story to be shared I would suggest contacting Dr Nic at FairPlay for women. I suspect Nic will not only happily publish your writing on the website, but she might be able to off some contacts who can help support you in more practical terms too.

fairplayforwomen.com/contact-us/

I have to amend something. Womens services are being blackmailed into including men through threats of funding withdrawal. It wasn't a slur on women offering womens services, which it did sound exactly like. Some of the women involved along our journey have been so considerate, gentle and supportive.

The police, courts and solicitors have also given away information that risks mine and my childrens safeguarding

Social engineering is the hardest attack to defend against because it's out of your control and the people spilling the beans aren't going to suffer the repercussions.

US refuges are having to brief women to stay off Facebook and turn off their phone GPS.

The stalker just needs a few minutes alone with the smartphone of the person being stalked. So when they're in the shower, just say: "Hey, honey, I need to use your phone. Tell me the passcode!" leapt out at me, because he might not even need to ask for your passcode. If you use your fingerprint to lock your phone, he only has to wait until you're sleeping to touch your finger to your phone to unlock it. Same for your kid's phones.

haXXor. This is here too. They only need your phone number, or to briefly plug in a usb stick loaded with bugs, for it to then report everything remotely, use the camera of your laptop or phone, etc, and cooy all mails, sms, and contacts, calendar, your life. In their hands. Buy it for pennies on amazon.

Or abuser buys devices for the children, linked to a cloud, their cloud.

Post a status on FB, tells everyone where you are.

Send an email from an MS account like hotmail, it logs your location.

Its become so hard to not leave a trail anywhere, or know how to be safe.

Women need high level tech protections, or all else is useless.

In our situation, I know of many that have been tracked and had to be swiftly moved from Refuge.

I also know that any of those perpetrators could have said they were women and been admitted into the refuge. This is why refuge is not safe for women, as men can say they are women and the doors are opened.

Why can't there be a safe space for men, separately, theres so much money available feom what I've seen.

I just cannot go near anything that opens its doors to men.

ah lovely, so sorry you are having to go through this.

You shouldn't be expected to trust anyone who offers help while risking lives by accepting men into these spaces.

I wish I could do more than listen. I can't.

Posting to add solidarity with you, OP.

It is an outrage that our services have been colonised by people who care nothing for our needs or our suffering.

I hope the good advice and support on this thread is of use to you.

Inebriati has it right: we need to start re-building our own support services for women. We've seen what happens when governments and big business get involved. Let's turn it round.

When we rebuild what we've lost, we need to assume that a DV victim's and her children's phones etc are compromised, that her car may have a GPS tracker hidden on it, etc.

The tools available to men to hurt us have increased enormously because of the ubiquity of internet-connected devices and the techniques needed to counter those tools are highly specialised and still being researched.

And we need more women (the cunty kind) in IT. When doing IT support, I was directly approached by a female user for help because her abusive ex was emailing her at her work address and I was the only female IT support worker in a three-building radius. Mailbox queries weren't really my job and I was supposed to send her to Service Desk or log her request in a ticket in the helpdesk database for every analyst to see. Like fuck was I doing that to an abused woman, I helped her off-ticket, but I had to figure out how best to do so as I went along because no one ever trains IT staff in how to deal with abuse cases. No one designing helpdesk databases ever thinks to design in a "sensitive ticket" feature so the user raising the ticket can lock the ticket so that only a limited subset of trained analysts can see it.

You shouldn't be expected to trust anyone who offers help while risking lives by accepting men into these spaces

Thats so true. How to get those running these services to even be aware of this, its so shocking that those I really did lean on to understand it better than I let us down so badly.

Thats horrible haXXor how great she had you to go to. I don't think any service like this exists for women, it surely is the first line of defence?

Life is very different when you can feel secure.

All these tools can be used over and over, which makes it a cheap solution.

I really appreciate pp coming to post suppprt for us.

Maybe things will start to change for womens services?

I mean LGB leaving stonewall is a powerful message to the world about what's happening!

This will surely open others eyes to the conflict and how men are being prioritised over all others, the way spaces are considered to be owned by them aswell instead of seeing how polar opposite the womens needs are to those of MTF trans people.

MTF trans people are so different to women. I cannot understand, and have no experience of their experience and needs. They have separate needs and its clear many women self-exclude to avoid males in womens spaces when they are in desperate need. That needs acknowledging and isn't,. Which is wrong.

These are womens spaces, based on womens rights as well as protection of children.