Self Identifying Women wanted

[EmmaGrundyForPM]

Our local Rape Crisis Centre is advertising for volunteers to be trained to respond to peopl calling for help. The advert stipulates that you've got to be over 18 and that you self identify as a woman.

So if I were the victim of a horrendous sexual assault I would phone for help/ support and possibly end up speaking to a "self identifying woman" who has a penis.

Just copied a couple of minutes ago.

Have gone back and looked - maybe I missed the 'self identifying' on the picture in the tweet. In the advert itself it still states the post holder needs to be female and doesn't mention anything about self identifying.

How fucking ridiculous, it doesn't even make sense. It says a 'self identifying woman' but then that the post holder needs to be 'female'. Female (as in the female sex) is the protected characteristic in the EA. Why are they muddying the waters in this way on something so important?!

At least they are getting their arse handed to them on the tweet.

So transwomen/biological men can work in a rape crisis centre, helping women.

But 'As a women only service, SARSVL does not work with transgender men or boys.'

So, women then.

Or female ??

Look at this person. Isn't 'Autogynefabulous' exactly the sort of person you would love to be on the other end when you call a Rape Crisis Centre?

Just leaving this here

Details - my bolding

"An advert is a notice or announcement, written or oral, promoting a job opportunity, a product, service or event.
Adverts can appear in newspapers, magazines, on the television, radio, online, in shop windows and in emails.
Adverts that restrict jobs or goods, facilities and services to people with particular protected characteristics, such as to men or to people of a particular age group, are unlawful except in very limited circumstances. Please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS))_ for more information on whether or not an advert may be discriminatory.
An advertisement must be viewed as a whole. Descriptions, job titles, illustrations and pictures that relate to particular protected characteristics may be discriminatory, as they may imply that only people with those characteristics are eligible for the job or service being advertised."

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/how-report-discriminatory-advert

Link to reporting form

https://ehrcweb.wufoo.com/forms/q1xec5yk19rgfd2/

I think its a more complicated arguement. They aren't using the EA (unlike say Brighton survivors).

But what they are doing both Cambridge RC and Rape Crisis England and Wales is saying their purpose is to provide services to women and girls. Most people in the UK will unquestioningly accept this to mean biological females. But some RCCs are advertising for self identifying women. Most users, and potential users will be unaware of this and so will use the service on the common assumption as implied by the phrase "women and girls" that the support service will be provided by biological women.

So the questions are

• why are they perpetuating this fraud on women and girls
• why aren't the using the EA that clearly allows them to provide services to biological females by other biological females
• they have no more right to force women to accept that TWAW than say a religious organisation says you have to affirm our believes to get the services we provide

• why aren't they setting up services to trans people in the same way as some provide services to male victims of rape

It is the overt duplicity of what they are doing.

Not that I agree with Rape Crisis Scotland (and Women's Aid Scotland) but they both clearly state they are trans inclusive.

Why cant they be straight forward and clear?

How can a women's service provider by so unwilling to say it provides services by and for women.

@NewAccountForCorona

This sentence is the most shocking of all:

As a women only service, SARSVL does not work with transgender men or boys

From Butterer's link to the Leeds centre. Here is an example of true transphobia

They are illegally discriminating on the basis of sex.

So a female bodied person who states that they are male gets raped (in the ‘traditional’ way) and hasn’t got somewhere to go? FFS...

I wonder if Sapphos has peaked yet

I'm not sure that services for men and boys who have been raped would be much good for women who identify as men . Surely being raped would be a massive trigger to a dysphoric female bodied person, and they would need support from people who understood that their female body had been raped by a male body.

This is even worse than the girl guides managing girls who identify as boys out of the organisation, when they are the very members who would benefit most from the original tenets of guiding - the now old-fashioned "you may be a girl but you can be whatever/whoever you want to be".

Nowadays you can only be a girl if you are fluffy, effeminate and like dresses and the colour pink, apparently

Well GG have an exemption as a charity that they can have only female children joining.

They changed it to identifying as a girl (gender).

So they are mixed sex but who can join and who can't seems confusing at best.

Essentially they have breached their exemption by allowing some boys in. And further they are discriminating against boys and girls who they won't accept. And girls who can't go to mixed sex stuff.

So they are breaking their charity charter or whatever it is.

But, on it goes. It has been a couple of years maybe and still the same. So essentially these rules and stuff are useless.

Have been wondering whether there should be a thread on FWR where we list the Rape Crisis Centres that have advertised for "self identifying women" as a useful resource.

ie just to post the name of the group, a link to the ad or web page and if there is a discussion thread already started on here add that.

If at some future date they reverse their SelfID position MNHQ could be asked to delete their entry.

Thoughts?

If you look at page 2 of this other thread there is a really horrendous response from the centre re right to self identify.

No concern for the women survivors needing the service.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3965408-Mail-article-on-rape-crisis-centres-recruiting-self-identifying-women?pg=2

@stumbledin. that link doesnt work

@EmmaGrundyForPM

The link seems to work, but here it is without the that makes it active. You can just copy it and then paste into your browser

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3965408-Mail-article-on-rape-crisis-centres-recruiting-self-identifying-women?pg=2

Hope that helps